Listening to a podcast on the validity of assessments, and on feeding two birds with one scone

I was listening to an episode of “dead ideas in teaching and learning” on my walk back from dipping this morning (now you can really see that fall has come!) and I really enjoyed it and can well imagine using as at “recommended listening” to prepare participants for workshops on AI and/or assessment.

The main idea is maybe not super new: rather than think about how to detect cheating, think about how to diagnose learning, and you are good… So that the problem isn’t cheating, it’s the validity of the assessment (or, as Dawson et al. (2024) say in the title of the article they are discussing, “Validity matters more than cheating“). But I think it is very worth reminding people of this on a regular basis!

Another point that I thought was really interesting is about the problem of defining cheating in the first place: Long lists of what exactly people are not allowed to do, or abstract concepts like “gaining an unfair advantage” (which might suggest that assessment is a competition — I have never thought about it that way!)?

Also, anti-cheating measures can backfire in that they can inhibit collaboration and feedback-seeking behaviors, and also how ethical are the methods themselves that we employ in order to enforce ethical behavior?

At the very end of the episode, the host uses the phrase “feeding two birds with one scone”, and I immediately had to google if that was just her genius invention that felt so wholesome and inspiring, or if that is *a thing*, and turns out that it is, indeed, *a thing*! I found other suggestions to change language in a way that keeps the meaning of a saying but makes it non-violent, like “feeding a fed horse”, “bringing home the bagels”, “more than one way to peel a potato”. Love it! I am working on training myself to use “due dates”, and it will be fun to find opportunities to use these other sayings!

Dawson, P., Bearman, M., Dollinger, M., & Boud, D. (2024). Validity matters more than cheating. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 49(7), 1005-1016.

I went a little later today than yesterday, but it felt so much darker…

But there is something about fall, even without sunshine!

Today, I stopped and just looked in many different spots. Somehow it felt like I needed to take in the place, the weather, the mood…

Today wasn’t the day, but I want to come back and sit here and ponder my life… And drink coffee from a thermos! :-D