Practice vs. Skill......

Does disagreement facilitate critical thinking? Hopefully learning facilitates critical thinking, but this week a disagreement really prompted me to think critically. One of our cohort member stated that a person can be as good a writer as anyone as long as they put in enough practice. Several members of the cohort agreed with this opinion and naturally I was left standing on the other side of the fence. The example I gave was in regards to the recently passed Major League Baseball draft. I stated that thousands of collegiate and high school baseball players are drafted and less than one-percent of them will ever reach the major leagues. Sure, with practice, people can achieve greater heights than anyone anticipated, but at the end of the day it comes down to a certain skill level. Shouldn’t the fact that these baseball players already have logged hundreds of hours of practice, yet less than one-percent of them will ever reach their life long dream.

If it was true that anyone can be as successful as they want to be by practice, than the world would be filled with lawyers, doctors, and professional athletes? Essentially, I could be a professional football player if I wanted to? Wrong! Practice is only part of the equation to succeed. The rest consists of physical make-up, determination, lucky breaks, and yes, skill. Perhaps the first part of the previous sentence is where the difference of opinion occurs. What degree are we measuring success by, personal fulfillment, self-satisfaction, or the ultimate fantasy? A disagreement can be as simple as interpretation of the desired outcome.

This week’s articles on assessment covered two really important themes:
1.) There are many different ways to conduct assessment. Some of them work wonderfully and others maybe flawed. The bottom line is that assessment must be done often and without it, it’s impossible to define the quality of education an institute credits its students with.
2.) The time frame and content that is associated with an assessment. Some of the questions this week dealt with cumulative scores of designated tests for assessment while others posed questions on time frames and of conducting assessments.

I have researched how often specific programs should conduct assessment and they answered about the same, “as often as possible or whenever necessary.” The bottom line is that there is not a specific map or book that issues a suggested method. Some of the research I saw concluded that assessment is not conducted as much as it should be. I posed the question, “shouldn’t we be assessing the way we conduct assessment?”

The reason I suggested this question was based upon an article I read about new program assessment. Some colleges wait as long as five years to conduct a follow-up assessment after the program’s inception. I was perplexed by this thought. Shouldn’t a new program be open to annual assessment? Even for a year? Then again, SCC’s Continuing Education Division has gone over ten years since its last formal assessment. Like I said, there are some varying degrees on the interpretation of how often assessment should be conducted. Maybe too long!

Hats off to the Kelly and Gina D. for an outstanding week of seminar leadership. The questions they posed on the college assessments compare and contrasts were great. In fact, their questions could easily have posed as group case studies. They both showed a great deal of critical thinking in preparation for this week!