Visible Learning - Activating The Learner...

         Reflecting on the concept of Visible Learning has been a little bit of a conundrum for me. Overall, I understand the new to demonstrate to students that what they have learned has made a positive influence in their education. From being able to visibly see the result of their learning, they are then positively motivated on a scale of one to ten to keep learning. Even though Hettie himself said not to simplify his findings into numbers, I can see why it can be difficult not to. However, my problem does not stem from wanting to quantify his findings numerically, but on whether visible learning is possible on a larger scale. The ability to see progress varies from student to student. There were times I found myself more successful than my peers in a classroom despite the fact that they seemed to understand the material far better than I did. 

         During those times, I wondered if I had simply gamed the system: learned to exploit the material or was better at taking tests then them. Most of the time I finished with an A, but I did not feel any “smarter” than I did before. So my question is how do we implement the idea of visible learning so that everyone could have felt the same way as my friends did back in university? How do we make everyone feel that learning has positively benefited the student? Even more importantly, how do we know that Hettie’s data was not provided by apathetic students looking to make a quick dollar out of an academic survey? All cynicism aside, I do believe that broadening the positive feeling of learning for every student is the primary obstacle in making visible learning the “Holy Grail” it has been touted to be. After all, even I admit the times I felt that I learned something in class was when I felt the desire to actually learn more. 

         My own solution to the problem is simply to increase the amount of teacher/student interaction in the classroom. Visible learners ought to be spending more time with their teachers so they are better able to understand each other. But in a system that prioritizes results over method, it makes me wonder if that will be a possibility in the near future. It certainly makes me feel that visible learning is another lofty goal that is just out of reach, much like the Holy Grail itself.