I was asked what skills I would want to assess if I were to reform "standards-based" education.   David Gibson, who will be one of our participants in a MacArthur Peer-to-Peer Pedgagogy HASTAC Scholars Workshop next fall, posed this question.  Here are the skills I think are important and that I'd love to be able to assess in a meaningful way.

Our entire practice of testing is based on a theory of knowledge that is out of date.  . . . I fear that No Child Left Behind may well be constructed to leave behind exactly those non-linear thinkers, some of whom, if nurtured, might well grow up to Be Like Einstein.

I was very excited today to receive the email from Rosemary Feal, Executive Director of MLA, announcing the unveiling of the Evaluation Wiki, an online Wiki for "The Evaluation of Digital Work."  It is part of the MLA's Committee on Information Technology, and allows any teacher or scholar to contribute to it, offering content on developing, gathering, and sharing material about the evaluation of digital work for hiring, tenure, promotion, and other rewards of our profession.  HASTAC has been writing about this for a long time but never came up with an idea this brilliant, to make it a wiki.   We're honored to be mentioned as part of this project and we here invite all HASTAC members to contribute.  

"What about the liability of not doing it? What about the liability, for everything else, of not taking responsibility?" That is the right answer to any experiment that pushes us to learn better and deeper, to take more risks, be more creative and bold together. And it is a very good thought with which to begin this new year.

Another look at Cathy Davidson's "How to Crowdsource Grading" appears in the Duke campus paper, The Chronicle.

Please don't ever ask me to bet on which topics will be "hot" and which ones not. I managed to blog about an experiment in evaluation (y-a-w-n, so I thought!) during the week our new site was down several times for repair and then when I was off the grid, on my big one-week-of-vacation-fun of the year. Off the grid. I thought posting what is basically a revised version of a very successful course I taught last spring, "This Is Your Brain on the Internet" was a respectable place-holder during absence (www.hastac.org's and my own). I threw in some new ideas about experimenting with grading methods almost as an afterthought. About 5000 views and dozens of comments later, well, I get it now: Grading is a hot topic! Here's why . . .

Inside Higher Ed has also picked up the "How to Crowdsource Grading" blog and featuers a very nice and thoughtful follow-up by the always thoughtful Scott Jaschik:http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/08/03/grading.