| Dear Colleagues: Apologies for any cross posting. Below please find the text of an open letter to the VPA, Jon Driver, and the President, Andrew Petter, in response to the recent report of the Learning Outcomes and Assessment Working Group (aka the LOAWG) that Carolyn Lesjak and I, Christopher Pavsek, have drafted in collaboration with several other faculty at SFU. We have kept it short and to the point. We are hoping that others at SFU who are opposed to the implementation of a Learning Outcomes and Assessment framework will join us in signing this letter. If you wish to sign this letter, please reply to Christopher Pavsek at cpavsek@sfu.ca; please indicate your name, title, and departmental/school or other affiliation at SFU and your name will be added to the signature list. The letter will be submitted electronically and in hard copy to the VPA and President on Friday, in time for the deadline for replying to the LOAWG report. Please note: we feel that it is urgent to submit individual replies to the report as well. We do not think that this letter should replace individual or other collective responses to the report. To see the report, please go to this link: http://www.sfu.ca/vpacademic/committees_taskforces/LOAWG/reportloa.html Responses to the report should be sent to the following email address not later than this Friday, December 7, as per recent instructions from the VPA's office: ucilsec@sfu.ca TEXT OF THE LETTER: An open letter to Andrew Petter, President, and Jon Driver, Vice President Academic. Dear President Petter and Vice President Driver: We the undersigned oppose the initiative to create a learning outcomes and assessment (LOA) framework at Simon Fraser University. Based on the report of the Learning Outcomes and Assessment Working Group of October 29, 2012, we see no compelling evidence that such a framework is needed. We also see no compelling evidence that such a framework would be beneficial to the students at SFU. In fact, there is much to convince us that an LOA framework will be detrimental to our curricula and that the implemention and administration of LOAs will be an unnecessary and heavy burden for faculty. Furthermore, we believe that the basic principles of learning outcomes is contrary to the development of the sort of rich and diverse pedagogies that should be the basis of an excellent university education.
END OF LETTER. Thank you very much for your time. Christopher Pavsek Associate Professor of Film SFU Contemporary Arts Simon Fraser University 149 West Hastings Street Vancouver, BC V6B 1H4 Canada 778 782 4672 cpavsek@sfu.ca |