John McLaughlin

Can we have interviews?

Can we talk about their life experiences?

Can we add things that go beyond a simple grade or a simple multiple choice midterm in a classroom?

It's a controlled environment.

What have they done in their lives and how can we use that to help support them?

I think that's a fair way to put it.

I think we can do things like drop the lowest grade and we need to work with those students that really want to get better.

Allow people to take a similar idea of a test again, not the same test, but understand, can I show that I got better at this over time?

If they've done something poorly at the beginning of the semester, but they show they're really good at the end of the semester, what are we more concerned with, that they did poor at the beginning or that they know how to do it at the end?

So can we assess their ability to do something as opposed to their path to get there?

Oh, yeah.

I tell my students I was a disaster in first year and that's fine.

And eventually, you know, you work your way through this nonlinear path of getting to where you are today and you're happy.

Understanding it's not the end of the world is important to them.

But at the same time, the university and like the province and the country and both countries need to start explaining to students that, sure, the path isn't over just because you had one minor blip.

Yeah, I do the same thing.

I never look at people's grades when they say, do you want to do a master's?

Do you want to do a project?

It's the last question I ask them.

I just sit and chat with them about what they want to do.