> What's with the obsession with student assessment over student learning
Surely you don't believe turning in someone else's work for an assignment counts as learning. At some level, we do need to know whether a student has learned the material. We assign homework because a) it's more efficient than lab assignments b) adult students grasp concepts best by doing. We grade them because we believe more students will do the work that leads to learning, because the students themselves want high grades (well, employers and scholarships do).
I'd be happy to see someone try to teach an intro to CS course in a US flagship state school with homework optional, and grades purely based on tests. Would that meet your definition of student learning?
Surely you don't believe turning in someone else's work for an assignment counts as learning. At some level, we do need to know whether a student has learned the material. We assign homework because a) it's more efficient than lab assignments b) adult students grasp concepts best by doing. We grade them because we believe more students will do the work that leads to learning, because the students themselves want high grades (well, employers and scholarships do).
I'd be happy to see someone try to teach an intro to CS course in a US flagship state school with homework optional, and grades purely based on tests. Would that meet your definition of student learning?