Dec. 4

‘You Can’t Measure What We Teach’

“You can’t measure what we teach.”

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Those are just a few of the responses that Orin L. Grossman, academic vice president at Fairfield University, said he has heard from faculty members — especially in the humanities — who resist the notion that they and the colleges that employ them must find ways to measure how, and how much, their students learn in the classroom. “Their view tends to be that we should simply trust the faculty, and that the role of the administration is to keep scrutiny of them at arm’s length,” Grossman said.

His comments came Wednesday during a session on assessing student outcomes in the humanities at the annual meeting of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, the regional accrediting agency for that part of the country. The meeting took place in Boston.

The session featured a panel of three humanists with views that were widely divergent in some ways: Grossman, a Gershwin scholar and senior academic administrator who believes higher education needs to get with the program on accountability for student learning outcomes; Ellen McCulloch-Lovell, president of Marlboro College, which uses several measures of student learning but has an educational philosophy that makes its brand of assessment virtually impossible to transfer to other colleges; and David Scobey, a historian at Bates College who acknowledged being a humanities professor who has “said every one of those whining comments” that Grossman recalled, “and believes them.”

Despite those diverging starting points, the discussion revealed quite a bit more common ground than any of the panelists probably would have predicted. Let’s be clear: Where they ended up was hardly a breakthrough on the scale of solving the Middle East puzzle.

But there was general agreement among them that:

Any effort to try to measure learning in the humanities through what McCulloch-Lovell deemed “[Margaret] Spellings-type assessment” — defined as tests or other types of measures that could be easily compared across colleges and neatly sum up many of the learning outcomes one would seek in humanities students — was doomed to fail, and should.
It might be possible, and could be valuable, for humanists to reach broad agreement on the skills, abilities, and knowledge they might seek to instill in their students, and that agreement on those goals might be a starting point for identifying effective ways to measure how well students have mastered those outcomes.
It is incumbent on humanities professors and academics generally to decide for themselves how to assess whether their students are learning, less to satisfy external calls for accountability than because it is the right thing for academics, as professionals who care about their students, to do.

“It’s in our hands — nobody is forcing us into overly prescriptive models or any one particular way at this point, and it’s our responsibility to respond to the public’s interest [in learning what value they’re getting for their tuition and tax dollars] by doing it ourselves,” said Grossman. “But the longer it’s delayed,” he warned, “the more over time the public will start saying, ‘What is really going on?’ and start pushing for the kinds of measures that nobody really wants.”

Wednesday’s session was part of the New England accreditor’s assessment forum, an event that has been attached for the better part of a decade to the annual meeting of the association’s Commission on Institutions of Higher Education. That fact alone, noted Barbara Brittingham, the commission’s president and director, challenges the frequent assertion by critics that colleges aren’t paying attention to how effectively they are educating their students.

But it is also true that the idea that colleges must measure the extent and depth of student learning is far from a fully embraced concept in higher education, and at this meeting. That is far more true, the University of New Hampshire’s Bruce Mallory said in introducing the panel, in the humanities, which are characterized by qualitative and analytic approaches, than in the sciences, which are “characterized by objective measurement, have more bounded notions of truth and fact, and for which the way we represent those bounded notions of truth and fact have been more quantitative.”

Fairfield’s Grossman, after provoking laughs with his litany of the humanists’ standard explanations for why measuring student learning is impossible in their domain (the ones that began this article), expressed frustration at the tendency of faculty members, “in extremis,” to pull out the mother of all reasons why they shouldn’t be assessed: academic freedom. He said he had taken to urging faculty members who define academic freedom to mean complete autonomy to re-read the American Association of University Professors’ 1940 statement on the concept, to realize that academic freedom was not a free pass from professional responsibility.

“It is not some kind of iron curtain faculty can draw around themselves to protect themselves from scrutiny or accountability,” Mallory, New Hampshire’s provost and executive vice president, said in reiterating Grossman’s argument.

McCulloch-Lovell, the Marlboro president, distanced herself from her faculty members most skeptical about assessment, who — she said — believe that most assessment is “antithetical to the humanities,” which is designed to develop the almost unmeasurable skill of “discerning judgment.” She also cited the multiple ways that the tiny (330 student) Vermont institution measures its students’ learning, both through commonly used measurements like the National Survey of Student Engagement, participation in experiments like the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education, and through requirements like the Clear Writing Program, which demands that all students submit a portfolio within their first two semesters to prove that they can, well, write clearly.

But McCulloch-Lovell also said that she was not convinced that the type of assessment in which Marlboro engages would apply almost anywhere else, given that so much of it takes place in one-on-one settings between professors and students. If assessment is, as some believe, about trying to find ways to compare colleges and hold institutions accountable, Marlboro’s version of assessment probably wouldn’t qualify. “I think we could describe it, but what I’m worried about it how transferable it is to other places,” she said. Her implicit question: Would that disqualify it from some definitions of valid assessment?

Though he described himself at the start as “a bit of a skeptic and a Luddite” on the question of assessment, David Scobey, who directs Bates’s Harward Center for Community Partnerships, did not fall neatly into the pigeonhole of humanistic faculty member who rebuffs any effort to hold colleges accountable.

He agreed with the assertion, frequently put forward by the Spellings Commission and by many other observers of higher education that “the public needs all kind of good information about colleges, and we have obfuscated it.”

But on the matter of measuring student learning, especially in the humanities, he expressed reservations. Partly that grew from his nuanced and complex definition of what the humanities seek to impart to students, from the ability to engage in “meaning-making,” to a degree of “cosmopolitanism,” to a reflexive ability to assess themselves and the quality of their own learning. Those and many other “outcomes” of the humanities are difficult if not impossible to measure in “any form of high-stakes knowledge,” Scobey said, “even rich high-stakes knowledge like the Collegiate Learning Assessment,” which has become the test du jour in many circles.

Ultimately, “the question ‘How well are we doing educating our students in the humanities?’ is much closer to ‘How good is our marriage?’ than it is to ‘How good is this hotel’s service?’ ” he said. In other words, it tends more toward the subjective than the objective, is better assessed over the long term than in snapshots, and is difficult to compare, among other things.

The question probably can be answered, but with “thick description” rather than concise data, Scobey said.

Despite those reservations, the panelists seemed to agree that the days were past when humanists, or colleges generally, could say, ” ‘It’s a little too complex and nuanced for you to understand — just trust us, and write us your checks,’ ” as Mallory put it.

As the issues of cost and affordability continue to mount, Grossman said, “the public will be asking more critically than in the past, ‘What are we getting for our money?’ ” If the answers aren’t forthcoming, politicians or other will offer their own prescriptions for how to gauge that.

But right now, he said, it is still in the hands of professionals in higher education to define for themselves what their students ought to be learning and how that might be measured. “Professors don’t want a model that will trivialize the humanities. Well, what do humanities professors think is important? What do we want them to know, what do we want them to learn? They have power to shape this analysis as they like, as they wish.” For now.

— Doug Lederman

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Comments

a little late in the game

Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t these discussions about assessing student learning outcomes a little late? about 16 years too late?

The student learning requirements for regional and national accrediting associations were part of the Higher Education Act Amendments of 1992 (see link).These quality control provisions were put in place to ensure that minimum standards of educational quality were being met for those institutions receiving federal funds.

And they still aren’t being met. Better to have a panel discussion about why it is taking this long, why the procrastination, to enact basic measures of quality control in higher ed.

Glen S. McGhee, Dir., at Florida Higher Education Accountability Project, at 7:50 am EST on December 4, 2008

Assessment Relies on Agreement

This is a great article that describes many of the discussions that have occurred at several campuses I have been at, but I cannot resist the temptation of stating the obvious—Successful assessment in the humanities relies on agreement about what specific departments in the humanities want students to learn. Without an explicit statement of what these student learning outcomes are, it is difficult to assess much at all that will impact student learning.

Thankfully, once student learning outcomes are agreed to (which can be a monumental task), the rest might be easier to facilitate. If student learning outcomes focus on “thick description” of values, world views, etc.—as the those quoted in the article suggest—then faculty conversations grounded in student performance in portfolios (the so-called “expert panel") could yield meaningful “thick description” about student performance specific to these student learning outcomes; NSSE data might be used to observe student performance, assuming sample size is large enough. There are other possibilities that many of my colleagues are better qualified to mention.

Nonetheless, in my experience, departments whose faculty agree on what they want their students to achieve, and which at least minimally agree that evaluating how well students learn with regard to stated student learning outcomes, usually have made or can made great progress. I appreciate the fact that this assessment discussion occurred, as it is a needed discussion at most campuses I know of.

Sean McKitrick, Assistant Provost for Curriculum, Instruction, & Assessment at Binghamton University (SUNY), at 7:50 am EST on December 4, 2008

The sloth of academic humanists, as noted here, is one of the great tragedies of higher education. I have an English major and learned about visualization from some of the greatest art historians in the planet. I use all this every day.

Then, again and again, I hear the academy in the arguments above. I’d be delighted to design a full two-year MBA program, which would be better than the one I took, using The Odyssey, King Lear, and Richard II.

Practitioners out here agree with me. The professorate that did such a fine job of teaching me these subject does not. I don’t know the answers.

The contrast that keeps showing up is all the attending and funding the STEM disciplines attract. Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. I agree with President Obama that the U.S. needs to improve in math and science education. Why not a cry for Richard II and the simple declarative sentence? We need those lessons every day.

What would a STEM of humanities look like, battle cry, funding proposals and all?

Wick Sloane, at 7:50 am EST on December 4, 2008

If you are already testing your students — midterms, finals, etc., — then you are already assessing. You can’t argue that student learning in the humanities is too subtle, nuanced to measure and still have midterms and finals. The problem is that we are not systematic in our testing, i.e., we don’t know what we have “measured” with our midterms. We tell a student he got 83% on the test but we cannot honestly say what that means. Assessment — for purposes of doing our job better, not accountability — simply requires we be more systematic about what we are offering students in the classroom and then be systematic about collecting feedback (testing) on how well we accomplished this task.

Kelly Aune, at 8:35 am EST on December 4, 2008

The sloth of academic humanists? Maybe somewhere—not where I work. Professors in the humanities are working their tails off (excuse my Shakespearean language), and the demands keep growing. Teach engagingly, assess student learning, keep up with research in the field, write and publish, do civic engagement, create new programs, and demonstrate that you are increasing enrollments and bringing in more money. Meanwhile, as a separate article states, hiring in the humanities shrivels up. Humanities professors (and this is true at our university for science professors, too) must take on ever greater workloads, while any new hiring tends to be of part-time faculty and occasionally full-time, non-tenure-track instructors.

Yes, I’m whining. But I also enjoy my work, do a good job, and constantly think about whether students are learning and how this learning will help them in the future, as professionals, as citizens, as interesting human beings. Portfolios and student self-reflection, along with faculty and student discussion of desired outcomes, and input from alumni—all are helpful. WHAT WE DO NOT NEED ARE ANY MORE TESTS, I DON’T CARE HOW WELL-DESIGNED THEY ARE. Life is not a standardized test. We aren’t measuring auto emissions or growth in GNP. That’s why we call what we do the “humanities” and “liberal arts.” I know, if we don’t design our own assessments, someone else will impose bad ones on us. But I refuse to design, endorse, or participate in “tests” of any kind, or simplistic assessments of student writing or thinking based on timed essays.

Ask the graduates of humanities programs what they think. Do they wish they had been “tested"? Do they think their education was lacking? What they probably aren’t happy about is how US society demeans intellectual, cultural, and artistic activities.

No, you can’t “measure” what we teach. Especially when “your” (read: our) values are so out of line with the best in what humans have thought and done. The point of a humanities education is to take the measure of society, not the other way around.

Steve, Director of Writing; Director, ITW Writing Project at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis, at 8:55 am EST on December 4, 2008

Assessing outcomes in the major requires huge time commitments

I think one of the unspoken challenges in getting departments and faculty to “do assessment” in the way this article describes is that it amounts to an additional (and usually unwelcome) task on their already-very-busy schedules. Many departments have developed general statements about what their majors are “about” and what the requirements are, but to have them sit down and completely spell out the goals of the major, how they are realized via specific required courses, and how outcomes will be measured would seem to require at least a half-day retreat, and that’s assuming the department members get along with one another. Some of these things are spelled out already in course catalogs and web pages, but probably not in the kind of detail needed for assessment.

There is a difference between assigning grades and assessing learning outcomes in a major. Both are very time consuming, but they’re different enterprises.

John Nugent, Senior Research Analyst/Special Asst. to President at Connecticut College, at 9:40 am EST on December 4, 2008

Assessment is a Red-Herring

I always find myself amused by the persistent hand-wringing, by academics, politicans, and the public, about assessment. This article and the comments it has elicited illustrate why I have come to believe that the conversation about accountability is one of those infamous red-herring debates. This is not to say that assessment may not be a good and useful thing. I tend to think it can be done well and ultimately lead to students learning more. The big question is whether the assessment converation is really about student learning or justifying how much (or little) we as a country invest in higher education and what kinds of things we invest in. I think that many humanities faculty have come to realize that student learning, despite the billions spent on higher education, is playing a smaller and smaller role in decision-making within higher ed and by policy makers. I say this because after attending nearly ten years of AACU, HLC, and AGLS meetings, I have rarely met or seen journalists, politicians, college presidents, or trustee members at these meetings even though I have heard literally hundreds of great panel discussions about how to improve student learning. Moreover, it seems that few of the many ideas discussed at meetings of these kind ever make it into the public dialogue about higher education. From what I can tell talking with other general education administrators, chairs, and assistant deans is that few of us possess the resources, platforms, or access to the real decision-makers to make a difference. I know that there are probably thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people who really care about student learning on our college campuses right now and are tasked with improving student learning. These folks tend not to have any real staff, any real budget, any meaningful oversight over the faculty who teach in general education, or real access to potential funders. By contrast, most instutitions can the find the money to build new student centers, fitness centers, dormitories, or even specialized institutes or centers that will serve only a handful of students. Despite my personal commitment to general education, I don’t think that the structure of higher education is really all that focused on learning and the public does not really seem to care about the content of the learning that happens on campuses, just the cost. In that context, I am not fully convinced that better assessment really matters for the purposes of this national conversation. I think that Trustees, Presidents, and politicians would continue to find ways to de-fund general education (the supposed purpose of colleges and universities) and devote more and more resources to those activities and structures that they can market. Colleges and Universities may be facing tough economic times ahead, but it is not for want of assessment. It is about “butts in seats” (as my institution colorfully describes it) not how proficient at writing and critical thinking are our graduates. The first issue is always the primary concern, whereas the latter always seems lower down on the priority list when making decisions.

Rich, at 11:15 am EST on December 4, 2008

Measuring What We Teach

Didn’t we, once upon a time, call these “Objectives” and include them in our syllabi? Now, it seems, the terminology has gotten more “fashionable” and in order to pacify the politicians and regents we design “Parades of Thick Notebooks” in which we justify the new name of those course objectives and “map” them to each day’s activities. If there’s time later, we’ll try to teach the students something.

FBridger, at 11:15 am EST on December 4, 2008

Collegial Fear

“Learning” and the competencies for learning are discipline and profession based (i.e., the scientific method for theology are a tad different). In roads to articulate these competencies are emerging through conversations like this article and organizations of scholars and professionals. These potentially esoteric conversations are hard in the sense of content but they neglect the realities of collegial relationships at institutions of higher education, which muddies up the conversation even more. The basic fear of keeping your job is rampant in these economic times causing people to do the minimum and make claims toward the maximum.

One way of addressing both the “big picture” and the local realities is to call departments/ colleges to task of publicly sharing the learning that happens. As value judgments are made by students, parents, community, employers, and colleagues there will at least be information to work from. This outcomes based approach can be assessed early but requires colleagues to hold each other accountable for connecting the curriculum toward specific outcomes that are community/ collegially defined and owned.

As faculty lay down “academic freedom” arguments for their scholarly activities, I move to balance that with the “academic responsibility.” The responsibility is ours to advance the knowledge and application through developing future scholars and practitioners, which should face similar rigors to other parts of our academic lives.

J. L. Pellegrino, at 11:15 am EST on December 4, 2008

Perhaps the Deconstructionists Can Shed Light on the Situation?

I say “deconstructionsts,” but a number of other terms would indicate the rather large and hugely influential bunch I’m referring to—humanists who “theorize” this or that, who dwell at the “intersections” of (some)place or time, etc. So for quite a few decades, no mere blip among academic fashions, the humanist disciplines attacked their own canons and methodologies, attacked their own culture and legitimacy, often apparently throwing out the baby with the bathwater—and now they wonder if they can measure what they’ve been teaching? And, elsewhere, they wonder why their job market is shrinking more than for other knowledge fields? Circa 1970, “the Establishment” commenced to co-opt dissident forces; in academia, these turned out to be mainly ethnic/racial minorities and women. The burden of co-optation fell hardest upon the humanities (and hard on the social sciences) because those disciplines had the least defended barriers to entry: It was harder to prove that someone didn’t know enough to earn a Ph.D. in English than in Physics. The social sciences were less vulnerable in some areas, but quite accommodating to invented specialties. And the overarching intellectual rationale for this massive political accommodation tended to be of the “the old way is crap” variety. But the thing is, it’s hard to keep selling that line to new students who want to learn something and maybe even use that knowledge to get a job.

Rod Bell, Adjunct Professor at College of DuPage, at 11:55 am EST on December 4, 2008

While assessing, life happens.

Tom, at 12:35 pm EST on December 4, 2008

Measuring and the Magical Quantum

“You can’t measure what we teach” should not be confused with “You can’t measure anything we teach.”

We all know — if no other way, from our own experience — that teachers’ effects on the lives of students may not be evident, even to those affected, for years or even decades. Similarly, most of us know that we get students ill prepared for the work we’re about to give them, and we wish there were some way to get the teachers and institutions that send them to us to do their damned jobs.

There is probably no way to unlink the quality of education (teaching) from the quality of education (learning), but we’ve all had the experience that, “no matter what we do, they just don’t get it.” Setting aside for the moment the counter that we may not be doing the right things to reach the objectives we seek, measuring outcomes yields almost meaningless data unless we look at the raw material with which we start.

Both student learning and the effectiveness of teaching can’t be effectively gauged without reference to a starting point. Unlike manufacturing, the raw materials (students) in education are not essentially similar in abilities and acquired skills across institutions. And unlike food products, which can be judged in part on the basis of the quality of the raw materials selected, institutions with different missions do not all choose to compete for the “highest quality” material in an effort to boost sales.

Yes, there are magical quanta of unmeasurable riches we sometimes succeed in imparting to our students and there are very long germination times for some of the seeds we plant, but much of what we teach can and should be measured on occasion — particularly baseline skills and knowledge — but let’s compare starting and end points when we evaluate the students, the instructors, or the schools.

Andy Starkis

Andrej Starkis, Assistant Professor of Law at Massachusetts School of Law, at 12:35 pm EST on December 4, 2008

normal distribution?

No matter how any particular subject is taught, will not the outcome (student scores) always result in a distribution that approaches a “normal bell” curve?

What students and their families tend to really be asking, is “what job or career can I (or my student) get if they do extremely well in (for example) literature?”

This seems to be a spin off of the entitlement society we’ve jointly built, where ever soccer player receives a little trophy. E for effort or entitlement?

Dr. F. Gump, at 2:30 pm EST on December 4, 2008

Where are the Professional Associations?

Academic freedom effectively places the responsibility of establishing good teaching practice and rigorous subject matter at the feet of the peer review system. I think it’s fair to say that this framework has proven much more amenable to research and publication than it has to syllabi and teaching methods. Professional associations need to do a better job of organizing the critical teaching aspect of faculty work. Research is not enough.

Similarly, administrations, which are really only asking that academic departments act in their own interests in generating some progress on the issue, need to back off on the summative tone. Even if this is a critical issue, it’s not their role to demand or threaten regarding anything to do with instruction. Incentivizing productivity in addressing the concern among faculty members is a much more appropriate avenue, and it will result in greatly reduced faculty opposition, at least conceptually.

Wossamotta U., at 2:30 pm EST on December 4, 2008

Semester-long evaluations

Obviously one evaluates instruction mainly by evaluating students’ abilities and achievements (sometimes over a lifetime and minimally over a course). So, spend at least a full term with the students, listening to their discussions, reading their papers, seeing their projects, understanding their development during the term—that is, do what each teacher should do to evaluate students and her own teaching. Anything less is as useless as evaluating a person’s driving by scoring a written driver’s test (I long ago stopped giving tests myself.)Quantifying and graphing humanities teaching is a superficial way of making administrators feel useful.

David Eggenschwiler, Prof Emeritus of English at Univ. of Southern Calif., at 2:55 pm EST on December 4, 2008

Too personal

Learning cannot be assessed by anyone of anyone.

Mary C., at 5:15 pm EST on December 4, 2008

Assessment for whom?

Assessment is a very handy tool for the de-skilling of the academic professions. If we can reduce everything we strive for to a set of numbers, then we can hire cheaper labor to teach to the test. I’ll leave it to the reader to make judgments about what would be good for society. I suspect that those whose daily bread depends on professing will differ from those who pay tuition directly, or indirectly through taxes. As a professor, I’m inclined to point out that the development of the current system was accompanied by the greatest increase in the standard of living the world has ever experienced. But that is, of course, an assessment of a different kind.

miller mcpherson, at 9:35 pm EST on December 4, 2008

what should be learned?

I’m not sure if this has been touched on directly or merely alluded to, but how do we, as a profession, a department, a division or a college, decide what should be learned from text X? Richard II was mentioned. What should be the outcome of such a text? What about Moby Dick? Bartleby the Scrivener or Billy Budd? Othello? Walden? or Oronooko? Should it be the same for all students in every college everywhere in every situation?

Sure, we do assessment in our classes but how do we really measure the seemingly immeasurable? Would it be enough to measure the like or dislike a student has for literature or art or philosophy? How can we measure whether a student is no longer a philistine (at least by my measure in my classroom)? Should every student take the same thing, or even the same sort of thing from art, history, literature or philosophy?

Maybe we should ask for math to be put back with the humanities so we’d have something that maybe we could measure. Maybe the value of these courses is in their existence. As Stanley Fish has noted we should be saving the world on our own time and not with our curriculum and pedagogy, that the value of these courses is in their existence and our exposure to them and it should be enough that we ponder them. But how do we measure the value of pondering the big picture?

bradley bleck, instructor at Spokane Falls CC, at 5:05 am EST on December 5, 2008

I have been teaching at the college level for almost thirty years and have had contact with many parents and students during that time. I cannot remember one time that any of them asked, “Can you demonstrate learning outcomes?” or “What am I getting for my money?” WHO is the “public” in all these discussions about the “public” wants to know?

David Falcone, at 6:55 am EST on December 5, 2008

humanities assessment is transferable

I was glad to see Doug’s coverage of the probing and useful discussion on assessment in the humanities at the NEASC meeting in Boston. I want to clarify that when I raised the question of whether Marlboro’s methods were transferable to other, larger institutions, it was not because I don’t think they are; they are, but it takes concerted faculty time and attention to individual students through many rounds of written and verbal feedback. But isn’t that what should be happening in the interchange between teacher and learner anyway? My comment aimed at pointing out that some institutions are looking for more mass solutions: tests or other tools that make it hard to get at the students’ developing judgment and ability to reflect on the “big questions” posed by the humanities.

Thanks, Ellen McCulloch-Lovell

Ellen, at 3:10 pm EST on December 5, 2008

Mary C. is Right

Of course!

But, Mary, by saying so, you might then feel the full brunt of the entire “Education Major ‘Industry’.” (They must justify their existence, after all.)

Like the notorious “consultants” who are contracted by private businesses to “improve” their bottom line — while undeniably undermining it by the loss of future clientele — the Educational Establishment (All Praise Be To Them) must be able to publish such “intellectual” results!

Otherwise, they may just wither on the vine, and we can’t have that, since their’s is such a big (and unnecessary) chunk of the graduate product.

Hang in there.

DFS, at 11:55 am EST on December 6, 2008

Measuring learning

I would say that we can measure what we teach, but we can’t measure what students learn.

I can give a test on subjects discussed, but that is not all they’re learning— I hope.

You can’t measure, for instance, the student who, with tears in her eyes, threw her arms around me and told me I had changed her life because I’d made her understand that others perspectives are just as valid as hers. (The subject was Speech 101.)

You can’t measure the effects on the student who came back two years after English 101 and told me that, thanks to me, he was not taking any shortcuts (read that “cheating")anymore and he was succeeding.

You can’t measure seeing life in a different way, believing in yourself, learning that communication is possible, and all kinds of other effects that are what really make education relevant.

When I was in the 4th grade, I was taught reading and math, etc., but what I learned that stuck with me was from my choral teacher who taught me responsibility to my fellow man, professionalism, and that working hard pays off.

Can you measure that? Really?

Lynda Lambert

Lynda, at 1:30 pm EST on December 9, 2008

Great Point, Lynda!

And these are the ones who keep us coming back!

Sometimes life is good.

DFS, at 5:00 pm EST on December 9, 2008

you can’t measure that!

What a relief to know I can finally give up these pain in the butt tests. Thanks everybody for setting me straight on this. Now that we have vanquished the evil, bean-counting administrators with our insurmountable argument, “What we teach is immeasurable, therefore I’m not gonna and you can’t make me measure it,” I think we can rest easy in the unassailable knowledge that we are doing an excellent job in the classroom and our word is all the evidence we need to support that claim. I teach, therefore I teach well!

Kelly Aune, at 11:25 pm EST on December 12, 2008

Kelly Aune

And the tests should be the only standard for assessment.

DFS, at 4:00 pm EST on December 16, 2008

Physics and Mathematics

The subject of humanities involves, in large measure, the spiritual nature of man. This is why the characteristics of “measurement” would be significantly different and perhaps impossible on a materialistic basis. The present difficulty in assessment rests in the fact of spiritual diversity that exists among faculties or institutions. Until a unified epistemological, philosophical and spiritual outlook is agreed upon we will continue to have diverse institutions and faculties with diverse worldviews regarding the humanities. To measure something presupposes a superior standard to compare things against. This, of course, challenges the current attitude within the humanities themselves regarding pluralism and diversity.

Dr. Stan Smith, Asst. Professor at South Plains College, at 11:20 am EST on January 2, 2009

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