The importance of being imprecise
I have written before about the problems that learning outcomes fail to deal with (Jorge Luis Borges and learning outcomes), but there is another cognate issue that bugs me from time to time. The following is a quote from The Undercover Economist in the FT
Should the rules and targets we set up be precise, clear and sophisticated? Or should they be vague, ambiguous and crude? I used to think that the answer was obvious — who would favour ambiguity over clarity? Now I am not so sure. Ponder the scandal that engulfed Volkswagen in late 2015, when it emerged that the company had been cheating on US emissions tests. What made such cheating possible was the fact that the tests were absurdly predictable — a series of pre-determined manoeuvres on a treadmill.
I think there is a very clear downside to making too precise what it is that students should learn. I actually think we need noise in the system, simply because assessment methods are imperfect and unnatural, and the more you seek particular psychometric qualities the greater the distance between what is important and what and how you test. This is not a popular position to take, and I confess I am one of the worst offenders in terms of producing tightly defined content. But if:
assessment drives learning
the I would add, to make a couplet
assessment wrecks learning