On consent, though, the problem is that if you want the exercise to be useful for assessment, you really need to have the entire class involved. Otherwise the volunteers you get may be the people who are very confident about their writing (and thus, oddly, the least useful for measure the differential that a professor’s instruction contributes to.)

I agree that public posting makes students concentrate harder on what they’re doing, but for that reason, I’m not sure it’s universally appropriate.

On the Weekly Standard, of course I could care less about how something like that impacts me here. I should think at this point it’s obvious that I don’t particularly care about reputational effects in that sense, or I wouldn’t be blogging. But I do think it takes a while to build up calluses to careless or thoughtless criticism. I’m pretty inured to it, but sometimes it does take my breath away a bit. I don’t think I could expect my students to be similarly used to it, and I’d really hesitate to have some shallow weenie posting cruel things about a paper by a student, for example. But even in my case, if the feedback you get isn’t constructive or helpful, and just consists of the right-wing peanut gallery repeating canned invective, it’s hard to see why I should go to the trouble. Because what you’re proposing is actually a pretty serious amount of labor, if only the setting up of the site itself. I think this is the kind of thing that would be more worth doing in some kind of systematic environment, or as part of a larger initiative, rather than a one-off lark.

I think I’d consider it in a class that was heavily focused on writing. But the problem is that all the students would have to consent, and I think a lot of them might feel reluctant. The public posting of the papers, after all, wouldn’t substantially benefit them: it would be for the sake of making a point to a larger public about higher education.

1) Isn’t almost every history class at Swarthmore feature a lot of writing? I hope so. Whether or not the class is “focused on writing” depends, I guess, on the professor. But you sure seem like the sort of guy who wants to teach all his students to write better, even the ones who already write quite well. Don’t you?

2) Not all the students need to consent. Try asking for volunteers. Or make it a requirement for the course. I agree that some might be reluctant. Another way is to make the posting public to just the class and not to the wider world. I bet that the students will read each other’s papers and, certainly, many of your comments.

3) I predict that public posting of papers and comments would benefit them substantially. In particular, they will try much harder knowing that someone besides you is reading their papers. At least that has been my very limited experience. But it is an empirical question! Try it and see for yourself.

PS. With regard to the Weekly Standard, isn’t this why we have tenure? Also, I expect that the causal effect of such a mention at a place like Swarthmore is to improve your chances of, say, getting a named chair. Would you disagree? Or do senior Swarthmore administrators care a great deal about what the Weekly Standard writes?

I’ve been to two Teaching American History Grant conferences now and it’s beginning to look like the Department of Education is beginning to understand that (at least for teachers) there are other ways to go about measuring historical learning. I don’t know if teh Spellings Report marks a differing point of view or that they see history as an exception. Nevertheless, I’m more optimistic about the future of history education than I was in 2003.

JR

PS to withywindle: If I’m writing for a journal called Radical Pedagogy do you expect me to check my politics at the door?

I also have to say that I feel more reluctant than I once did in from a personal standpoint given the current somewhat poisonous environment of debate. When I first starting trying to have an active online profile nine years ago, I felt much more excited and open to whatever came my way. But here we are now when a publication like the Weekly Standard not only feels no shame or reluctance about allowing an editor to write careless attacks on specific courses, but says absolutely nothing when they’re caught red-handed simply skimming course titles. I don’t have a much higher opinion of a lot of similar attacks on curricular choices. It’s a little hard to feel it would do much good to expose oneself and one’s students to that kind of careless invective from all comers. In a context where there was some kind of constructive and focused attention to pedagogy, I think it could be a really useful thing to tackle, though.

When I have suggested that students should post their papers and professors their comments (if not their grades), I get a lot a push back. Have you ever done something like this, Tim? Would you consider it? I would be interested to read your thoughts on the topic.

Good news! Here’s how to do that. First, publish at the start of the semester (or the start of freshmen year) your goals for the skills that you want students to master. For the most part, these will be clear writing, logical thinking and the like, but you pick the goals. Second, publish (anonymously, if you prefer) the work that your students submit during the semester or during their four years at Swarthmore. Show us both their very first papers (which may fairly be taken as what they know before being taught by you/Swarthmore) and their very last papers. Third, publish the feedback which you gave them on their papers. This may or may not include grades, but the key part is the comments. What did you praise and what did you criticize? What concrete suggestions did you make? Fourth, have an open conversation at the end of the semester/BA about the progress which has been made and your contributions to that progress. Allow outsiders to chime in.

This won’t be easy, but there is no simpler way for you know what “specific difference” you or Swarthmore are making.

So it might be that standardized testing is appropriate in some cases, or other stringent measures of assessment–but that will require everyone to drop their squeamishness about talking about the differences between different kinds of universities and colleges.