This morning I was thinking about the single significant problem with milestone based education. The problem is that milestone based education allows students to work at their own pace and to do things in the order they want to. This is great for effective learning, but in the work place, it works very differently. Now, no one is going to convince me that the current education system is an accurate analog to the work place. Its scheduling system seems to be a lot closer though. (In fact, the workplace is more harsh: Most bosses will not accept late work, and one major mistake can result in being fired.) I can see that people might argue that traditional classroom learning will teach scheduling and responsibility better because of this. That is a lie! Formal classroom learning teaches students to prioritize their time, deciding which classes they should work harder on and which ones they can either afford poor grades in or retake. They also teach that you can just retake hard classes, with a load of easy classes to compensate. This is not any more like the work place than milestone based education, and it certainly does not teach students good time management skills.
So, here is the problem with either approach: In many industries (especially the highest paying ones, like engineering) tasks are handed out on short notice, with short deadlines, and little information. These are typically small tasks that are expected to take from a day to a week. The first problem is prioritization. How much are your current tasks worth, and how are you going to decide how to allocate your time between the tasks? This is exactly as far as classroom learning goes. The second part is, how are you going to get the new task done on time? Now, this is not taught by modern classroom learning, though some students force themselves to learn it. Most students, however, prioritize time over quality, because they can handle getting a B or even a C. In the work place, B level work may be acceptable (you won't be getting the big promotion though), but C level work is not usually acceptable. Milestone based education takes care of this problem. Instead of grading with letter grades, where knowing a measly 70% of the material is acceptable (most majors seem to require C- or better for major related classes), milestones grade pass or fail. The bar can be set at 90%, and because students can try again, all students can try as many times as necessary until they prove proficiency, without the high risk of classroom learning (instead of wasting an entire semester retaking the class, they can spend a week studying the part they missed). This teaches students that low quality work is not acceptable, instead of teaching that meeting deadlines is paramount even if the quality is horrible.
So, the problem is, how do we teach compliance (with deadlines and such) without undermining quality? We could use the oriental approach. In Japan, a C grade is equivalent to our A. To get better than a C, students have to go beyond what is taught. There are a few schools in the U.S. that use this system, but ultimately, it harms the students. Most scholarships are based on average grade. If I was getting a B average at one of these schools, I would be less eligible for scholarships than someone getting an A at another school (an A that is equivalent to a C at my school). This would have to be a global change of all schools in the U.S., and good luck getting even a small portion of U.S. schools to change their grading system. Ironically, a milestone based system can handle this problem quite gracefully.
A milestone based system allows students to study at their own pace. It also allows them to choose when they do milestone evaluations. Each milestone evaluation should be a fairly small assignment, designed to test the student's proficiency in one part of a subject. One milestone for basic math might be addition of one digit numbers. Another might be addition of multi-digit numbers. A milestone for English might be identification of simple word types, where a student would identify if a word is a noun, verb, or adjective. Another might be identifying tense of phrases. The catch is, if this is only as far as educators can see, they will miss one of the most important parts of milestone based education. Milestone tests should be designed to test a small element of the subject, but they do not have to be designed to be short. The smallness of a milestone test should reflect the element it is testing. If a milestone test is testing a student's ability to write an article in a journalism workplace setting, it should be designed to take several hours. Imagine the situation where a writer for a popular news outlet is asked to write an article about some breaking news. The assignment is given at 5 in the evening, it is required to be two pages (on normal paper, single spaced), and it must be done by midnight, so it is ready for the next morning's news. This is a fairly small assignment in the news world. This is not an assignment that is scheduled a month before it is due. It is given several hours before it is due. This is common in the work place. How can we teach students proficiency in this skill? A similar problem related to my major (computer science) is where the boss gives a small assignment that is expected to be finished in a week. Right, is that really small? Yes, in the work place, especially for computer science, a large assignment is one that takes 40 hours a week for at least three people and still takes over a year to complete. Small assignments are ones that take a few months or less, at 40 hours a week, for one person. Similarly, work place assignments are never scheduled so far in advance that it does not take significant work to get them finished on time.
The trick is recognizing the flexibility of milestone based education. While most milestone evaluations will take no more than a few hours, this is not a solid requirement. If a small assignment in journalism is a two page article on breaking news with only 6 hours notice, then this is reasonable for a milestone evaluation. Similarly, if writing a six page proposal for using a new technology in one week is a small assignment in industry for computer science, it is reasonable for a milestone evaluation. Now, the problem is that these assignments do not come when the employee requests them. They come when they are necessary. They also come when the student has had significant training in the field. Giving serious real life assignments in school in not appropriate when the students do not have significant training. In fact, in traditional education, they do not typically come at all until the student has graduated and found a job. This is something that cannot realistically be taught in a classroom setting, because no teacher can assume that students have the time to complete real work place assignments in the same time expected in the work place. The typical college student spends 60 to 80 hours a week on course work, and this is often lower than acceptable quality work for the work place. Assigning an activity that is as intense as a real work place assignment would be unethical. With a milestone based system, however, the student is not penalized for changing priorities on the fly. This means that a student can do a very intense evaluation, and put off study until the higher priority assignment is finished.
Here is how I suggest this be done: First, workplace simulation milestone evaluations should require that most of the major milestones for that evaluation be completed. So, the journalism one above should require that all English milestones for the major are complete, as well as most of the journalism reporting milestones. Second, the student should be able to schedule a range of time to do the evaluation but should not be able to schedule an exact time. Again, in the work place, the employee does not choose when a project will be assigned. So, the journalism assignment that is given only 6 or 8 hours to complete should be scheduled for a period of two weeks or more. Sometime during this period, a professor should contact the student, notifying them of the exact assignment and the deadline. On the side of the professor, it might look like this: The professor is notified when the student registers for the evaluation. The professor decides when the assignment will be given (this should be unpredictable). The timing should be realistic to what happens in industry. As the time approaches, the professor does a little research to find an appropriate event for the student to report on. When the time comes, the professor contacts the student via an appropriate medium (for this, probably email; some industries might assign something at unusual times, in which case, an employee might be sleeping, so phone would be more appropriate; think about med students). The student is given the topic to report on as well as the deadline. If the student misses the deadline, the evaluation is a failure, and it must be repeated. If the student meets the deadline and the work quality is acceptable, the milestone is completed. For the computer science evaluation mentioned above, the student might be required to schedule a month for the evaluation, since it is a week long assignment. When the time for the assignment comes, the professor would email the student with a very short email (as is common in industry) asking the student to research a technology and write up a proposal for implementing it in a specific application. For instance, the student might be asked to research an automated testing system for web sites and write a proposal for implementing such a system (this is an actual assignment I was given once). The student would be given a week to do the research and finish the proposal. Note that again, the professor would be responsible for finding an appropriate technology for the student to write the proposal on.
So, it turns out that milestone based education can be used to teach things like time management, quality assurance, and quick response to assignments. In fact, it could even be used to teach good estimation skills. In computer science, it is very common for developers to underestimate cost and schedule for a project. Imagine a milestone evaluation deliberately designed to be difficult or impossible to complete in the time given. The student might be expected to notify the professor of the scheduling difficulty before a certain amount of time has elapsed in the project. This could be worked into one of the other longer milestone evaluations, randomly. Another common event in industry is for the requirements of an assignment to change partway through. An evaluation could easily simulate that, without requiring the professor to spend much extra time. It turns out that milestone based education is not just incredibly flexible for the students, but it is also extremely flexible for professors and for education in general. We can teach students things that traditional classroom methods are not capable of teaching and in fact typically teach wrong.
In engineering fields, most employers expect new graduates to take about two years of work experience to become profitable. The reason is that the students learn tons of theory, but almost no practical skills. The theory is very helpful in learning the practical skills, but it still takes about two years in the work place to become truly valuable. One reason for this is that most colleges focus on preparing students for graduate school. Graduate school does not require practical experience. The obvious problem is that new graduates often cost more money than they produce for their first two years. Is it possible to prepare students for industry and graduate school at the same time? At BYU-I, we are actually doing this. All of the computer science and electrical engineering professors have significant industry experience, so they know exactly how things work in industry and what students need to learn to be useful right off the bat. It turns out that application of knowledge really helps with understanding theory, so teaching applications in addition to theory helps the students understand theory at least as good as students from other colleges that teach theory exclusively. It is indeed possible to teach both theory and application in the same time most colleges teach only theory. For bonus points, BYU-I CS and EE graduates have a very easy time getting jobs, because they have portfolios of work done for class projects. Milestone based education can do one step better than this. Even BYU-I students have to learn what is expected in the work place. CS and EE professors frequently mention common expectations in industry, but students do not get to actually learn how to manage those expectations. Some of those can be taught to a limited degree, but with a milestone based education system, we can teach most, if not all, work place skills. Imagine how industry would view a school where the graduates came out capable of being profitable right off the bat. In fact, imagine what other schools would think of a school where graduates coming in for graduate school could produce high quality work on time, every time.
In theory, a well implemented milestone based education system can dramatically reduce the time most students require to become well educated. A well implemented milestone system will also put the burden of learning on the students, which in today's technology driven society is a very important skill for students to learn (the BYU-I CS program puts a lot of emphasis on learning to learn and even includes a mandatory senior project designed to evaluate this skill). These are two major benefits of a milestone based approach. It turns out even the apparent weaknesses of a milestone based approach are not actually weaknesses at all. While a formal classroom based system might appear to teach prioritization, it teaches incorrect prioritization for almost all professions. A milestone based system is flexible enough to allow it to teach any prioritization scheme. Not only is this not a weakness, it is a very valuable strength, because different industries expect different prioritization schemes, and a general milestone based system is flexible enough to teach the appropriate prioritization scheme for each major.
So what this comes down to is, are we trying to teach competency or compliance? The formal classroom education system used in the U.S. seems to be focusing almost entirely on compliance. The system teaches students that the most important skill is getting things done on time, not getting things done to a high degree of quality. In fact, even to get an A, it is permissible to have 7% of answers wrong. If McDonald's found this acceptable, they would have more than 1 in 15 orders incorrect. A 70% success rate (a C-) would result in more than 1 in 4 orders being incorrect. The typical idea people see when they hear of a milestone based education system is that it is totally focused on competency. The idea of a milestone based education system is indeed to focus on competency, but if we treat compliance as just another skill, we can use milestone based education to actually teach compliance. Not only that, but we can teach compliance based on what industry it is needed for. We cannot teach compliance in competency, but we can teach competency in compliance.
It is clear that classroom based learning does not teach compliance well, and by trying, it undermines the teaching of competence. Milestone based learning is a higher system of learning. Instead of trying to do the impossible, at the cost of the necessary, it puts things in the right roles and allows the teaching of skills that most educators do not even realize are skills. I believe it is possible for students to become sufficiently competent in their area of study before they graduate. I think that our schools have a moral obligation to provide education of the necessary quality to accomplish this (given what they charge). Unfortunately, the traditional formal classroom approach to learning is no longer sufficient. We need to switch to a learning model that can keep up with changing society and technology, and milestone based education seems to show more promise than any other option.
Showing posts with label milestone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label milestone. Show all posts
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Monday, July 23, 2012
Poor Public Education
Ok, so I have mentioned these ideas before, but I think they bear repeating.
Our public education system sucks. I am not just talking about the US education system, which is one of the worst in the world. All of our educations systems suck. Japan has one of the best education systems in the world, and it sucks.
Long ago, we had universities that actually cared about learning. They did not have classes, grades, or degrees. People came to these universities because they wanted to learn. They were not looking for diplomas certifying that they knew things. They wanted knowledge. Instead of classes, these universities had lectures and forums. The lectures were open to all students who wanted to attend. A professor (literally, one who professes) would give a lecture on accepted theories, which were attended by fairly new students, or on new theories he or others had concocted. The forums were open discussions that any student could attend (there were also sometimes closed forums limited to specific disciplines or specific people). A forum would have a topic which would be discussed in depth. Students who had difficulties understanding a topic would attend these forums and ask questions to improve their understanding. The goal of these institutions was to spread knowledge and gain new knowledge. Many of the students conducted research in new fields to improve their knowledge of that field and to contribute to others studying the same things.
Now, we have very formalized educational systems. We have each subject divided up into a number of classes. Each class runs for a limited duration. We assign grades based on students' ability to learn the required material within the allotted time. Classes are sometimes all lecture and other times part lecture part forum. The time given for a single class period is usually fairly short. Students are required to learn 4 to 8 subjects at the same time, attending several very short classes each day. Each class hands out homework or other assignments, often with little regard for the limited time each student has to do all of the assigned work. If a student fails to grasp a concept, they are left behind. Sometimes tutors are available, or professors are willing to work with the student, but if the student needs even a week to grasp a new concept, the class leaves him behind. Students that already have proficiency in a subject must still slog through all of the work at the slow relative pace of the class. The result is that there is no class that even satisfies the needs of the majority of students, let alone all of them.
This highly formalized education is failing. It has been failing for several decades, and still we cling to it. Our government had introduced legislation with the hope of improving the situation, but instead they have further alienated the students who are struggling. New educational requirements force teachers to try to teach subjects that some students find very difficult in even less time than before. Many students in public school hate learning because our educational system makes effective learning impossible for them. Most students in college care more about getting passing grades than actually learning the materials. Some even feel compelled to cheat to relieve some of the absurdly difficult tasks set before them. Was this our goal? Do we really want surgeons, politicians, and mechanics that got through school only learning 75% (a grade of C) of the material, or who felt forced to cheat to get through? An education system that rewards cheating is a very poor system indeed. (Right, there is no reward when they get caught, but do you seriously believe that most cheaters get caught?)
We need a system where the natural consequences of cheating are bad, not good. We need a less formal system that is flexible enough for both fast learners and slow learners. We need a system that is flexible enough for students that learn some things quickly and other things slowly. Most students have difficulties with some parts of a subject but not others. This means that most students during the course of a typical class will have some parts where the pace of the class is too fast and others where the pace is too slow. The problem with the class model is that few students find the same parts easy and the same parts hard. A class design that gives more time for a topic that some students have difficulty with and less time for topics that those same students find easy will be much more difficult or even impossible for the majority of the students.
Grades are a major problem. Grades are one of the things that encourage cheating. Students on financial aid, or scholarships may even be more inclined to cheat in difficult classes, because their financial stability depends on their grades. Grades encourage students without these problems to be lazy. Why work hard to learn something you don't care much about when you can get by only learning 75% to 80% (C to B- in most schools) of the material? Even if you do care about it, if you are taking another class that is especially difficult, why not slack on the easier class so you have more time to get that minimum passing grade in the hard one? In addition, while grades are intended to be a measure of proficiency, they are often misused as a measure of how compliant a student is with the professor's policies. Some professors give tons of meaningless homework intended to improve proficiency, but then they grade based on how well the student did on that homework. If the homework is intended to improve proficiency, then shouldn't the measure be taken after the homework, not during or before? Further, if a student is already proficient, should that student really be penalized because they did not need to do the homework? How is how much time you have for pointless busy work a valid measure of proficiency in a subject? I recognize that there must be some measure, but professors should not force students to waste their lives doing absurd amounts of unnecessary homework to get that measure.
We need mechanics that will allow students who can demonstrate proficiency in a subject to skip the work that is intended to give them that proficiency. You might say that most colleges already have test out mechanics in place that do this, and you would be right. There are a few problems that this does not not cover though. Students in the public school system do not have this option. No matter how good I was at algebra, I did not have to option to test out of high school algebra. Worse though, while most colleges have a test out option for many classes, they still charge full price for taking the class. This is extremely dishonest. If I test out, I am not using the full services of the professor. I am not using the facilities of the college for an entire semester. Really, the most I could be using is an hour or two of the professor's time to make and grade the test, if that, and for a subject that requires a computer, I might use the computer lab for a couple hours. If the lab fee is $50 a semester (I have not seen more than $20), a couple hours should not cost more than 6 cents ($50/4 months/30 days/4 hours * 2 hours; assuming the average student uses the lab 4 hours a day). A class that costs $500 a semester should come out to $20, presuming that the class meets for an hour, 3 days a week, and that the professor does not spend any out of class time for grading or preparing (if he does, the time is less valuable, and thus the cost should be decreased). So, an average 3 credit class that meets 3 times a week for an hour, over the entire semester, that normally costs $500 (colleges that I have seen that charge on a per credit basis do not usually charge more than this) should cost no more than $20.06 to test out. More prestigious colleges may have higher per credit charges, but even at $2,000 for a 3 credit class, this should not be more than $80.24. Instead, US colleges penalize students who have the sense to study what they are interested in before they go to college.
This is as much an ethical issue as anything else. Many schools (public schools and colleges) don't actually care about education. A friend in Washington State recently discovered that a local school was intentionally doing a poor job, because it would get them more funding. Now, I recognize that this is a flaw in the funding system, but dishonesty is wrong regardless of the money involved. Do you want your children taught by educators who care more about money than how well they educate your children?
With modern technology, we can go back to the old ways, but still have means of measuring proficiency. Instead of classes, we could have lectures and forums. Neither the lectures nor the forums would have any assignments or requirements associated with them. Any student could attend either (if seats are limited, students might be required to sign up for specific times; some forums might be limited in size as well, to facilitate good discussion). Instead of typical class assignments and home work, the school would have study exercises on the internet. Anyone wanting (or needing) credit for a specific topic of a subject (see my Milestones article) would work on these exercises, attend lectures and forums as needed, and when they felt comfortable with the material, the would take some kind of test. This might be a written essay, a multiple choice test, or an oral examination (or a combination), that would be intended to determine the proficiency of the student. This would not be graded; it would be pass/fail. If the student fails, there is no penalty, besides maybe an amount of time that must pass before trying again. Once the student passes a specific proficiency, they can move on to more difficult material in that field (proficiency tests might require that proficiency in a previous subject already be established). When a student established proficiency in certain collections of subjects, they can receive a degree in that subject. There would be no limits on what a student could get a degree in. For instance, where I currently go to college, I cannot use the same classes for a Computer Science and Electrical Engineering degree, even though there is a huge overlap. In the system I am suggesting, this would not be the case. If I could demonstrate proficiency in all of the subjects required for an Electrical Engineering degree, it would make no difference that I had already used some of those same proficiencies for my Computer Science degree. The idea here is that my degrees indicate what I am proficient in. There would be no rules restricting what degrees I can obtain based on what other degrees I already have.
This system would encourage students to learn what they want to learn. There would need to be no declared majors. Really, employers might even look at specific proficiencies not related to a specific degree in hiring, when trying to hire people with very specific skill sets. A person might not even need to officially graduate, or have a degree to get a good job, if they have the specific proficiencies that an employer needs. This means that school could be much more streamlined for people that need it and more complete for others who need or prefer that. Instead of being job training centers that require a bunch of extra unrelated things (generals), they would be true centers of learning. Those who want and can afford well rounded scholarly educations would be able to obtain them, while those who only want (or only can afford) marketable job skills can obtain them there as well. It would be easy for those who want continued education, but who work full time jobs, to continue learning. For those on any kind of financial aid, there might be requirements of progression, for instance, they might be required to maintain a specific average number of proficiencies gained per semester to continue to receive aid. For those paying their own way, there might be no restrictions at all. For instance, I might have a well paying job and have no reason to get credit for additional proficiencies, but I could still benefit personally from attending lectures and forums in my free time, without ever needing to do skill building exercises (the equivalent of home work) or take proficiency tests. This system is very conducive to continued education. For people who want higher degrees, this would also give them a means of doing it as they have time and resources. It might take them 10 or 20 years of spare time to develop the levels of proficiency required for a Masters degree in a subject, but it would be possible, even with a large family or a demanding job.
I don't know if this system is perfect. In my mind, it works very well, and it would be hard for any system of education to be worse than what we are doing right now. I think this system would be more likely to train people in what they enjoy and what they are good at. For many people, it would result in more rounded educations, even if they did not ever pass the proficiency tests for some of the subjects that they attended lectures and forums for. This open, casual system would result in many, of not most, students progressing through college in much shorter time than our current system. We would not have so many students who graduate with only 75% of the needed knowledge learned. Without graded homework, or even traditional grades, we would not have so many people cheating (if the proficiency tests were well proctored, cheating would be reduced to almost nothing, since no other school work is graded). We would not have surgeons who cheated their way through school, or who passed with only a C. Those who could not demonstrate true proficiency in a subject would not get a degree in it. This is dramatically better than what we currently have, and I urge those with the power to affect change to push government and institutions of education to at least try this system.
Lord Rybec
Our public education system sucks. I am not just talking about the US education system, which is one of the worst in the world. All of our educations systems suck. Japan has one of the best education systems in the world, and it sucks.
Long ago, we had universities that actually cared about learning. They did not have classes, grades, or degrees. People came to these universities because they wanted to learn. They were not looking for diplomas certifying that they knew things. They wanted knowledge. Instead of classes, these universities had lectures and forums. The lectures were open to all students who wanted to attend. A professor (literally, one who professes) would give a lecture on accepted theories, which were attended by fairly new students, or on new theories he or others had concocted. The forums were open discussions that any student could attend (there were also sometimes closed forums limited to specific disciplines or specific people). A forum would have a topic which would be discussed in depth. Students who had difficulties understanding a topic would attend these forums and ask questions to improve their understanding. The goal of these institutions was to spread knowledge and gain new knowledge. Many of the students conducted research in new fields to improve their knowledge of that field and to contribute to others studying the same things.
Now, we have very formalized educational systems. We have each subject divided up into a number of classes. Each class runs for a limited duration. We assign grades based on students' ability to learn the required material within the allotted time. Classes are sometimes all lecture and other times part lecture part forum. The time given for a single class period is usually fairly short. Students are required to learn 4 to 8 subjects at the same time, attending several very short classes each day. Each class hands out homework or other assignments, often with little regard for the limited time each student has to do all of the assigned work. If a student fails to grasp a concept, they are left behind. Sometimes tutors are available, or professors are willing to work with the student, but if the student needs even a week to grasp a new concept, the class leaves him behind. Students that already have proficiency in a subject must still slog through all of the work at the slow relative pace of the class. The result is that there is no class that even satisfies the needs of the majority of students, let alone all of them.
This highly formalized education is failing. It has been failing for several decades, and still we cling to it. Our government had introduced legislation with the hope of improving the situation, but instead they have further alienated the students who are struggling. New educational requirements force teachers to try to teach subjects that some students find very difficult in even less time than before. Many students in public school hate learning because our educational system makes effective learning impossible for them. Most students in college care more about getting passing grades than actually learning the materials. Some even feel compelled to cheat to relieve some of the absurdly difficult tasks set before them. Was this our goal? Do we really want surgeons, politicians, and mechanics that got through school only learning 75% (a grade of C) of the material, or who felt forced to cheat to get through? An education system that rewards cheating is a very poor system indeed. (Right, there is no reward when they get caught, but do you seriously believe that most cheaters get caught?)
We need a system where the natural consequences of cheating are bad, not good. We need a less formal system that is flexible enough for both fast learners and slow learners. We need a system that is flexible enough for students that learn some things quickly and other things slowly. Most students have difficulties with some parts of a subject but not others. This means that most students during the course of a typical class will have some parts where the pace of the class is too fast and others where the pace is too slow. The problem with the class model is that few students find the same parts easy and the same parts hard. A class design that gives more time for a topic that some students have difficulty with and less time for topics that those same students find easy will be much more difficult or even impossible for the majority of the students.
Grades are a major problem. Grades are one of the things that encourage cheating. Students on financial aid, or scholarships may even be more inclined to cheat in difficult classes, because their financial stability depends on their grades. Grades encourage students without these problems to be lazy. Why work hard to learn something you don't care much about when you can get by only learning 75% to 80% (C to B- in most schools) of the material? Even if you do care about it, if you are taking another class that is especially difficult, why not slack on the easier class so you have more time to get that minimum passing grade in the hard one? In addition, while grades are intended to be a measure of proficiency, they are often misused as a measure of how compliant a student is with the professor's policies. Some professors give tons of meaningless homework intended to improve proficiency, but then they grade based on how well the student did on that homework. If the homework is intended to improve proficiency, then shouldn't the measure be taken after the homework, not during or before? Further, if a student is already proficient, should that student really be penalized because they did not need to do the homework? How is how much time you have for pointless busy work a valid measure of proficiency in a subject? I recognize that there must be some measure, but professors should not force students to waste their lives doing absurd amounts of unnecessary homework to get that measure.
We need mechanics that will allow students who can demonstrate proficiency in a subject to skip the work that is intended to give them that proficiency. You might say that most colleges already have test out mechanics in place that do this, and you would be right. There are a few problems that this does not not cover though. Students in the public school system do not have this option. No matter how good I was at algebra, I did not have to option to test out of high school algebra. Worse though, while most colleges have a test out option for many classes, they still charge full price for taking the class. This is extremely dishonest. If I test out, I am not using the full services of the professor. I am not using the facilities of the college for an entire semester. Really, the most I could be using is an hour or two of the professor's time to make and grade the test, if that, and for a subject that requires a computer, I might use the computer lab for a couple hours. If the lab fee is $50 a semester (I have not seen more than $20), a couple hours should not cost more than 6 cents ($50/4 months/30 days/4 hours * 2 hours; assuming the average student uses the lab 4 hours a day). A class that costs $500 a semester should come out to $20, presuming that the class meets for an hour, 3 days a week, and that the professor does not spend any out of class time for grading or preparing (if he does, the time is less valuable, and thus the cost should be decreased). So, an average 3 credit class that meets 3 times a week for an hour, over the entire semester, that normally costs $500 (colleges that I have seen that charge on a per credit basis do not usually charge more than this) should cost no more than $20.06 to test out. More prestigious colleges may have higher per credit charges, but even at $2,000 for a 3 credit class, this should not be more than $80.24. Instead, US colleges penalize students who have the sense to study what they are interested in before they go to college.
This is as much an ethical issue as anything else. Many schools (public schools and colleges) don't actually care about education. A friend in Washington State recently discovered that a local school was intentionally doing a poor job, because it would get them more funding. Now, I recognize that this is a flaw in the funding system, but dishonesty is wrong regardless of the money involved. Do you want your children taught by educators who care more about money than how well they educate your children?
With modern technology, we can go back to the old ways, but still have means of measuring proficiency. Instead of classes, we could have lectures and forums. Neither the lectures nor the forums would have any assignments or requirements associated with them. Any student could attend either (if seats are limited, students might be required to sign up for specific times; some forums might be limited in size as well, to facilitate good discussion). Instead of typical class assignments and home work, the school would have study exercises on the internet. Anyone wanting (or needing) credit for a specific topic of a subject (see my Milestones article) would work on these exercises, attend lectures and forums as needed, and when they felt comfortable with the material, the would take some kind of test. This might be a written essay, a multiple choice test, or an oral examination (or a combination), that would be intended to determine the proficiency of the student. This would not be graded; it would be pass/fail. If the student fails, there is no penalty, besides maybe an amount of time that must pass before trying again. Once the student passes a specific proficiency, they can move on to more difficult material in that field (proficiency tests might require that proficiency in a previous subject already be established). When a student established proficiency in certain collections of subjects, they can receive a degree in that subject. There would be no limits on what a student could get a degree in. For instance, where I currently go to college, I cannot use the same classes for a Computer Science and Electrical Engineering degree, even though there is a huge overlap. In the system I am suggesting, this would not be the case. If I could demonstrate proficiency in all of the subjects required for an Electrical Engineering degree, it would make no difference that I had already used some of those same proficiencies for my Computer Science degree. The idea here is that my degrees indicate what I am proficient in. There would be no rules restricting what degrees I can obtain based on what other degrees I already have.
This system would encourage students to learn what they want to learn. There would need to be no declared majors. Really, employers might even look at specific proficiencies not related to a specific degree in hiring, when trying to hire people with very specific skill sets. A person might not even need to officially graduate, or have a degree to get a good job, if they have the specific proficiencies that an employer needs. This means that school could be much more streamlined for people that need it and more complete for others who need or prefer that. Instead of being job training centers that require a bunch of extra unrelated things (generals), they would be true centers of learning. Those who want and can afford well rounded scholarly educations would be able to obtain them, while those who only want (or only can afford) marketable job skills can obtain them there as well. It would be easy for those who want continued education, but who work full time jobs, to continue learning. For those on any kind of financial aid, there might be requirements of progression, for instance, they might be required to maintain a specific average number of proficiencies gained per semester to continue to receive aid. For those paying their own way, there might be no restrictions at all. For instance, I might have a well paying job and have no reason to get credit for additional proficiencies, but I could still benefit personally from attending lectures and forums in my free time, without ever needing to do skill building exercises (the equivalent of home work) or take proficiency tests. This system is very conducive to continued education. For people who want higher degrees, this would also give them a means of doing it as they have time and resources. It might take them 10 or 20 years of spare time to develop the levels of proficiency required for a Masters degree in a subject, but it would be possible, even with a large family or a demanding job.
I don't know if this system is perfect. In my mind, it works very well, and it would be hard for any system of education to be worse than what we are doing right now. I think this system would be more likely to train people in what they enjoy and what they are good at. For many people, it would result in more rounded educations, even if they did not ever pass the proficiency tests for some of the subjects that they attended lectures and forums for. This open, casual system would result in many, of not most, students progressing through college in much shorter time than our current system. We would not have so many students who graduate with only 75% of the needed knowledge learned. Without graded homework, or even traditional grades, we would not have so many people cheating (if the proficiency tests were well proctored, cheating would be reduced to almost nothing, since no other school work is graded). We would not have surgeons who cheated their way through school, or who passed with only a C. Those who could not demonstrate true proficiency in a subject would not get a degree in it. This is dramatically better than what we currently have, and I urge those with the power to affect change to push government and institutions of education to at least try this system.
Lord Rybec
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Grading Systems
I have a beef with the common grading systems in US education. My smallest issue is that we are continuously allowing it to slip. Originally, the grade of a C represented a satisfactory understanding of a subject, while grades of B or A represented an exceptional understanding of a subject. In oriental countries, this is still true, but not in the US. If you perform only to the expectations of a class in the US, you get an A. To get a C, you must perform well below expectations. Recent "reforms" in education have made the situation worse. Teachers in public schools now must advance poorly performing students, even if they barely understand the subject at all. This is destroying the already poor reputation of the US public education system. My primary problem though makes this one pale in comparison.
Would I be wrong to say that the intent of grading is to represent the proficiency a student has in a particular subject? When you apply for a major in a college, especially when that major is for a post graduate degree, they look at your previous transcript. If the major is especially competitive, they look at your grades in specific classes related to that major. A student attempting to enter a post graduate math program might have a strict review of grades in previous college math classes. The reviewers make the assumption that the grades listed on the transcript represent the student's proficiency in those areas of math and in math in general. This is the same for any subject. There is, however, a problem with how our education system gives grades and how it interprets them.
While it is assumed, when looking at a grade, that it represents proficiency, it is not actually true. Teachers and professors may take any number of things into account when giving grades. Class grades are generally composite grades from all of the assignments given throughout the course of a class. This means that a student that takes an extra two weeks to understand something which is taught, but then catches up, will have a poorer class grade than a student who has identical proficiency at the end of the semester, but who did not have difficulty early on. A student who has some special circumstances which cause homework to be late, but who understands the material quite well will end up with a class grade that under-represents proficiency. A professor might burden a student with excessive, unnecessary busy work that the student does not have time for, which would also cause the class grade to misrepresent proficiency. In addition, some college professors like to give assignments which are not related to the subject at all, but which may help some students learn better. Again, missing these assignments may not affect a student's proficiency, but the student will still be given a grade that indicates a lower proficiency than actually exists.
I have dealt with many of these situations. I once took a physics class that required weekly workbook assignments, in addition to regular homework. The workbook assignments were generally ten pages or more and often took two hours a day, five days a week to complete. The weekly homework required only two to three hours a week. The workbook assignments were excessive and unnecessary, especially given that this was my second time taking physics (the first class did not transfer, but I had gotten an A). I was also taking several other quite difficult classes, so I chose to forgo the workbook assignments so that I would have time to study the other subjects, which I was not so proficient in. Ultimately, I got a class grade of C in the physics class. When you look at my assignment grades for the class though, it is obvious that a C did not accurately represent my proficiency in the subject. I had many scores of zero, where I had not turned in assignments, however, regularly interspersed between the zeros were grades between 93 and 100. There were no grades lower than 90 for anything I had completed. As I had missed only a very few homework assignments, and the tests and homework assignments were fairly comprehensive, my proficiency in the subject was quite well represented by the grades of the assignments that I had completed, but my class grade indicated that my proficiency was similar to that of a person that had learned only a little over half of the material.
My first two physics classes were very different. My professor gave final grades either as composites of all assignments including tests, or only the grade of the final, which was comprehensive. He would choose whichever grade was higher. The reason he chose to grade this way is that it more accurately represents the proficiency of a student than just the composite grade. When he explained this, he also pointed out that the occurrence of a final grade higher than a composite grade was very rare. My second semester of physics, my composite grade before the final was a B. During the last two tests, I had kept careful track of the things that I did not know well, and spent extra time studying them. I scored a full 100% on the final, showing high proficiency. Instead of getting a B, or B+, which would have indicated only moderate proficiency, my class grade was an A, which accurately represented my proficiency in the subject.
Now, I am not saying that all classes should be graded like my first physics professor chose to grade. That system also has its flaws, though not nearly as bad. First, I think that teachers and professors need to carefully consider how to grade so that the grades accurately represent proficiency, with as few taints as possible. I realize that it is impossible to grade entirely accurately, but some effort should be expended to minimize inaccuracies. If a school feels that it is important to also keep track of a student's dedication, work ethic, and punctuality, then maybe a second grade should be given and tracked, but this should not be allowed to taint the representation of proficiency of the class grades.
I propose, however, a system that makes such changes entirely obsolete. A less formal milestone based system would far more accurately represent proficiency than a class based system. Instead of collecting letter grades and then using them to compose a GPA, progress could be tracked more directly. Each subject would be divided into a collection of significant milestones. The subjects of a single class would be divided into at least 5 milestones, though some classes might be divided into 10 or more milestones. Instead of using a GPA for gauging progress, progress would be determined as a function of milestones over time. A full time student might be expected to complete at least 25 milestones in the time of a normal semester, or 50 milestones a year. There might be a requirement that a certain number of those milestones be related to the student's major, or other required classes. A student could exceed that number by any amount. Using milestones, letter grades would be meaningless. Each milestone test would be pass or fail. A failed milestone test would not show up on a transcript, because the lack of a passed milestone test already indicates a lack of proficiency. Accurate grading is not the only benefit of a milestone based system.
A milestone based system allows students to work at their own pace. A milestone system does not even need regular semesters. A milestone system would be ideal for those with jobs, who do not have time to attend school full time. A milestone system would also dramatically benefit people like myself, who are already quite proficient in the subject of their major. I could easily finish all of the milestones associated with the first two years of my major, in only a few months. This would reduce the cost of my schooling by nearly half. I am sure there are plenty of others in a similar situation. A milestone system would also help those who have difficulty with certain subjects, since they would have longer to study and would be able to spend more time on the parts they find difficult and less on the parts they find easier.
A milestone system would also be easier on teachers and professors. Instead of regular classroom sized lectures on a series of subjects in succession, ignoring the needs of the students, professors could give lectures to larger groups, spending more time on subjects that need attention. Instead of a class schedule, professors would have lecture schedules. Any student could sign up for a lecture and attend, and if there was room, additional students could attend without signing up. If no students signed up for a specific lecture, the professor could instead do a question and answer session. Since professors would be doing larger lectures less often, they would have more time for one on one work with students who need it. Also, in a milestone based system, students would be more responsible for their own learning. This means that there would be almost no graded homework. Students could ask a professor for feedback or help on a specific assignment, but automated systems could be used for basic feedback. The only real graded work would be milestone tests, which could be graded by paid graders, leaving professors more time for helping students who need it. This would allow professors to have much more time for teaching by reducing the task of grading and placing what is left on less skilled workers, who do not need the expertise of the professors to grade.
I believe this sort of system would dramatically improve the performance of our educational systems. It would reduce the workload of teachers, giving them more time to do their primary job, teaching. It would remove the inherent discrimination against slow learners and the learning impaired that exists in an arbitrarily timed class based system. It would also remove the discrimination against fast learners and those who are already self educated, by allowing them to complete milestones at as fast a pace as they desire. In addition, it would overhaul our current grading system to accurately represent proficiency in each subject, because each milestone would be verified for each student. I also believe that it would dramatically improve education, because no student would graduate without having passed each individual milestone required for their major. No student could get by just barely.
The primary argument I have heard against this sort of system is professors who say that because they had to work through the current system, everyone else should have to. This is a lie. By this argument, I can show that those very professors should be doing hard labor in the fields of a farm for the own survival (or even hunting and gathering naturally occurring foods), without any modern tools or other conveniences. Those who claim that the next generation should have to work just as hard as they did do not deserve the conveniences of modern technology and medicine. The progression of the human race requires advances in education. Even very specialized fields require more knowledge than the average human can learn in only 4 or even 8 years of schooling. As technology and science continue to advance, this will only increase. If we do not find ways of increasing the speed and efficiency of learning, we will find that technology and science advance ever more slowly. Eventually, learning enough to continue to advance will take a lifetime, and at this threshold, humans will no longer be able to continue advancing, because people will die before they have learned enough to advance further. Computers have already expanded that threshold, but the advancement of computers itself is subject to that threshold. If we do not improve education, the human race will eventually reach a technology cap, and cease to progress any further. Improving education, even a little, may allow us to create technology that further extends that threshold, and may even allow us to extend it indefinitely. If we choose not to improve education, because "it was good enough for us, so it is good enough for them," then we are taking an enormous risk. Let us not lie to ourselves. The current US eduction system is terrible. It does not fulfill its purposes. A milestone based system would allow students to prove their merit by their rate of learning, instead of being forced to conform to a rate of learning that is optimized only for the most average student, and that makes fast learners hate school for the boredom and slow learners hate school because they can never learn fast enough to understand anything.
Eventually some country is going to adopt this system. That country will very quickly begin to excel in technology and science at rates never seen in human history. We are already behind nearly every other 1st world nation. Shall we allow Japan, or China to beat us to the punch, and become the new greatest power in the world, or will we do it first, and reclaim our dominance in technology and science?
Would I be wrong to say that the intent of grading is to represent the proficiency a student has in a particular subject? When you apply for a major in a college, especially when that major is for a post graduate degree, they look at your previous transcript. If the major is especially competitive, they look at your grades in specific classes related to that major. A student attempting to enter a post graduate math program might have a strict review of grades in previous college math classes. The reviewers make the assumption that the grades listed on the transcript represent the student's proficiency in those areas of math and in math in general. This is the same for any subject. There is, however, a problem with how our education system gives grades and how it interprets them.
While it is assumed, when looking at a grade, that it represents proficiency, it is not actually true. Teachers and professors may take any number of things into account when giving grades. Class grades are generally composite grades from all of the assignments given throughout the course of a class. This means that a student that takes an extra two weeks to understand something which is taught, but then catches up, will have a poorer class grade than a student who has identical proficiency at the end of the semester, but who did not have difficulty early on. A student who has some special circumstances which cause homework to be late, but who understands the material quite well will end up with a class grade that under-represents proficiency. A professor might burden a student with excessive, unnecessary busy work that the student does not have time for, which would also cause the class grade to misrepresent proficiency. In addition, some college professors like to give assignments which are not related to the subject at all, but which may help some students learn better. Again, missing these assignments may not affect a student's proficiency, but the student will still be given a grade that indicates a lower proficiency than actually exists.
I have dealt with many of these situations. I once took a physics class that required weekly workbook assignments, in addition to regular homework. The workbook assignments were generally ten pages or more and often took two hours a day, five days a week to complete. The weekly homework required only two to three hours a week. The workbook assignments were excessive and unnecessary, especially given that this was my second time taking physics (the first class did not transfer, but I had gotten an A). I was also taking several other quite difficult classes, so I chose to forgo the workbook assignments so that I would have time to study the other subjects, which I was not so proficient in. Ultimately, I got a class grade of C in the physics class. When you look at my assignment grades for the class though, it is obvious that a C did not accurately represent my proficiency in the subject. I had many scores of zero, where I had not turned in assignments, however, regularly interspersed between the zeros were grades between 93 and 100. There were no grades lower than 90 for anything I had completed. As I had missed only a very few homework assignments, and the tests and homework assignments were fairly comprehensive, my proficiency in the subject was quite well represented by the grades of the assignments that I had completed, but my class grade indicated that my proficiency was similar to that of a person that had learned only a little over half of the material.
My first two physics classes were very different. My professor gave final grades either as composites of all assignments including tests, or only the grade of the final, which was comprehensive. He would choose whichever grade was higher. The reason he chose to grade this way is that it more accurately represents the proficiency of a student than just the composite grade. When he explained this, he also pointed out that the occurrence of a final grade higher than a composite grade was very rare. My second semester of physics, my composite grade before the final was a B. During the last two tests, I had kept careful track of the things that I did not know well, and spent extra time studying them. I scored a full 100% on the final, showing high proficiency. Instead of getting a B, or B+, which would have indicated only moderate proficiency, my class grade was an A, which accurately represented my proficiency in the subject.
Now, I am not saying that all classes should be graded like my first physics professor chose to grade. That system also has its flaws, though not nearly as bad. First, I think that teachers and professors need to carefully consider how to grade so that the grades accurately represent proficiency, with as few taints as possible. I realize that it is impossible to grade entirely accurately, but some effort should be expended to minimize inaccuracies. If a school feels that it is important to also keep track of a student's dedication, work ethic, and punctuality, then maybe a second grade should be given and tracked, but this should not be allowed to taint the representation of proficiency of the class grades.
I propose, however, a system that makes such changes entirely obsolete. A less formal milestone based system would far more accurately represent proficiency than a class based system. Instead of collecting letter grades and then using them to compose a GPA, progress could be tracked more directly. Each subject would be divided into a collection of significant milestones. The subjects of a single class would be divided into at least 5 milestones, though some classes might be divided into 10 or more milestones. Instead of using a GPA for gauging progress, progress would be determined as a function of milestones over time. A full time student might be expected to complete at least 25 milestones in the time of a normal semester, or 50 milestones a year. There might be a requirement that a certain number of those milestones be related to the student's major, or other required classes. A student could exceed that number by any amount. Using milestones, letter grades would be meaningless. Each milestone test would be pass or fail. A failed milestone test would not show up on a transcript, because the lack of a passed milestone test already indicates a lack of proficiency. Accurate grading is not the only benefit of a milestone based system.
A milestone based system allows students to work at their own pace. A milestone system does not even need regular semesters. A milestone system would be ideal for those with jobs, who do not have time to attend school full time. A milestone system would also dramatically benefit people like myself, who are already quite proficient in the subject of their major. I could easily finish all of the milestones associated with the first two years of my major, in only a few months. This would reduce the cost of my schooling by nearly half. I am sure there are plenty of others in a similar situation. A milestone system would also help those who have difficulty with certain subjects, since they would have longer to study and would be able to spend more time on the parts they find difficult and less on the parts they find easier.
A milestone system would also be easier on teachers and professors. Instead of regular classroom sized lectures on a series of subjects in succession, ignoring the needs of the students, professors could give lectures to larger groups, spending more time on subjects that need attention. Instead of a class schedule, professors would have lecture schedules. Any student could sign up for a lecture and attend, and if there was room, additional students could attend without signing up. If no students signed up for a specific lecture, the professor could instead do a question and answer session. Since professors would be doing larger lectures less often, they would have more time for one on one work with students who need it. Also, in a milestone based system, students would be more responsible for their own learning. This means that there would be almost no graded homework. Students could ask a professor for feedback or help on a specific assignment, but automated systems could be used for basic feedback. The only real graded work would be milestone tests, which could be graded by paid graders, leaving professors more time for helping students who need it. This would allow professors to have much more time for teaching by reducing the task of grading and placing what is left on less skilled workers, who do not need the expertise of the professors to grade.
I believe this sort of system would dramatically improve the performance of our educational systems. It would reduce the workload of teachers, giving them more time to do their primary job, teaching. It would remove the inherent discrimination against slow learners and the learning impaired that exists in an arbitrarily timed class based system. It would also remove the discrimination against fast learners and those who are already self educated, by allowing them to complete milestones at as fast a pace as they desire. In addition, it would overhaul our current grading system to accurately represent proficiency in each subject, because each milestone would be verified for each student. I also believe that it would dramatically improve education, because no student would graduate without having passed each individual milestone required for their major. No student could get by just barely.
The primary argument I have heard against this sort of system is professors who say that because they had to work through the current system, everyone else should have to. This is a lie. By this argument, I can show that those very professors should be doing hard labor in the fields of a farm for the own survival (or even hunting and gathering naturally occurring foods), without any modern tools or other conveniences. Those who claim that the next generation should have to work just as hard as they did do not deserve the conveniences of modern technology and medicine. The progression of the human race requires advances in education. Even very specialized fields require more knowledge than the average human can learn in only 4 or even 8 years of schooling. As technology and science continue to advance, this will only increase. If we do not find ways of increasing the speed and efficiency of learning, we will find that technology and science advance ever more slowly. Eventually, learning enough to continue to advance will take a lifetime, and at this threshold, humans will no longer be able to continue advancing, because people will die before they have learned enough to advance further. Computers have already expanded that threshold, but the advancement of computers itself is subject to that threshold. If we do not improve education, the human race will eventually reach a technology cap, and cease to progress any further. Improving education, even a little, may allow us to create technology that further extends that threshold, and may even allow us to extend it indefinitely. If we choose not to improve education, because "it was good enough for us, so it is good enough for them," then we are taking an enormous risk. Let us not lie to ourselves. The current US eduction system is terrible. It does not fulfill its purposes. A milestone based system would allow students to prove their merit by their rate of learning, instead of being forced to conform to a rate of learning that is optimized only for the most average student, and that makes fast learners hate school for the boredom and slow learners hate school because they can never learn fast enough to understand anything.
Eventually some country is going to adopt this system. That country will very quickly begin to excel in technology and science at rates never seen in human history. We are already behind nearly every other 1st world nation. Shall we allow Japan, or China to beat us to the punch, and become the new greatest power in the world, or will we do it first, and reclaim our dominance in technology and science?
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Milestone Based Education
Our current education system has divided subjects into sections that are intended to be taught by semester. The division is entirely arbitrary. No one went to any effort to determine how much information is reasonable to learn over a given amount of time, they just decided where to cut based on personal preferences and opinions. The result is that some classes are excessively difficult in the time given and some are excessively easy.
Because classes are divided into semesters, the subject matter must be taught at a set rate, otherwise the class might get behind and will not have learned all the subject matter by the time they are expected to. This system expects all the students to learn at the same rate. It also expects each student to learn each sub-section of the subject at the same rate as all the other students. This causes two problems. The first is that some students learn faster than others and this system holds them back. This can make a student become tired of a subject that they are extremely good at, making them dislike that subject. The result is that a student that could be a great asset to industry and technological advancement ends up in some job that does little for society, because they don't like the things they are good at (or worse, they don't even know they are good at it in the first place). Second, and much more common, a student may struggle with some principle partway through the semester. Unfortunately, the teacher and the rest of the class will go on without that student. This student learns the rest of the subject perfectly fine, but that one thing they missed can result in a poor grade or even failing the class entirely. One extra day covering that missed principle might have prevented the problem, but with 20 or more other students in the class, the teacher cannot afford the time to give an extra day to every student that needs it.
The problem here is that in most classes, many of the students have difficulty with various principles of the subject. Some manage to figure it out on their own, but others do not. Many students come out of their classes with Bs, Cs, and Ds, or even Fs, because they missed something simple early on, that made the entire rest of the class impossible. Many of these students have to retake the classes, wasting an entire semester because they missed something simple that could have been resolved in only one or two days. In high school, this results in late graduation. In college, it results in additional costs to the student as well as potential risk of loosing scholarships and grants. The overall cost of these problems is enormous, to individual students as well as to the taxpayers. This also destroys the many students' confidence in their abilities, making them hate subjects that they might be good at and causing more difficulty the further they get in school.
This can be solved with a milestone based learning system. This sort of system does not have a formal semester based class structure. Students are allowed to learn at their own pace, so long as their rate of progress does not become too low. Subjects are divided into small milestones that should generally take less than a week to complete (but more complex ones may take more). Once the student provides sufficient evidence of understanding of the subject material of the milestone, is it passed off and they can continue to the next. Some students may find that they can pass off what would have been an entire semester class in only a week or two. Others (or the same student in a different subject) may take more than a semester for a particular subject. Students that are doing well in a subject may need little or no attention from a teacher, while slower students may need extra attention. This allows teachers to teach where needed and stay out of the way where they are not needed. This allows students that are good in a subject to complete that subject extremely quickly so they can spend more time on subjects where they need it.
Khan Academy is doing research using a milestone based system, with a lot of success. BYU Idaho is also experimenting with a milestone based system. So far evidence has shown that most students have a number of subjects that they will do enough faster than a semester based system requires that they can learn more in less time than a semester based system allows, using a milestone based system instead. In short, most students perform better and learn faster in a milestone based system than in a semester based system.
Another major benefit of a milestone based system is that it can be gamefied very easily. This helps to encourage students to work at as fast a pace as they can handle. Khan Academy has gamefied its system by keeping track of milestones with "badges". Many students have started to learn competitively in an effort to accumulate as many badges as possible. Learning has become a game, and thus fun, for these students. Doing something like this with our entire education system could dramatically improve the education of high school graduates in the US, not because the education system has improved itself, but because the students will be treating learning as a competitive game, where they are rated by how much they have learned (ie, how many badges they have accumulated). Many students will come out of high school with a deep knowledge and understanding of subjects that many college students are currently struggling with. I will discuss gamefication of education in more depth later, but this is quite possibly one of the greatest benefits of a milestone based education system. Making education into a game will encourage the students to become proactive in their education, which is more valuable than any other single improvement we could make to the education system.
Lord Rybec
Because classes are divided into semesters, the subject matter must be taught at a set rate, otherwise the class might get behind and will not have learned all the subject matter by the time they are expected to. This system expects all the students to learn at the same rate. It also expects each student to learn each sub-section of the subject at the same rate as all the other students. This causes two problems. The first is that some students learn faster than others and this system holds them back. This can make a student become tired of a subject that they are extremely good at, making them dislike that subject. The result is that a student that could be a great asset to industry and technological advancement ends up in some job that does little for society, because they don't like the things they are good at (or worse, they don't even know they are good at it in the first place). Second, and much more common, a student may struggle with some principle partway through the semester. Unfortunately, the teacher and the rest of the class will go on without that student. This student learns the rest of the subject perfectly fine, but that one thing they missed can result in a poor grade or even failing the class entirely. One extra day covering that missed principle might have prevented the problem, but with 20 or more other students in the class, the teacher cannot afford the time to give an extra day to every student that needs it.
The problem here is that in most classes, many of the students have difficulty with various principles of the subject. Some manage to figure it out on their own, but others do not. Many students come out of their classes with Bs, Cs, and Ds, or even Fs, because they missed something simple early on, that made the entire rest of the class impossible. Many of these students have to retake the classes, wasting an entire semester because they missed something simple that could have been resolved in only one or two days. In high school, this results in late graduation. In college, it results in additional costs to the student as well as potential risk of loosing scholarships and grants. The overall cost of these problems is enormous, to individual students as well as to the taxpayers. This also destroys the many students' confidence in their abilities, making them hate subjects that they might be good at and causing more difficulty the further they get in school.
This can be solved with a milestone based learning system. This sort of system does not have a formal semester based class structure. Students are allowed to learn at their own pace, so long as their rate of progress does not become too low. Subjects are divided into small milestones that should generally take less than a week to complete (but more complex ones may take more). Once the student provides sufficient evidence of understanding of the subject material of the milestone, is it passed off and they can continue to the next. Some students may find that they can pass off what would have been an entire semester class in only a week or two. Others (or the same student in a different subject) may take more than a semester for a particular subject. Students that are doing well in a subject may need little or no attention from a teacher, while slower students may need extra attention. This allows teachers to teach where needed and stay out of the way where they are not needed. This allows students that are good in a subject to complete that subject extremely quickly so they can spend more time on subjects where they need it.
Khan Academy is doing research using a milestone based system, with a lot of success. BYU Idaho is also experimenting with a milestone based system. So far evidence has shown that most students have a number of subjects that they will do enough faster than a semester based system requires that they can learn more in less time than a semester based system allows, using a milestone based system instead. In short, most students perform better and learn faster in a milestone based system than in a semester based system.
Another major benefit of a milestone based system is that it can be gamefied very easily. This helps to encourage students to work at as fast a pace as they can handle. Khan Academy has gamefied its system by keeping track of milestones with "badges". Many students have started to learn competitively in an effort to accumulate as many badges as possible. Learning has become a game, and thus fun, for these students. Doing something like this with our entire education system could dramatically improve the education of high school graduates in the US, not because the education system has improved itself, but because the students will be treating learning as a competitive game, where they are rated by how much they have learned (ie, how many badges they have accumulated). Many students will come out of high school with a deep knowledge and understanding of subjects that many college students are currently struggling with. I will discuss gamefication of education in more depth later, but this is quite possibly one of the greatest benefits of a milestone based education system. Making education into a game will encourage the students to become proactive in their education, which is more valuable than any other single improvement we could make to the education system.
Lord Rybec
Khan Academy
There are a few things you should be familiar with if you are going to read this blog. One particularly important one is Khan Academy.
Khan Academy is a website with over 2,000 educational videos on a large number of subjects ranging from elementary school levels to higher college levels. Khan Academy is a non-profit organization that creates and provides these videos free to the public. In addition to videos, the site has a coaching section that can be used to keep track of the progress of users. Many of the videos also include exercises for practicing and evaluating the progress of users. The coaching section can be used by teachers to keep track of any number of students. The system even tracks which specific exercises students have difficulty with, so that teachers can offer focused help to each student, exactly where it is needed. I hope this becomes the standard education system of the future.
The benefits of the Khan Academy teaching method are great. Instead of sitting through a 30-45 minute lecture on a subject in class, then doing the homework on their own at home, the students watch the 10-15 minute videos at home (which allows them to rewind and rewatch sections where needed, which cannot be done in a lecture setting), work on the exercises at home, then they do the "homework" in the classroom, where they can get help from the teacher as needed (and as I mentioned, the coaching section allows the teacher to know exactly where each student needs help based on their performance on the exercises). Salman Khan, the owner and producer of Khan Academy describes his system, the benefits, and the results of ongoing research using his system in this video.
I mentioned that the website can keep track of student progress. Each student can register a free account that will track their progress in the exercises. The progress is tracked with a "badge" system. This is essentially a milestone based system (which I will discuss more in a future post) that awards badges as milestones are completed. Milestones are completed by completing exercises with satisfactory scores. This allows a teacher to determine the overall progress of a student by look at what badges that student has earned. More important though, this turns education into a game, where students are encouraged to learn new subjects more thoroughly so that they can earn these badges. According to the website, they have fifth grade students competitively completing college level material in order to earn more badges.
The overwhelming success of this system is more evidence that our current education system is deeply flawed. I would like to see this type of system entirely replace how our current education system currently works. Khan is working with at least one school to research the viability of this system (see the video I mentioned above for details) with great success. I hope the US public education system will see how well this works and care enough about actually educating to use it.
Lord Rybec
Khan Academy is a website with over 2,000 educational videos on a large number of subjects ranging from elementary school levels to higher college levels. Khan Academy is a non-profit organization that creates and provides these videos free to the public. In addition to videos, the site has a coaching section that can be used to keep track of the progress of users. Many of the videos also include exercises for practicing and evaluating the progress of users. The coaching section can be used by teachers to keep track of any number of students. The system even tracks which specific exercises students have difficulty with, so that teachers can offer focused help to each student, exactly where it is needed. I hope this becomes the standard education system of the future.
The benefits of the Khan Academy teaching method are great. Instead of sitting through a 30-45 minute lecture on a subject in class, then doing the homework on their own at home, the students watch the 10-15 minute videos at home (which allows them to rewind and rewatch sections where needed, which cannot be done in a lecture setting), work on the exercises at home, then they do the "homework" in the classroom, where they can get help from the teacher as needed (and as I mentioned, the coaching section allows the teacher to know exactly where each student needs help based on their performance on the exercises). Salman Khan, the owner and producer of Khan Academy describes his system, the benefits, and the results of ongoing research using his system in this video.
I mentioned that the website can keep track of student progress. Each student can register a free account that will track their progress in the exercises. The progress is tracked with a "badge" system. This is essentially a milestone based system (which I will discuss more in a future post) that awards badges as milestones are completed. Milestones are completed by completing exercises with satisfactory scores. This allows a teacher to determine the overall progress of a student by look at what badges that student has earned. More important though, this turns education into a game, where students are encouraged to learn new subjects more thoroughly so that they can earn these badges. According to the website, they have fifth grade students competitively completing college level material in order to earn more badges.
The overwhelming success of this system is more evidence that our current education system is deeply flawed. I would like to see this type of system entirely replace how our current education system currently works. Khan is working with at least one school to research the viability of this system (see the video I mentioned above for details) with great success. I hope the US public education system will see how well this works and care enough about actually educating to use it.
Lord Rybec
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