Talk:Outcomes

Suggested improvements July 2000

'creating standards of competency' Outcomes - OU, Jul 10, 1.9 VI, need to clear this up...outcome is not like a (numerical, letter) grade.

• It's a statement that a person can do something (eg. ride a bike), not necessarily how well they do it (eg. 73% well). OK, the link with scales ... test this!
• Maybe I am being picky because I used outcomes extensively in schools and they never lent themselves well to classical 'grading'
• Outcomes_report - OU, Jul 10, here it is again... how can you have an 'average of outcomes'? (can fly aeroplane, can't drive car - what's the average? ... arrrrgh (technical phrase that is untranslatable)
• Metadata - redirect from Development: Outcomes - explained rationale, borrow and link

The color of outcomes

I now relate outcomes to visual colors. Imagine there are 3 outcomes in our course or activity. Each outcome is a primary color that has a scale. We don't learn much by saying the average was 100. But we perceive more when we say Red was 200, Green 100 and Blue 0 (a shade of brown), as opposed to another class with the same average but had 200, 200, 200 (a shade of grey), or 0, 100, 200 (a shade of blue) and so forth. This is the theoretical problem with a single grade as a summary, even if it is a weighted average: we don't know anything about the red, green and blue qualities of knowledge we expect out students to obtain.

Another way of putting it, might relate to defining a point in a 3 dimensional space. We do this by using a scale for the X, Y and Z axises. We can all agree that we know where the point (0x,100y, 200s) is. The average of the 3 values is meaningless to those who live in a 3 D world. I will let the higher math people to argue about how the average might apply in flatland or whatever is on the other side of flatland away from the direction of sphereland. :)

As for the average on the report for all outcomes in aggregate: I can hear the Dev or techie say , 'but my boss ALWAYS asks for the grand total and overall average in reports!!" And the said sad fact for an educator is that some administrator will insist upon it, because that is where they live. --Chris collman 20:27, 6 September 2011 (WST)