Rousing discussion today during our collaboration about ELOs (essential learning outcomes) and whether a student passes for not meeting one of them. The whole thing seems kind of black and white to me. Referencing back to my previous post, ELOs are the learning outcomes that must be met in order for a student to pass the course. In my opinion if a student fails to meet one of those ELOs they have not done enough to pass the course. That is what essential means (to me at least)
To put it in game terms, it's like trying to beat a level in Mario Bros. without learning how to jump. Knowing how to jump is an essential skill to pass the first level in Mario Bros. If you can't, you fail and will keep failing until you learn how. The first half of this video kind of illustrates the idea that if you can't learn the skill, you can't move on (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FpigqfcvlM#t=16, quite a bit of profanity though so you have been warned)
So combining the two ideas of meeting an ELO in order to pass I put forward the idea of holding a student back if they are unable to meet one of the ELOs for that particular class. Doesn't matter if they meet 9 of the 10 ELOs of the class, they still fail the course because they could not meet (or learn) that 10th ELO. Being essential kind of means it has to be learned in order to move on right? Well not quite according to the admin (the folks who presented this idea of ELOs to us in the first place).
For each ELO we need to determine what exactly needs to be done in order to pass the ELO. So for me, I teach math classes currently, I would give the student 10 problems for a particular ELO and tell the student they need to solve an arbitrary amount of them correctly in order to meet that ELO. Arbitrary because there's lots of different ideas about what passing/meeting means. Some educators say at least 1 problem is enough to demonstrate proficiency, others would say 50% of the problems, and still others would say 80%.
In our discussion we decided on giving them a series of problems of scaling difficulty and as long as they got one of them they would be proficient enough. Some students only do well on hard problems while others only do well on easy problems. If they can't solve at least one of those problems, that ELO would not be met (i.e. they didn't learn to jump) and they would be held back until they could meet that ELO. Then repeat for each ELO. If a student can't meet one of those ELOs they don't pass the course.
That last line kinda irked the admin I think. I likened it to a driving test in that if they can't meet all the outcomes of a driving test, they fail the test. Though it as pointed out that you are allowed a few mistakes and can retake the driving test so that's why I changed my stance slightly to say as long as some of the problems for that ELO were correct instead of all the problems. Students are also welcome to take the test as many times as they want until they do pass. The ability for a students to retake the course (or the course final exam) as many times as they want is definitely a bonus to being enrolled at EBUS as opposed to a traditional school and I pointed out to everyone that we have the ability to make a robust enough test bank that a student could take the final exam 100 times and still write a different exam each time.
Like a video game, if you can't learn all the necessary techniques or strategies to beat a level, you can't move on. Thankfully unlike the old games where one had limited lives and continues, I'd probably take a more modern approach and give the student infinite tries.
The one thing I did not propose to the group was that we make all assignments and chapter tests worth nothing and have their entire mark ride on a final assessment. Again mirroring a driving exam or similar qualifying exam. That would cause quite a stir I think. Maybe in the new year at our next collaboration meeting I will propose that idea.
