Re: Test/Examinations: The Eisen Effect

In a message dated 04/17/2002 6:05:46 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[email protected] writes:

<< In any of these cases, had the instructors made very clear to their
 students what they were _expected_ to learn and should/would learn?  No,
 they made assignments, lectured, and so on and left it to the students to
 figure out what was and was not 'important.' >>

OK, first how do we know that they didn't make clear to their students
what they were "expected" to learn?  Do you have copies of their
syllabi?  Were you present the first day of class? Second, how do we
know that they were less clear than any of their colleagues practicing
the same sort of lecture-assign-test instructional system?

<< The lack of this instruction at the beginning of the course, with planned
 repetition of major concepts and skills, will make almost any test/exam
 "too hard." >>

While making things clear to students may make things better for
them -- again we don't know that these professors made things unclear --
I don't see how this would drive grade inflation, or select it.  If you
wanted students to have higher grades, instead of clarifying what
they are "expected" to know, it would be easier to drop the work
load, to make the tests easier, to lower the grading requirements,
and to really, really grade on that ol' curve.  If one did any of these
latter then it would stand to reason, and be useful for determining
experimentally, that these are the causes of grade inflation.

<< When we "explain" grading policies by appealing to Flexner, and to
 "corporate greed," forget about it. >>

The "corporate greed" would reflect, I take it, the complex array of
metacontingencies that define a changed institution.  The point being,
that universities evolved, as one would expect any social institution
to evolve over time, from a noncorporate or precorporate system into
one predicated on a corporatist model.  The "greed" would manifest
itself in terms of who runs the university, who defines its priorities
and how these get defined, how its policies change, and by other
changes that affect the cash-flow into and through the system. (At
the university level of analysis, as distinguished from the instructional
system or classroom level of analysis, the inputs to the system include
revenues brought in, outputs include costs, including payroll.)

Accordingly, if the policies, priorities, and practices of the entire
university system evolves over time toward that "corporate greed"
system, you might find this manifesting itself in other ways.  For
instance, it might manifest itself in the hiring of more temporary
and adjunct faculty as opposed to the hiring of people with full-time
positions.  It might manifest itself in having more courses
taught by G.A.'s and T.A.'s instead of instructors and professors
with Ph.D.s.  It might manifest itself in lower frequencies of tenure or
greater difficulty in obtaining it. It might manifest itself in the
creation of more pedestrian and maybe popular programs, perhaps
things like hotel management and the like, where graduates can
learn how to run a Courtyard by Marriott, but who may not have
a clue about what the Monroe Doctrine was or where Mongolia is
located. And, it might manifest itself in the evolution towards
grade inflation to the degree that this functions to simultaneously
retain students in the university by not making it worth their while
to go elsewhere, and to the retention of faculty who inflate grades.

Now then, ask yourself a question, are any of these changes things
that have happened?  -- JE