{"id":6402,"date":"2015-07-30T07:01:13","date_gmt":"2015-07-30T07:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6402"},"modified":"2015-07-30T07:01:13","modified_gmt":"2015-07-30T07:01:13","slug":"ahelo-ahelo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2015\/07\/30\/ahelo-ahelo\/","title":{"rendered":"'Ahelo 'Ahelo!"},"content":{"rendered":"

No, this is not about some dyslectic verison of the BBC's brilliant French farce<\/a>\u00a0of (almost) the same name, but the tale is Gallic in one respect.<\/p>\n

The term, Ahelo, is the acronym for 'Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes' which is the Paris-based OECD's attempts to extend its PISA tentacles into higher education. \u00a0The OECD\u00a0has been quietly developing a way to test students across different institutions and countries, with the aim of discovering how much they have learned. \u00a0Their expectation is\u00a0this will\u00a0lead (of course) to more international league tables. \u00a0Joy unbounded. \u00a0You can read more about this on the Diverse<\/a> blog, and there's a UK perspective on the Guardian<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As sensible commentators in the UK have noted, this is a deranged idea. \u00a0The Guardian article quotes\u00a0Alison Wolf:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is basically impossible to create complex language-based test items which are comparable in difficulty when translated into a whole lot of different languages. \u00a0And that is before you even start on whether a given set of items can possibly be equally appropriate regardless of the subject studied or the very different nature of higher education courses in different countries, or the level of similarity between OECD question formats and those used for assessment in the system concerned.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wolf says that an OECD-style multi-country test is not the answer, but she adds:<\/p>\n

\u201cI do, however, think that the question of how much people actually learn on degree courses is a major one, long overdue for serious attention.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Such comments are no doubt\u00a0music to the ears of those in HEA \/ QAA \/ HEFCE \/ Offa \/ BIS \/ Cabinet Office \/ etc who always want more\u00a0opportunities to hold universities to account \u2013 and don't be fooled; this is as much about the effectiveness of institutions as it is about student learning.<\/p>\n

As such, it's no surprise that there are\u00a0new efforts to explore 'learning gain', with HEFCE being\u00a0about to announce around a dozen pilot projects to look at ways to measure the skills and knowledge students develop in higher education. \u00a0This is what schools know as 'added value'. \u00a0The Guardian says that these projects will<\/p>\n

\"... range from surveying students at the beginning of their courses and then in years two and three to test how ready they are for employment, to asking them at the beginning and then again at the end of their university studies to write essays to test their ability to analyse, synthesise and think critically.\"<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Clearly, students\u00a0will be queuing down the street and round the corner to write\u00a0these essays.<\/p>\n

\"To test how ready they are for employment<\/em>\" is the key idea here. \u00a0Given that no one has the faintest idea what this means, it's going to be a tough ask. \u00a0Employers hire potential, trusting themselves to do the rest. \u00a0Possession of a (good) degree is part of that potential in a new graduate, and what an added value score will add to this is not clear. \u00a0I think it's a nonsense, and shall keep well away from it.<\/p>\n

What (the prestigious) institutions are concerned about, of course, is that there may not be much correlation between 'learning gain' and 'student satisfaction' scores. \u00a0Now, wouldn't that be awkward\u00a0...<\/p>\n

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No, this is not about some dyslectic verison of the BBC's brilliant French farce\u00a0of (almost) the same name, but the tale is Gallic in one respect. The term, Ahelo, is the acronym for 'Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes' which...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6402\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}