Re: Students as customers LO1578

djustice@wppost.depaul.edu
Fri, 09 Jun 1995 07:53:35 -0600

Replying David Birren LO1571
[discussion of learning vs. credentialization]

We might say that the cultural/economic system specifies what it needs in
terms of educational outcomes, and the student specifies what she needs in
terms of how she participates in developing those outcomes. In this
perspective, to answer Phillip's question, to fail a student is to
communicate the fact (or judgment) that the she did not meet the
"production standards" for a particular component of the credential being
sought.

>The inevitable consequence is a debasing of the value of the product through
>grade inflation...

Personally, I think this is a real problem. It happens when institutions
perceive students as purchasing knowledge instead of the opportunity to
learn. A student's failure is seen as failure of the institution to meet
her needs, rather than evidence that she did not take adequate advantage
of the learning opportunity.

----->end of David Birren's message, radically reduced<---------

Because, in the end the learner is also the person in the best position to
judge whether learning occurred (much better than the institution or even
the teacher) in addition to treating students as "customers" institutions
might consider using student's own assessments of whether or not they
learned. In fact self-assessment is an important new approach to
measuring learning and has many applications, particularly in what we hope
to create in "learning organizations."

--
David O. Justice
Dean
School for New Learning
DePaul University
<djustice@wppost.depaul.edu>