This was the third in a series of 3 talks that Stephen Downes gave in London this week.
Jul 11, 2014
Keynote presentation delivered to 12th ePortfolio, Open Badges and Identity Conference , University of Greenwich, Greenwich, UK.
ePortfolios and Open Badges are only the first wave in what will emerge as a wider network-based form of assessment that makes tests and reviews unnecessary. In this talk I discuss work being done in network-based automated competency development and recognition, the challenges it presents to traditional institutions, and the opportunities created for genuinely autonomous open learning.
For recordings of all three talks see OLDaily
Beyond Assessment – Recognizing Achievement in a Networked World
Jul 11, 2014. 12th ePortfolio, Open Badges and Identity Conference , University of Greenwich, Greenwich, UK (Keynote).
Beyond Institutions – Personal Learning in a Networked World
Jul 09, 2014. Network EDFE Seminar Series, London School of Economics (Keynote).
Beyond Free – Open Learning in a Networked World
Jul 08, 2014. 12th Annual Academic Practise & Technology Conference, University of Greenwich, Greenwich, UK (Keynote).
This was perhaps the most forward thinking and challenging of the three talks. I wasn’t at the talk, but listened to the recording. What follows is my interpretation of what Stephen had to say, but it was a long talk and I would expect others to take different things from it and interpret the ideas presented differently.
Educators have been wrestling with the issue of assessment, how to do it well, how to make it authentic, fair and meaningful, how to engage learners in the process and so on for many, many years.
Assessment has become even more of a concern since the advent of MOOCs and MOOC are symptomatic of the changes that are happening in learning. How do you assess thousands of learners in a MOOC? The answer is that you don’t – or not in the way that we are all accustomed to – which is testing and measurement to award credentials such as degrees and other qualifications. This has resulted in many institutions experimenting with offering a host of alternative credentials in the form of open badges and certificates.
Stephen’s vision is that in the future assessment will be based not on what you ‘know’ but on what you ‘do’ – what you do on the public internet. The technology now exists to map a more precise assessment of people through their online interactions. Whilst this raises concerns around issues of privacy and ethical use of data, it also means that people will be more in control of their own assessment. In the future we will have our own personal servers and will personally manage our multiple identities through public and private social networks. Prospective employers seeking a match for the jobs they want filled can then view the details of these identities. There is some evidence that learners are already managing their own online spaces. See for example Jim Groom’s work on A Domain of One’s Own.
Why might new approaches to assessment such as this be necessary? Here are some of the thoughts that Stephen shared with us.
It is harder and harder these days to get a job, despite the fact that employers have job vacancies. There is a skills gap. The unemployed don’t have the skills that employers need. We might think that the solution would be to educate people in the needed skills and then employers could hire them, but employers don’t seem to know what skills are needed and although learning skills inventories help people to recognise what they don’t know, these inventories don’t help them to get to what they do know.
Education is crucial for personal and skills development and more education leads to happier people and a more developed society. The problem is that we confuse the outcomes of education with the process of education. We think that we can determine/control learning outcomes and what people learn. See Slide 14
But useful outcomes are undefinable (e.g. understand that …..) and we need an understanding of understanding. Definable outcomes such as ‘recite’ and ‘display’ are simpler but behaviourist (Slide 18). There is more to knowing than a set of facts that you need to pass the test. Knowing something is to recognise it, in the sense that you can’t unknow it. Stephen used ‘Where’s Wally’ as an example of this:
Knowing, according to Stephen, is a physical state – it is the organisation of connections in our brain. Our brain is a pattern recogniser. Knowing is about ‘doing’ rather that some mental state.
My understanding of what Stephen is saying is that if we believe that knowing is about pattern recognition, then achievement will be recognized in how good learners are at pattern recognition as evidenced by what they ‘do’ in their online interactions. ‘Assessors’ will also need to be good at pattern recognition.
Learners are increasingly more sensitive to the patterns they see in the huge amount of data that they interact with on the internet, and machines are getting closer to being able to grade assignments through pattern recognition. As they interact online learners leave digital traces. Big data is being used to analyse these internet interactions. This can be used for assessment purposes. But this has, of course, raised concerns about the ethics of big data analysis and the concern for privacy is spreading – as we have recently seen with respect to Facebook’s use of our data. (Slide 55)
A move to personally managed social networks rather than centrally managed social networks will enable learners to control what they want prospective employers to know about them and human networks will act as quality filters.
Stephen’s final word was that assessment of the future will redefine ‘body of work’.
All these are very interesting ideas. I do wonder though whether it’s a massive assumption that all learners will be able to manage their own online identities such that they become employable. What are the skills needed for this? How will people get these skills? Will this be a more equitable process than currently exists, or will it lead to another set of hierarchies and marginalisation of a different group.
Lots to think about – but I really like the move to putting assessment more in the control of learners.
26-09-2014 Postscript
See also this post by Stephen Downes – http://halfanhour.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/beyond-assessment-recognizing.html – which provides all the details of this talk
Jenny Connected 
I do need to work through the documents in detail, but for now …
Thanks for providing an entry point into the issues Stephen has raised.
I think there is an additional issue that is really important, namely ‘currency’ as opposed to ‘assessment’. In a sense assessment it not the real issue, it is but a stage on the way to the main issue. Of course, it is not a trivial task, but educators are pretty good at it by now (a few hundred years of practice), even though we might not always agree with each other on how it should be done – or even what exactly it is that we should assess. (From norm referenced to criteria referenced, and from content to capability).
However, assessment is really just the first stage. Despite the importance that institutions attach to performance in assessment (i.e. compliance with the institution’s prescribed outcomes), most learners want to move on, and use the academic or professional capital that their qualification gives them as currency in the wider market place – they want to cash in that capital for a new role in society, with financial, status, social, personal, community etc benefits.
That’s currency, within one or more ‘markets’ in society. Currency, ideally, must travel, quickly and simply, and as widely as possible. It’s a reductionist, simplistic mode of discourse, of social interaction.
So the question is not really how to assess, but how to transform the evidence and learning-mapping from the places it has been created (work, school, university, community, social group, social networks, etc) – through assessment frameworks – into currency.
Maybe we’re looking for the Bitcoins of learning.
Hi Roy – thanks for this. Do you think the mapping of what you ‘do’ on the internet, i.e. maintaining a record of your multiple identities, interactions and activities online, that Stephen suggests, is a form of ‘currency’?