SYNTHESIS PAPER

Synthesis Paper - Disappearing Ink

Synthesis Paper - Disappearing Ink

In the minds of many teachers, students and parents, everything related to monitoring and evaluation of school work is reduced to an issue of notes attesting to a result. It would take too long to return all work sociology. Their findings are sufficiently known. They show, conclusively, that every note - even in the disciplines known as "accurate" - depends, in large part, of very diverse conditions, which have little to do with "quality" intrinsic job noted : the criteria are different from one teacher to another and, for the same teacher, depending on the timing and conditions of the evaluation we underestimate the work of those whom we regard as "bad students" and not always see the errors (even unconsciously) those which we expect a good result, etc (Johnson & Mighten, 2005). Yet, even acknowledging the faults of our habits of notation, we must admit that it is difficult to give it up for several reasons, not all reject. We can however, ask ourselves what these notes and the use we make of it.

We can not seek to make a student more demanding of himself without her used to judge for him, to appreciate what he does and to improve it. This attitude is a mental operation clearly identified - decentring - is essential to progress. And it should encourage us never to just "pay" a bad mark a bad job, but to point consistently failed to improve the points for the student finally arrives at a result which he could be proud. In this perspective, it is sufficient to have a binary grid "successful" or "failed" (occasionally succeeded and should be reworked on the same statement or in a different context, before going further) (Landrum, 2010).

The real problem here has to do with economics. If students have the rights to their own notes, then they can sell those notes. That creates a substitute good for the class itself, and one which will generally cost a lot less than the class. The university doesn't want that substitute good existing, especially since substitutes (even inferior ones) almost always lower the price of the primary good. (Rarely, though, substitute can increase the price of the primary good, especially if the primary good has status value) (Zhou, Xu & Guan, 2010). If people can get a comparable education for much less by paying a much lower fee to get a copy of the class notes, then the university may, in the end, lose enrollees, and thus revenue. However, this is fairly shortsighted (as evidenced by the open coursework programs at MIT and Stanford); the the university retains its guild-controlled monopoly on granting degrees, which is what students are really paying for in the end, and no amount of reading course notes is going to get you a degree without paying whatever fees the university decides to charge; the school isn't really losing anything much here.

Some consider that this is a utopia: "My students work ...