Thinking about how this diagram changes when the we is students (with some guidance from the teacher). Stay tuned for more on this :-)

Interesting point, Mary - I, of all people, should have thought about that! I was aiming the talk at teachers teaching in a conventional (well - as conventional as AU gets) context and so 'us and them' vocabulary seemed appropriate, but a more realistic systems diagram of all of this would reveal a very different picture. Even in this diagram, part of my point is exactly that teaching is always, and irreducibly, distributed. I don't think a more accurate rendition would be a Venn diagram any more, though.

I agree about the Venn diagram, Jon, so I madea Doodly (my new toy) to record my very basic interpretation of what you were saying. I'd be interested in your thoughts. An Interpretation of teaching/learning/assessment posted by Jon Dron_31_10_18

Jon,

I really enjoyed reviewing the slide deck. If you have any audio, it would be great to be able to hear the presentation itself.

I was unaware of Outcome Mapping or Outcome Harvesting, so I look forward to learning more about them.

Particularly intriguing to me is how much tunnel vision gets added by not looking at all learning outcomes. So, thanks for that.

Thanks Gerald!

Yes, I had an 'aha' moment when I drew the Venn diagram and mapped it to intended outcomes. I've said as much in so many words many times before but, seeing it laid out in front of me, it just seemed so obvious that the only thing we should ever assess is (in positive terms) what a student has learned. It's good news if that happens to overlap with what we are trying to teach and what we are trying to assess, but that's not the main point. Another nice thing about thinking this way is that, if a student achieves outcomes that we did not intend, but that happen to overlap with something else we assess (e.g. a different course) it can be used as evidence towards that, too. This does mean that we need to have a pretty fair idea of our intended outcomes across the whole institution (or at least a whole program), and thus will run into the many problems of misusing learning outcomes as currency/bureaucratic measurement tools, but it might be a way to sell the idea to those in charge.

Alas, no audio or recording of any kind.

I came across the concept of outcome mapping/harvesting at the International Federation of National Teaching Fellows conference earlier this year and it resonated with many of the things I have been grappling with over recent years. The details are fairly mundane and obvious - it's a project management tool for dealing with complex projects and emergent/unanticipated/fuzzy outcomes, but the general principle of identifying change (any change) as an outcome, and working back from that to discover what led to it makes an awful lot of sense to me in a learning context. The act of mapping itself is a highly reflective and potentially very effective pedagogical process in its own right, so it's a good idea even if bureaucracy prevents you from actually using those outcomes in summative assessment. If the powers that be prevent you from adding new outcomes (or from removing those that are pre-ordained) you can always add an outcome along the lines of 'be a reflective practitioner' or 'demonstrate the ability to be a lifelong learner' or 'critically evaluate their learning in the field' to the specified outcomes, but I think it is way more useful if we are allowed to be flexible in specifying criteria for success on a per-student basis.  

Jon

Jon,

In a chunk of time full of synchronicity, I have been wondering about the same things. 

I have been working with my teacher candidates in designing curriculum, specifically units of study and lesson plans for elementary school students. They are good students and very committed to being good teachers, but all of there work amounted to an addition problem = fact 1 + fact 2 + fact 3 = learning. You can imagine that the assessments they designed were very traditional and linear as well.

I have been working with them pretty intensely around seeing that their job is to create learners and people in love iwth learning, not pushing content. I want to investigate outcome mapping and outcome harvesting further as tools that they could be possibly using to change their thinking and practice.