Grades never tell the whole story.
They are one-dimensional, subjective, non-standardized and unreliable. Most teachers would agree that there are better ways to evaluate students and assess their progress. Students stress about grades and all agree that it kills collaboration and sharing. And yet we keep using them. April is the time of year when colleges decide who to admit into their hallowed ranks. This is the time when the panic about grades, GPAs and scores hits an all-time high. Studies of Kuh, Pascarella & Terenzini, and others have established quite clearly that student engagement rather than grades is the most significant predictor of student success and retention. Engaged students are the ones who raise their hands in class to ask questions, who chat with their classmates, and who stay back to interact with their teachers. They are the ones who join clubs, participate in sports, find a cause to champion, volunteer, and who help out in the community. This is important, right? Well then, where is this included in the curriculum and where does it appear on the transcript?
When was the last time you were offered a job based on your college transcript? When employers sift through entry-level applicants, they look beyond the GPA for evidence of teamwork, passion, problem solving, communications. And yet you will not find any of these attributes on the college transcript. These skills are developed during experiences outside the classroom: experiential learning, problem based learning, real life experiences, projects, co-ops. Our learner faces two challenges—to pick the right experience to learn these skills, and to produce credible documentation of these skills.
Today’s world is dynamically changing, technologically evolving, highly global, constantly online, and demandingly collaborative. Do we have educational experiences to train our young learners for this brave new world, a connectivist world where Google places encyclopedia facts at a eight year old’s fingertips, where online chats connect an Atlanta coed with an Ankara teen in seconds, a world where notions of privacy are being challenged by texting tweens. At OpenStudy, we asked ourselves what environment would make it is easy and fun for learners of all ages to prepare themselves for the new tomorrow? Our answer: Open Social Learning.
OpenStudy’s first disruptive innovation was to enable peer learning. We set out to prove that learning could occur in an open social platform that offered peer learning help. The platform exceeded expectations. It has grown to over 100,000 users from 170 countries, and it offers a free, scalable, 24/7 learning help that users report is “addictive”. 80% of surveyed users report improved learning outcomes.
But there is more. I’ve written countless letters of recommendation to help students apply for jobs, graduate school, and medical school by evaluating and documenting soft skills. I could see something remarkable emerge on our peer learning platform. Students began building and demonstrating these very skills. They learned to articulate their questions and answers, to maintain courtesy and openness, to work together in teams. They were truly passionate about learning. Some became leaders and offered support and mentoring.
Watching the interactions on OpenStudy, we realized that this ecosystem was just the right environment to develop key soft skills: helpfulness, courtesy, teamwork, problem solving, engagement, to name a few. Today, OpenStudy is a global extracurricular extraordinaire, experiential learning for the 21st century, with access for all.
SmartScore is OpenStudy’s bold new initiative to challenge the traditional notions of intelligence normally quantified by grades. SmartScore will report on skills and competencies demonstrated on our platform that are relevant and meaningful for both student and workplace success. SmartScore is a 21st century version of real world intelligence.
We are hacking education and rethinking evaluation and assessment. You can think of it as going beyond grades. We call it a SmartScore.
Join us for our SmartScore launch on April 17th at the Education Innovation Summit to learn more.
Got your SmartScore?
Trackbacks & Pingbacks
- 3 Start-Up Announcements From the Education Innovation Summit - Wired Campus - The Chronicle of Higher Education pingbacked Posted April 18, 2012, 10:45 pm
- 3 Start-Up Announcements From the Education Innovation Summit – – JavelinITwe have your solutions! pingbacked Posted April 28, 2012, 7:31 am
- 3 Start-Up Announcements From the Education Innovation Summit | red rabbit skills services | skills programme development and related services pingbacked Posted May 9, 2012, 2:34 pm
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Entries
Smartscore sounds like a really great idea. There is so much more to measuring intelligence than just the traditional formalized system of education.
Woho!!! Great initiative!! All the best!!! I am so excited.
Wow!!!That’s an awesome initiative. I’ll wait for this!!!!
PS: OpenStudy is the best
WHOOOOOOOOOOOO! Amazing openstudy! I didn’t think that it could get any better, but ir JUST did! Thank you so much!
That’s totally right, grades can never judge a person! I can’t describe how happy I am to read such an article by a like-minded person! You rock!
I’m sooo excited!
You guys are boss.
Perhaps you’d ought to make a high smartscore considerably harder to obtain, so the “hierarchy” in the group can be more easily spotted, basically if you got a answer from a high “level/rank” before you knew you could most likely rely on the answer whilst now it seems like almost everybody has a Smartscore near 90 region.
It would be a wonderful idea, but for it to be usefull as a refrence when searching for a job/academic education it has to be hard and take dedication to obtain.
Cool,
I like the continually changing things on the site, this is cool,
I hope Smart Score is well accepted by the student community.
Excellent! I think it’s a great idea! This site is so innovative. Now, instead of ranking in levels according to given medals, we use the smartscore – and I can see everyone has high smartscores! Awesome…
awesome!!!! Smartscore ^-^
Wow, it’s amazing. I hope a whole of the students, teachers, and lecturers join in here..!!! Two Thumbs for OpenStudy.!!!!!
Innovation for grades…it’s a smart way of scoring a student’s work…well done openstudy….
Its totally good
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One day whole world will join it:)
dear sir,
really opencourseware programme is a amzing fact for me because i belongs to village of india there has no facilities ialso wants a special english and frach language courses
I have been away far too long and am glad to be back. It’s great to have the opportunity to share what we learn over the years with folks of all ages, and Open Study gives us many of them, in spades.
Stu
Easy Credit evaluates the credit limit of people based on their income and past credit limits. Based on these inputs, calculations are performed to ascertain the credit worthiness of the customer. The following is a pseudocode that will help them to automate the system of checking the credit worthiness and then printing out the results so that Easy Credit’s manager can make a decision on the limit to be given to the customer:By Saturday, September 1, 2012, optimize the above pseudocode to make it more efficient. Submit it in a Microsoft Word document and post it to this W4: Assignment 2 Dropbox and explain why the pseudocode is now more efficient.
I need help
The following is a pseudocode that will help them to automate the system of checking the credit worthiness and then printing out the results so that Easy Credit’s manager can make a decision on the limit to be given to the customer:By Saturday, September 1, 2012, optimize the above pseudocode to make it more efficient. Submit it in a Microsoft Word document and post it to this W4: Assignment 2 Dropbox and explain why the
GOOD OF U OPENSTUDY I LOVE DIS AND I PROMISE TO BE VISITING HERE
I wonder how this technology could be used in high schools to engage students at a higher level than what we currently do. This system sounds like a real-life “game”/team environment where true supporting/helping can show as others have said, “softer” skills. It’s bringing what humans do best face-to-face, but in the online world. I look forward to what happens with me and this system and you
Sounds quite interesting, I certainly agree that engaged students are the best because of their ability to ‘give and take ‘
find this to be helpful keep up the good work.
this artical really courages
this artical really courage me thanks
so interesting, SMARTSCORE.thumps up for openStudy!
its so interesting
Its so interesting
While I agree test scores are somewhat archaic and don’t measure the exact ability of a student’s future success, I do feel they measure the caliber of a student’s ability to grasp concepts effectively in a relatively short period of time.
When under the gun, the real question is how do you perform with the knowledge stored in the memory bank. In the business world, real time data analysis and executing management decisions can be performed over a long period, but how effective is it?
Team work and knowing who/where the answers are located are important but if the average student doesn’t know where or who to ask, they may be asked to resign in a short period of time.
Excellent inititiative by openstudy
I totally agree that today’s evaluation system is very primitive. Students are learning for the sake of getting good marks only so they don’t question what they are taught because they think that won’t fetch them marks and this is exactly the reason why they lose their curiosity and ability to learn and think critically with an open mind. All they think about is about a good job and money money money.
When they study for getting GPA they won’t think outside the box and enjoy the beauty of education. I hate school because they actually just give us all the solutions and we just simply copy them in exams and toppers think they are genius. Schools don’t promote imagination and creativity which are required to solve any problem including the problems of physics too
“Imagination is more important than knowledge” – Albert Einstein
If getting excellent marks and GPA meant being genius and intelligent then every student who gets 100 % marks in maths or science would become mathematician or scientist, but that isn’t so.
Dipankar (student)
Curiosity and the desire to learn are divine
This site is amazing!!Grades don’t judge anyone and I am happy it doesn’t. This site is really helpful. I hope people start making more sites similar to this one.
This is a great Site! I hope learning very much about electrical enginnering