Just wanted to add OCAD's first year course saga to the list. We had some
discussion of a first year course which was vetoed by the VP Academic and
certain English faculty.
This year we're attempting a six week workshop on writing about art and
design that will accompany the first year art history course. Since we
don't have enough money to provide the workshop for all 600 of our
incoming class, we're taking a writing sample from within the class in the
third week of classes. Students who do poorly on that assignment will
have to take the workshop.
Interesting, there have been some inquiries as to whether you can take
the workshop even if you do well on the writing sample. We're attempting
to bill the sample as the first assignment in the Art History course. The
writing prompt will be related to the topic of the course but wont require
content specific knowledge or jargon.
The testing is a huge absurd process which the institution seems to want,
no matter what information I give them about the failure of,or problems
with these sorts of tests. They don't seem to care that the cost takes
money away from the workshops that we could have mounted, etc. I'm
fascinated by different constitutent's longing for a test and the
delusions that they are under about the meaning of the results.
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