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Writer's pictureKane Murdoch

The Rickety House

Evening all, As part of my continuing efforts to remain astride the proverbial horse, I've been using my short stint of work-free Fridays to reach out to friends and acquaintances to invite them out to lunch or a moderate number of libations. Aside from the genuine pleasure one gets from hanging out with people you like and respect, hanging out with smart folk means I'm getting to stretch my brain, which has felt a little like a cramping marathon runner recently.


Unsurprisingly though, when hanging out with academics in recent times our thoughts often turn to assessment. And after a really lovely conversation today, a thought I had previously had (it seems that it's one in, one out at the moment), popped back into my mind, and hence the title of this post.


So, little back story, two years or so ago I was invited to Ireland to run a series of sessions on contract cheating. People seemed to really take a lot out of the sessions, but they also stimulated some great conversations around assessment, which I found invigorating. As it transpired, QQI (Ireland's education regulator) needed someone to step in and give a talk the following week, and I was happy to assist. Coming out off a week of intense thinking and discussion around assessment, my brain was in top gear. One of the slides I came up with to explain my point about how fallible assessment has become was the one below- the rickety house.

What I meant by this was that assessment had rarely been afforded the kind of intent and conscious planning that it truly deserved. Most often what people know best about assessment is how they were assessed, and sometimes that means "Perfect" and sometimes that means "I hate it all, hoik it into the sun!" But it's usually based upon preformed views about what's good and what's bad, nearly aways focused at a unit specific level, and often the product of one person's proclivities or limitations over a period of time, after which it's handed off to the next person. And, to be fair, it kinda worked for a long time.


To be even more specific about what I meant though, when assessment is based on a single person's limited understanding of the assessment environment, as institutions we have a tendency to bolt on bits, to apply a shiny new technology here, a slap of paint there, and it ends up looking as wonky as the picture above. What you might also notice about that picture is that it seems about as structurally sound as a city built on rock and roll, i.e. not at all. This was perfectly clear to me well before 2022 and ChatGPT was released.


What should be clear to everyone now is that the weak support (see pic above) has collapsed, but what I see is people furiously throwing paint on their houses like Jackson Pollock! Using AI detectors, retreating into "pen and paper", trying gotchas on their students to catch GenAI use, and many others. None of them are really improving the house, and I'm sorry to tell you this, but none of it will save your house- it's already fallen off the cliff.


To avoid ending on a note of disaster, and to loop back around to my recent conversations, we need to take some of this load off academics. That will require what I consider is one of the most serious structural changes in higher ed: combining skills, knowing where the limits of our knowledge are, learning from each other, and relinquishing some control. As my colleague Wylie Bradford rightly points out, subject level academics are the experts in their subject, and they should not be swamped by diktat from above where knowledge is lacking. However, honestly acknowledging where that expertise ends, and ego and insecurity begin, is really important to open the door for the people (like me and others) who really want to be able to help you shoulder the burden of the change required.


Until next time,

KM

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