Way back last century, year 12 students were assessed for what was called Sixth Form Certificate in New Zealand. SFC consisted of a whole series of specific assessments over the whole year, including an end of year examination in some disciplines. SFC was tossed out towards the end of the 90s in favour of a standards based assessment that embraced the senior school.

For all the vagaries that were talked about to do with SFC, I always felt that it was a better system in terms of education, rather than duty performed. One of its strengths that I saw was that it provided a broad based education rather than training in chosen spots which standard based assessment tends to do.

ka kite
from Middle-earth

Thanks for this confirmation by the researchers Pashler and Thalheimer. Three things fall out of this for me:

1 –
It confirms what I’ve always believed about crash learning for exams and crash learning in general (without exams). Distance learners in particular cannot be easily monitored in the way they may attempt to cram a lot of material associated with learning into a short space of time. Their end assessments will not be a true measure of their learning though it may have some bearing on their ability to understand and apply.

2 –
Crash courses per se are implicated here. That’s not to say that they are no use, but the content, whether knowledge or concept, must be carefully analysed if the course is to be any use. Essential learning may be the way to go with this, giving feeds to where to find extension material if required.

3 –
Everyone is different. I see no reason to believe that learning for everyone isn’t also different. What one person can gain usefully from a paced rate of learning may not be equivalent to that acquired by another, even if their end assessments may be identical.

This has implications – more than one might think – for all learners in all disciplines.

Catchya later
from Middle-earth