{"id":447,"date":"2011-11-03T18:02:34","date_gmt":"2011-11-03T18:02:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncanning.net\/?p=447"},"modified":"2011-11-03T18:02:34","modified_gmt":"2011-11-03T18:02:34","slug":"discard-the-irrelevant-statistics-dont-bleed-but-our-students-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johncanning.net\/wp\/?p=447","title":{"rendered":"Discard the irrelevant: Statistics don\u2019t bleed, but our students do."},"content":{"rendered":"

I have written an new article for the LLAS blog (in a personal capacity).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Some rise by sin and others by virtue fall. William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Statistics are everywhere in education. We have the National Student Survey (NSS), the First Destinations Survey, newspaper league tables, and the Times World University rankings among others. Universities are now required to publish \u2018Key Information Sets<\/a>\u2019 (KIS) from 2012. The KIS has data from the NSS (the higher the agreeing percentages the better), the cost of university accommodation (presumably the lower the better), fees (the lower the better), graduate employment rates (the higher the better), percentage of assessment which is written exams (depends on the student) and number of \u2018contact\u2019 hours (again, depends on the student). In short if it can be measured the data is out there. And if it can\u2019t be measured, we\u2019ll find a way to measure it anyway, (research impact anyone?). Add to all this the information that students get from visit days, Facebook, twitter, the online student forums, friends and the phrase \u2018information overload\u2019 comes to mind. In his report Dimensions of Quality<\/a> Graham Gibbs warns us about that immeasurable factor, reputation, which can override any real measure of quality. I suspect that all this information only serves to make reputation all the more important.<\/div>\n

Read the full article on the\u00a0 LLAS news blog<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n