Re: Student Evaluations (was "Re: On Correlations")

[Brian McInnes <bmcinnes@PNC.COM.AU>]

Hi All (and Jack),
Windmill tilting; no, I don't think so.  What Dick is on about - and it's a
natural and necessary follow on from work done by Hestenes, McDermott, Redish
and quite a few others - is not satisfying the superficial concerns of
administrators but addressing the question of student understanding.

I agree with your realistic cynicism as to administrators' priorities; we'll get
nowhere attacking that head-on.  What we have to do is to come at them from
another angle by producing graduates who, as a result of good learning outcomes,
have a better understanding of the disciplines they have studied. Then they may
well have an appreciation and a recollection of the experiences that led to
this.

Brian McInnes

----------
> From: Jack Uretsky <jlu@HEP.ANL.GOV>
> To: PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu
> Subject: Re: Student Evaluations (was "Re: On Correlations")
> Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2000 4:44 AM

> Hi all-
>         I think that Dick Hake is tilting with a windmill.
> Student evaluation = customer satisfaction,
> and that's where the money is, as far as administrators are concerned.
> They, basically, don't give a hoot about "learning outcomes" because
> neither do the students.  Let's remember that few few people find need
> to call upon their undergraduate experiences once they are out of
> college.  I include engineers in this broad generalization.
>                         Regards,
>                                 Jack
>
> Adam was by constitution and proclivity a scientist; I was the same, and
> we loved to call ourselves by that great name...Our first memorable
> scientific discovery was the law that water and like fluids run downhill,
> not up.
>                           Mark Twain, <Extract from Eve's Autobiography>