Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2001 11:37:46 +0100
From: Ruth Chandler <R.Chandler-AT-ucc.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: sneers to you.


Thanks for this, it does help
i like the sound of this, the pass fail assessment is really hard to do well and, i think needs the posssibility of the distinction etc to stop it flatlining. i like the impulse to move away from marks driven performance which kinds of stops you seeing the books ( or whatever material ) en route. one of the good things about the current UK discourse ( (educrap) of transferable skills and 'vocational' learning is that does allow one to work out ways to assess things like class participation under fluffy managerial sounding headings. my situe to pomo course has 'independent learning' as one of its learning outcomes. it would be interesting to see if there was (a) kind of Deleuze pedagogy although, is suspect, such an efforst would be far too systematic. 

still, what is a new code for if not for setting up tremors from within?  

ciao
Ruth.C
>>> Chris Jones <ccjones-AT-turboweb.net.au> 08/26 6:23 am >>>
Ruth and interested anyones

I am straitened by schedules. . . can't say much.

Ruth's questioning of the academic exam buys into what Deleuze would call 
scholasticism. An exam examines how well you can recite the word of the 
father of thought passed onto you, in brief.

My undergraduate degree, BA (Communication) at the University of Technology, 
Sydney, not only did not have exams but also did not use the grading system 
which here in Aust is usually: fail, pass, credit, distinction and high 
distinction. You were either awarded a pass or a fail and to fail required a 
boycott of seminars and failure to produce any projects and even then 
extenuating circumstances, such as heroin addiction (not uncommon in the 
communication industries) could allow you to complete the subject and be 
awarded a pass. You were assessed on your project, which you were free to 
chose, design, and undertake in any media available: eg writing, sound 
production, video or film. This was considered very radical by conventional 
academic standards and the result was other universities often had difficulty 
assessing graduates wishing to undertake postgraduate degrees. However, the 
degree is extremely highly considered internationally by employers in the 
field. As a sort of countering effect, the sort of Higher School Certificate 
ranking needed to gain admission to the degree is in the top 3 percent, 
making the degree an elite degree, like law or medicine. The faculty, to 
counter this, again, accepts a high proportion of mature aged students who 
have industry experience (journalism, radio, film, video or in my case, 
publishing.) 

I was not graded until undertaking my graduate honours year and this still 
did not involve exams. I was graded on class participation, two essays and a 
thesis. The essays and thesis did not have to be a traditional academic 
essay and thesis. (Most people chose written essays simply because a seven 
or eight thousand word essay is much easier then a sound or video piece. As 
you know, my thesis was a non-traditional thesis using magazine journalism 
formats, in part.) It is called a graduate year, based on the Harvard system. 
The three year BA (Communication) is considered equivalent of a four year 
college degree in the US and the honours year is equivalent to a masters 
degree. (This academic need for equivalence is fascinating in itself.)

Of course, this non-traditional academic training invites sneering remarks as 
not being a real academic degree. Even on this list I have come across this 
more then once, I will add. Even my PhD, if I decide to attempt it, that 
is, can be sneered at as not being a real doctorate! Interestingly, this also 
invites competitive challenges to ones understanding of Deleuze, for example, 
or Freud, Marx or Nietszche, as the traditional scholastic training in 
Philosophy which situates it in a filial line called history of thought is 
not taught, at all. It should go without saying that such a scholastic 
training would be next to useless as communication professionals (writers, 
film makers, journalists, radio producers, advertising, public relations et 
al) would be bound up in history and unable to use theory as a tool. When 
faced with an urgent need to re-invent journalism, for example, such a 
scholastic training would not be worth the paper it is written on, to be 
blunt about it. This is a pedagogical question D&G often address and is a 
thread through all their writings.

Hope this helps

Chris Jones.


On Thursday 23 August 2001 23:05, you wrote:
> Paul and anyone esle interested,
>
> Apologies and thanks for the kind words- i was generally annoyed and had
> slipped into generalising remarks. i don't, because of certain access
> issues around email participation, usually take the time to go through my
> post for grammatical and spelling errors, it would take ages, i would write
> less and, on the whole, i think it better to expose lexy demons without
> shame than to worry about what people think of me on cosmetic grounds.
> however,, i should have read back for content and you didn't make a sneer
> ng remark. nevertheless, as this is  the first post you have ever responded
> to of mine despite having addressed several to you, i might be forgiven for
> a somewhat negative construction?
>
> on the issue of continous asessment, it has really only just begun to stop
> being controversial here. exams are such a bad way of assessing deep
> learning although they are very good at what a person can pull out under
> pressure in a timed environment, a different set of skills entirely. one
> can argue that deep learning has to have taken place before a student can
> do this but when i ask students several months later, even the ones that
> did very well, most of them have forgotton most of what was taught on th t
> module. exams appeal to a pragamatic learning style ( not to be confused
> with pragmatism) the A level system has taken the message on board and
> there are now many which have a high continous assessment content. my own
> degree was continous assessment although it included some module exams as
> part of that process. on the whole, i usually ended up an entire degree
> classification down on these assignments and, like my students now, can
> barely remember what i learned. the modules for which i prepared writte
> assignments and oral presentations have stayed with me to the extent that i
> can still remember page quotes from first year assignments!
>
> sadly, it is still hard work convincing external examiners of the merits of
> this approach. there is a seen exam on one of my courses and, because they
> have a week to prepare, i expect something a lot more worked out than can
> be produced in an unseen paper and, for several years, have allowed the
> students an A4 page of notes ( with a word limit) to take in which must be
> submitted afterwards. i am not measuring their ability to produce a falsh
> answer but their ability to research a topic, i want footnotes oddamit!
> apparently, this kind of assessment gives the students an unfair advantage!
> i havn't met one which agrees with this remark!
>
> on its own, i think the viva an applaing method of assessing the labour of,
> at least, three years. apart from the opportunity for some ( definitely not
> all) external examiners to take revenge for whatever unfortunate
> expereinces they might have had as a postgraduate, engage in depsotic power
> play and so forrth, never has such a long period of study been evaluated by
> such a short mode of assessment. the idea of continous assessment is an
> important part of the thrust behind the national qualifications fram work
> being drawn up here and it has some good points. e.g the Mphil becomes a
> desirable qualification in its own right, significantly more than an
> undergraduate degree and not a failed phd. yet, the guy responsible for
> producing this is a biologist ( i think) of the Aristotlian school, the
> lines between a model of discrete typologies re what a posgraduate should
> know and the content of a phd are becoming increasingly blurred. despite
> some obvious demarcations,  too tight a grid here is going to impose th
> truth of its model re what knowledge is etc. the content issue is really
> thorny and not at all appropriate for the humanities.
>
> the worst thing of all is the temporal rthym of the RAE which seesm to
> measure output as much by quantity as anything esle.because RAE submissions
> dissapear every five years, or four, depending on what the agrremment for
> the interval will eventually be, there is no incentive at all to produce a
> book that may take years to think about.
>
>  for all potential researchers which may be reading, the most important
> recent development in PG funding is that one of science research councils
> has just taken the step of running a pilot funding scheme whereby ten
> departments have allocated a research budget ( based on their RAEscore) to
> spend as they wish. departments, rather than the Research council, allocate
> the level of research stipends, if that is how they choose to spend the
> money. a good outcome could be is that departments can pool research b
> dgets if they want to do something cross or interdisciplinary and it make
> it easier to collaborate with other HEI's. a negative  consequence could,
> of course, be even fewer stipends available than is currently the case and
> a worseniing of the intensification of resouces in a few departments. while
> all the different research councils don't operate in quite the same way,
> their is a strong likelihood that most of them will follow suit if the
> pilot is deemed sucessful. if this were accompanied by a contingen loans
> system for pgs ( with a restoration of some undergraduate grants) this
> wouldn't be that bad a funding package. i.e the big research machines could
> do what they wanted to do but there would be nothing ( too much) to stop
> researchers  producing a piece of entirely 'useless' critical research on
> anything whatsoever.
>
> finally, apologies if my remarks about the fact that academics are usually
> to busy to do anything about these issues have offended anyone. its not a
> balme /shame thing but, realistically the wheels of the RAE keeps peples
> noses to the grind in a way which i think scandadalous. its a dreadful
> implementation of hermenutic horizon into the shape of knowledge and the
> plethora of awful, trivial books which have floursihed in recent years, is
> testimony to its impact. i asked my musician friends recently, wheth r they
> would play in aband with a drummer like this, you can gusss the response.
> if any of you are in a psoition to mention the problem of PG funding
> anywhere strategic, especially the lobby for contingent loans and some
> undergraduate grants, it would be greatly appreciated, it all feeds in!
>
> i think these issues sufficently amenable to anlsysis from Delueze and
> Guattari's works to lay them out in some detail here but, clearly, most of
> you are not on the list to read about educational policy. anyone that want
> more info, please, as with thoughts on how one can define a robust
> ombudsman structure, please backchannel.
>
>  best wishes
> Ruth.C
>
> >>> Paul Bains <P.Bains-AT-murdoch.edu.au> 08/23 1:33 am >>>
>
> At 15:23 22/08/2001 +0100, Ruth wrote:
>  it seems, it is impossible (for me at any rate) to congratulate you guys
> without receiving a sneering remark in reply, time to give up trying i
> think.
>
> Heh! Which 'guys'. I don't remember making any 'sneering' remarks. On the
> contrary I'm truly impressed at your commitment and involvment in these
> issues. When I first went to uni (a long time ago) I was involved in
> attempts to introduce continuous assessment (rather than exams - I was
> hopeless at them) - which seem revolutionary at the time.
> I left uni and got very involved in the early squatting campaigns in
> Central London - these had a real impact on local govt policies re homeless
> accomodation.
> In Oz there are no vivas - we have had a contribution scheme for years - in
> fact the Brits took it from here. The good thing is that there are quite a
> few federal and local postgrad scholarships. That's all I really know -
> sorry can't help more.