[From Bill Powers (931103.0900 MST)]
Chuck Tucker (931101) --
SO WHAT DO YOU SUGGEST BE DONE TO STILL USE GRADES BUT NOT HAVE
THEM HAVE THESE ANTI-LEARNING AND COERCIVE EFFECTS??
You have to decide what you (and the students) want to use them
FOR. As I indicated about my experiences in a physics class,
grades can be used by students as information about what they
understand and don't understand, in courses where there is some
substantive material to be learned. But that worked only because
the same grades were NOT being passed on by the instructor for
use in decisions by the department or university about the
students' futures.
Realistically, public reports about a student's progress in
learning a subject ARE GOING TO BE USED by others to evaluate the
student. Until the entire educational system of a university or
other school is redesigned from scratch, students will have to
cope with the fact that others are going to evaluate th8:03:22 EST
Message-Id: <9311032303.AA02562@ben.dciem.dnd.ca>
Received: from vm.utcc.utoronto.ca by vm.utcc.utoronto.ca (IBM VM SMTP V2R2)
with BSMTP id 8120; Wed, 03 Nov 93 18:01:36 EST
Received: from UTORONTO.BITNET by vm.utcc.utoronto.ca (Mailer R2.10 ptf000)
with BSMTP id 9664; Wed, 03 Nov 93 18:01:27 EST
Sender: "Control Systems Group Network (CSGnet)" <CSG-L@UIUCVMD.BITNET>
X-To: CSG-L <CSG-L%UIUCVMD.BITNET@pucc.princeton.edu>
Status: RO
From Bob Clark (931103 1:20 pm EST)
DAG FORSSELL (931027 1145)
Your substitution of "in management science?" for "by behavioral
science?" in the first paragraph of your letter seems to me a
significant improvement.
Let's see how the revised letter works out. Any other suggestions I
might offer at this time would make the letter much more mine than
yours. To me it is important that your own orientation is apparent
to the reader.
DAG FORSSELL (931026 1930)
Your report on your sales trainer friend is interesting. However I
would point out that his purposes are quite different from yours. He
wants to produce effective sales persons, so he applies the best
methods he knows. To him, they "work," what more does he want?
Clearly, he has a well developed set of ideas about what people want,
what people are interested in, etc. And this set of ideas seems to
produce results he finds acceptable. The fact that his "set of
ideas" can be regarded as "theory," doesn't occur to him -- and if
pointed out, would likely be rejected (politely and gently, I presume)
as uninteresting and useless.
If you want to work with him, I suggest you "learn his language" and
use it as much as you can.
At this stage, I think you need a "self-selected" audience --
"Self-selected," that is, by means of an initial offering. Your
article appears to fit with that concept -- those responding have at
least some curiosity, if not explicit interest, in these kinds of
topics.
Good luck, Dag!
Regards, Bob Clark
PS -- We hope you were not affected by the Santa Anna fires!
ยทยทยท
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1993 18:21:00 GMT
Reply-To: "Control Systems Group Network (CSGnet)" <CSG-L@UIUCVMD.BITNET>
From: "Robert K. Clark" <0004912499@MCIMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: LTTR REVISN - RKC
To: Multiple recipients of list CSG-L <CSG-L@UIUCVMD.BITNET>