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Course Exam: Religious Studies (RELS) 211
One of what I hope will be a continuing series of interviews with AU faculty about their courses in AUSU's Voice Magazine. This one is concerned with the intriguingly titled Death and Dying in World Religions, explained by the author and coordinator, Dr. Shandip Saha. It provides fascinating glimpses into the course rationale, process and pedagogy, as well as some nice insights into what drives and interests Dr Saha. There are some nice innovative aspects, such as formally arranged phone conversations between tutor and student at key points - low tech, high engagement, great for building empathy while doing much to assure high quality results. It does make me wonder, when tutors inevitably therefore get to know a lot about their students and their thinking, why an exam is still necessary. My inclination, in the next revision, would be to scrap that or make it more reflective ('what I did on my course' kind of thing) as it offers nothing much to an otherwise great-sounding course apart from a lot of stress and effort for all concerned. The course subject matter and pedagogy itself sounds brilliant and I really like Dr Saha's attitude and approach to its design and implementation.
I would love to see more of these. It's a great way of sharing knowledge and reducing the distance. One of the fascinating things about our virtual institution is that, in some ways, we have far greater opportunities to learn from one another than those in conventional institutions, where geographical isolation means people seldom get a chance to see how those in other centres and faculties think and work, and the local is always more salient than the remote. Online learning can and should break down boundaries. Apart from places like here on the Landing, where a few dozen courses have a pitch, we don't normally take enough advantage of this. I would encourage any AU faculty who are running courses that are even a little out of the ordinary to share a bit about them with the rest of us via blogs on the Landing, even if the courses themselves don't actually use the site. Or maybe even to contact Marie Well at the Voice Magazine to volunteer an interview!
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Jon Dron
Jon Dron
Comments
RE: “My inclination, in the next revision, would be to scrap that or make it more reflective ('what I did on my course' kind of thing) “
Interesting…reflective learning
I have been reading research studies on the application and implication of electronic portfolios in higher education, and the above passage from your post ‘spoke to me’ in an ePortfolio language.
A quote from an article I read earlier this evening (1994):
“When we began working with portfolios, we were initially attracted to them as an assessment alternative to standardized tests. Like many other educators, we were concerned with the contrived and overly simplified way that standardized achievement tests defined and quantified learning…..” (p.10)
Although the exam proposed (I read the interview) by Dr. Saha promotes critical thinking, the format may lead to less reflection than an ePortfolio would – perhaps AU could consider implementing the tool in all its courses – that would certainly promote 'what I did on my course' kind of thing “ type of reflection.
Paulson, F. L. & Paulson, P.R. (1994). Assessing portfolios using the constructivist paradigm.
Very interesting to see this interview with Dr Saha, I does not consider myself to be strictly religious but at the same time I think religion is your relationship with whoever is your GOD and its very personal. You can't impose your believes and ideas to others, especially, what is going on in the world today we have to be very careful when it comes to religion. The idea behind this course without exam is brilliant, you would like people to share what they truly believe and not to following strict book either right or wrong. Next question comes to mind how you judge them, its hard to answer this question, if someone ask me about my religious believe I should able to answer them to some extend, but when it comes to talk about other religion I have not idea, not sure how teacher came test me.
Jon, you already have mention the virtual online classroom where people all over the world meet and share their life experience rather then confined to one city or town. Online experience is amazing, when you hear people share their knowledge, their thoughts and show their style of working, it is great learning exercise, its like you are traveling to different places and spending time with different people.
Top of that Jon, I believe you have unique knowledge spreading ability, you broke traditional class room barriers and have reach to wider audience by virtual tours and such.
Thanks for sharing.
Shafiq
That would be excellent, Rita, I agree completely! All my own courses have only portfolio assessment, and most allow lots of different kinds of evidence of competence to be used in constructing them. The Landing is a very good platform for that, especially the process side of it (following Helen Barrett's distinction between process and product) though we do have a purpose built eportfolio server for more formal portfolio construction that is more focused on standardized presentation and assembly.
I am very much opposed to nearly all exams, though I don't object where conditions and stresses are authentic: driving tests, for example, make sense to me, as do conventional exam conditions for students of journalism. People support exams based on the erroneous belief that they protect against most forms of cheating. Given that, in some countries, over 80% of students admit to cheating in exams and, even here in Canada, over 60% of high school students admit to it (the numbers drop as level of study rises), this is not a great defence. There is clearly a fundamental problem with the whole idea when it is so endemic. However, if exams were less stressful, were more meaningful, made a useful rather than a negative contribution to learning, and were less easy to abuse - such as through a reflective commentary on the learning process and content - it would be a big improvement and would at least partly satisfy both camps.
My own belief is that no one cheats when the process is meaningful and valuable to them in and of itself, when they are part of a supportive social environment where to cheat would be to let down others, and where they control the process - ideally, where there is no coercion in the form of summative grading. That last one is a hard problem to deal with, even when portfolios are used, given the design of educational institutions, but I think we have to seek ways of addressing it. If we separated summative assessment from the process altogether, cheating would virtually vanish from our courses overnight as, if people did cheat, it would be of no benefit to anyone, least of all themselves. It is our own system, sitting on top of and reinforced by a bunch of mistaken implicit behaviourist assumptions and an ugly power dynamic, that causes cheating. Driving people with grades then complaining when they cheat is like pouring a drink for someone you have aleady made into an alcoholic and then complaining when they drink it.
Great response! So much being covered...
1) on cheating: some of my ESL students (from certain areas) say that 'they are expected to cheat' even when they know the subject matter inside out.
2) on Mahara: I have been attending ePortfolio (M.A.) presentations (Thank you, Dr. Hoven!) and have recently started creating my own both at AU and at my workplace (something new)
3) on process and product: the LEARN (D2L) environment has affordances for the product, but my workplace has opted for Mahara in this trial three-year project -- not sure if Faculty sees the value, though. My learners have expressed how the reflective piece helped enhance their language skills.
4) 'on reflective commentary on the learning process': evidence-based learning - isn't this what learning is all about?
I enjoy reading your posts!
@Shafiq - I love:
"Online experience is amazing, when you hear people share their knowledge, their thoughts and show their style of working, it is great learning exercise, its like you are traveling to different places and spending time with different people."
Very true, very poetic.
Though I am not an expert on religion at all, I have written and taught the occasional ethics course that faces similar issues, inasmuch as people always have ethical principles and beliefs when they start such a course, and these are almost certain to be challenged at some point. Assessment in such courses tends to focus on critical thinking, synthesis, analysis, creative argument and transcending personal beliefs in order to understand the world from other people's perspectives. At a more basic educational level, it also relates to being familiar with well-known arguments, theories and classifications in the field. I am guessing this course works similarly in the context of religious beliefs. It would be a sign of failure in my teaching if students used their own beliefs to attack other beliefs, though a sign of success if they reflectively embraced and fortified their own beliefs while recognizing, understanding and perhaps even valorizing what others believe in the light of that. I'd not be unhappy if they changed their beliefs either! I'd be happiest of all if they came out of it more accepting of the fact that, in some important aspects of human existence, including in ethics, aesthetics, or metaphysics, different and contradictory things can both be true without either negating the other. I expect the same is true of courses on religion.
@Rita -
There are cultural differences in cheating, for sure. I've commented on this a few times before, e.g. here, or, a couple of years later and better thought through, here. Interestingly, it seems that a lot relates to the social and economic significance of qualifications within a society - the more the qualification matters, the less learning counts.
I'm not familiar with the D2L portfolio tools, though I'd be intrigued to know more about them. I'm particularly interested in how they might square with the teacher-dominated hierarchies of an LMS. The roles and permissions in most (all?) LMSs make it quite hard to make things from inside hidden course spaces available outside them. When it is possible, it tends to be hard to manage that without granting access to more content and/or to more people than many students would feel comfortable revealing so, quite often, they are used within rather than across courses, which is a great pity. One of the things I really like about Mahara (and Elgg, used on the Landing) is that the learner, socially networked with other learners, is the centre of the system, not the course or the teacher. The learner can explicitly reveal as much or as little as they like to whoever they like and has a far greater sense of ownership and control.
Reflection is one of the very few things that almost every teaching theory agrees upon. It's a crucial part of most intentional learning processes, though other things matter too (motivation, action, application, creation, problem-solving, etc). I'm not so sure the evidence-based learning matters - or, at least, in a learning (rather than qualification) context, I'm not sure what it means!
RE: “The learner can explicitly reveal as much or as little as they like to whoever they like and has a far greater sense of ownership and control.”
And
“LMSs make it quite hard to make things from inside hidden course spaces *available outside them”
As the courses I facilitate in both ESL and Teacher Education are entirely in the Discussion Forum (DF) (tasks, research assignments, presentations, conceptual graphic representation of a lesson, etc.), I perceive my learners as having a “sense of ownership and control.”
During the last class (f2f) of a 12-week ESL blended (Thanks for the book, Dr. Cleveland-Innes! re: Orientation, 2015), each student spoke for a few minutes about their perception of the course (first blended at my workplace). A slide had been submitted via the DF with their final thoughts, and they used that artifact to guide their presentation. It was my understanding then, and now as I design a second course for ESL learners, that the community (learner-learner, learner-content, learner-instructor and learner-technology (citation?)) along with the sense of sharing, belonging, possessing, played a big role in this beautifully unveiled and openly shared final learning experience.
Regarding *college-wide viewing, I invite Faculty to be part of my course as auditors (even the former College President took a look at my modules). As a result, colleagues from other areas can view the learning process of my learners at different times of their learning journey – inter-professional collaboration, perhaps? It is possible…