"BA in 4 Weeks" Question...

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by skoolgurl, Jul 16, 2004.

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  1. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: "BA in 4 Weeks" Question...

    OK, no argiuing here. But John can derive value from his "education" whether he took the test or not. Maybe he'll apply knowledge attained in a workplace (without any reliable way of attributing his performance to that particular act of learning). Or perhaps he'll incrcrease his quality of life in an intangible way (say, he beleives in "increasing the sum of knowledge" as a value in and out of itself).
     
  2. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    Duh. Of course passing tests can evidence an education - espesially if the test is carefully designed. Testing is the only, although imperfect, tool to prove that educalion took place. People in "traditional" settings also do testing for this precise reason.
    I guess we are in the land of philosophy here. "What is the sound of a falling tree if there is no one to hear it".
     
  3. Lawrie Miller

    Lawrie Miller New Member

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: "BA in 4 Weeks" Question...

    Sure he could, but how do we know he has? The issue is not what we choose to believe, or what may be, but what we know. The question is not COULD John derive some nebulous benefit, but DID John derive some specific benefit, and, more simply, DOES John posses specific competencies, period? That is, regardless of the circumstances under which or through which they were obtained. Again, even the subject himself can make no judgment as to his learning and competence without measurement (albeit subjective measurement) of demonstrable outcomes.


    Well, if a quality is intangible, then we cannot know of it. The burden of proof lies with those who determine that they know the unknowable, and speculation about what maybe, is exactly that; speculation.

    To get back to the central point. A contributor to this thread declared she had no problem with those who sought only the credential, but that she wanted both the credential AND an education to back it up. The clear implication was that those in pursuit of a credential and nothing else would not receive, never mind ever posses, “an education”. She further held, as do you, that an education has value whether it is subject to assessment or not.

    You and she are not alone in your opinion. Some educators of repute have told me that there are qualities derived by way of certain pedagogies that are not revealed by testing. Many more have told me that BA in 4 Weeks is bunk, and that those who may graduate by such means are not educated. Some tell me that there is a world of difference between the competence of the educated graduate and the competence of those whose only ambition is to acquire a piece of paper (degree diploma). The veracity of all or any of these views hinges upon the role of testing.

    My first question to you and to them, is simply stated: how do you know what you say you know?

    1. “An education has value whether it is tested or not.” Sounds good, by how can we know an education was in fact received without assessing outcomes? The truth is, we can’t. What is actually being postulated is: “a process has value whether it is tested or not”. Education is only made manifest in terms of knowable (testable) outcomes. Education can be said to have taken place only where it has been demonstrated that some process has successfully delivered to a student, some knowledge they hitherto did not possess.

    Given the above, a more damning deconstruction of, “an education has value whether it is tested or not”, would be, “a process that has been found to successfully deliver knowledge, manifest in the form of measurable competencies, has value whether or not it has been found to deliver knowledge, manifest in the form of measurable competencies.”


    2. “[T]here are qualities derived by way of certain pedagogies that are not revealed by testing.” This may sound plausible to some, but it is delivered as a statement of fact. Not what may be, but what is. That is to say, those who postulate this view are telling us they know that which cannot be known. If these alleged qualities are not amenable to testing (assessment), how can you say as a matter of fact, that they exist? These claimed qualities do not reveal themselves as demonstrable outcomes, yet some claim to be privy to their existence, nevertheless. This is unalloyed quackery.


    3. “[T]hose who may graduate by such means [as delineated in BA in 4 Weeks] are not educated”, and, “there is a world of difference in terms of competence between the educated graduate and those whose only ambition is to acquire a credential.” Another well-worn variation seems to be, “. . . seek an education, not a piece of paper.”

    How do those who offer such finger-wagging admonitions, know that these differences exist? Given two graduates who have demonstrated competencies using equivalent metrics, how do you determine one who sought an education, to be educated, and the other, who sought a piece of paper, not to be educated? By further testing? If so, have those who make this case conducted such tests? No, not a one.


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  4. Lawrie Miller

    Lawrie Miller New Member

    The issue here is not whether the tree makes a sound, but rather, if you never enter the forest, how do you know it has in fact fallen. This is no fatuous dalliance.

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  5. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: "BA in 4 Weeks" Question...

    Why does it matter what you know or don't know? Isn't the decision whether or not John found his own education valuable up to John himself to decide? If the question is whether John's education is of value to you, then you probably would want to see evidence of whatever educational results you valued.

    I don't think that anyone has ever disputed that students can usually intuit their own intellectual growth.

    It isn't always obvious though. Sometimes education creates doubt and confusion. A student may feel that he or she knows less after taking a class than before. (Philosophy courses occasionally have that effect.) But that's often a sign of growing sophistication.

    But yeah, all in all, learning is a pleasure and a joy. It's precisely that feeling of increasing understanding that motivates most a-vocational study.

    Most things that people know are intangible, in the sense of being poorly defined, informal and difficult to quantify.

    She seems simply to have been observing that education and the certification of education are two separate things. She didn't want to shortchange the former.

    Her education may be of no value to you unless you get out your assessment yardstick and measure it, but it may be of tremendous value to her. In fact, it may be her primary motivation for learning in the first place.
     
  6. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: "BA in 4 Weeks" Question...

    1. I addressed the first one.

    2. This second one is not disprovable and therefore not a real scientific claim, and should be disregarded as such. "There is something we can not see, nor hear, nor smell, nor measure" - well, there certainly might be, but it doesn't make squat of a difference in any practical sence.
    I "beleive" that no real test capture _every_ bit of an "education" one receives - for the fact that any test has a limited length, and any good education equips one to solve an infinite class of problems (some completely unforeseeable by a teacher/test creator). Those "untested" bits are certainly valuable.
    2. This one is clearly wrong. Specifically, the "BA in 4 weeks" degree diploma says in fact that "there is a strong evidence that John Doe posesses an education at the specific level; a reasonable effort was made to ensure this fact". So does any other diploma in the world. Whether or nor an "education" has any "untestable" qualities, the "degree" does not capture those. And I do beleive testing is a "good enough in real imperfect world" measure for "education".
     
  7. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: "BA in 4 Weeks" Question...

    Exactly.
    That's also true.

    There is a hidden assumption that testing route shortcharge the education. I beleive it doesn't. All "quantified" evidence says it doesn't, and there is no and cannot be evidence that any "intangible" benefits suffer, too. Those things are not generalisable and are on a "person-per-person" basis, anyway.
     

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