THE INFORMER PAGE 6 NOVEMBER 8, 1989 Congratulations to Jaynie Pirani and Kathy MacDougall, winners of the $600 Capilano Suspension Bridge Scholarships. The two Tourism Management Co-op students were awarded cheques by Nancy Stibbart, president of the Bridge. Lost, Found, Lost Again? The Lost and Found is no longer listed in the phone directory, so if you can't find it, we understand. However, please note for future misplacements, that the Lost and Found is in the Student Society Office, not the Library. Phone Corrections ADD: 2098 Priscilla Kyllo, Personnel/ President’s Office A318 DELETE: 2098 Wendy Carter AMEND: 2948 Faculty Association Office M Bldg, 2428 Trudi Forrest 2948 Lee Hatton M Bldg, 2565 Rob Henderson 2555 Dorinda Neave I Bldg. 2411 Bill Schermbrucker H442 1.D. Cards Please pick up your College I.D. card at the Library's circulation counter. Sign the card and take it to the Student Services Building (old bank building) to have it laminated, or leave it with us, and we will take care of it. The Student Services building is open Monday - Thursday, 8:30 - 4:30. If your name was not on the faculty (Dean's Office) or staff (Personnel) database, a card was not produced. Call the Library (1944) to make sure your card is here. If not, we will make alaternate arrangements for a card to ensure that you receive Library borrowing privileges. Faculty Development, cont'd. Professor Wergin: Professor Larsen believes I have overstated the relationship between learning and testing and he may be right. Changing a test format will not immediately produce students who are critical thinkers and problem-solvers. But ironically, his counter-arguments only reinforce the basic point I was trying to make, namely that too oftenan exists between our stated educational philosophy and our actual classroom practice, and that testing is often the most visible symptom of that . The reason that asking students to do other than regurgitate information on an exam is such a “shock” to them is because they have not learned to study that way. I would agree that our educational system breeds this kind of thinking, but part of this system is a professor’s reliance on tests which measure rote learning - even if stated course objectives say otherwise. Research on college learning and testing has shown that how students study depends on the nature of the exam expected: students study isolated facts for an “objective,” multiple choice test, but study ideas and relationships for essay exams. Professors also need to engage students to practice using the knowledge gained, then test them for these new skills. Ihave more trouble with Professor’s Larsen’s counter to my “horror” story. I wonder whether the other students in his class remember this incident as fondly as he does. The exam question he was asked gives no hint about what the professor was looking for in the responses, or the criteria he would use to grade them. For example, I could write all I know about metallurgy in about two sentences and still, strictly speaking, satisfy the requirements of the question. Apparently Professor Larsen was prescient enough to construct a response that not only satisfied what his mentor was looking for (“‘Ah, yes, that’s what I wanted to know!”), but also turned the exam into a personal learning experience. All I leamed from my “horror story,” on the other hand, was how to manage panic. Whataccounts for the difference between our experiences? Either Professor Larsen was an exceptional student, able to synthesize all of the materials on his own (not an unlikely possibility), or the climate of our two classes was qualitatively different. In my case the instructor did nothing but lecture to us all semester, and it was clear that in his one-question final what he wanted was, essentially, a braindump. The more facts we could retrieve and write down in two hours, the higher our grade would be. Needless to say, I don’t remember much of what I wrote; I only remember the question. I doubt that Professor Larsen’s course was like that. But whatever the reason for our divergent experiences, the essential point boils down to this: Teaching students critical relationships and perspectives is not something we can leave to chance.