VOLUME 4 : NUMBER 05 : FEBRUARY 07, 1986

GEARING UP FOR EXPO 86
Do you have out of town friends or family coming to Expo?? Do they need a
house to rent?? Are any of us going out of town during Expo?? Would we be
willing to rent our houses to these visitors??
Maybe we could pool our information for mutual benefit!
I'd be willing to coordinate interested parties if this thing flies.
Peter Hopkinson, KEC, Local 567.

FROM DPC PARKING
The Downtown Parking Corporation ha's written us a letter regarding parking
rates during Expo, and notes the following:
"There's been so much erroneous and adverse publicity surrounding
projected parking rates for Expo that we want to assure you thatwe're not
anticipating any large increases.
D.P.C. rates, as you may or may not know, are established by Council based
on our recommendations to the parking engineer. Because we haven't had a
rate increase since April of 1983, and are facing increased costs for
taxes, security, labour, etc., we anticipate that there may be some minor
adjustments at some locations, but nothing to worry about.
Our philosophy - and that or our major competitors - is that we plan on

being in business long after Expo is gone. During the Expo crunch we will
want to protect our regular clientele so that together we can grow in the
post Expo period.

There's no doubt that parking will be very tight this coming summer and we
ask your indulgence in helping us help our lot managers and attendants.
They are the ones in the trenches who will be assaulted by anxious

strangers and probably blamed for parking deficiencies. Through it all
they'll be trying to protect the interests of you, their regular customers.
Please rest assured that we'll do our best to accommodate you at the most
reasonable cost we can afford. E.A. Keate

President & Managing Director

QUOTE OF THE WEEK
People who snore always fall asleep first!

mncouwn

COMMUNITY
Vancouver

Vocational Institute

MEASLES
Recently it has come to my attention that there have been two cases of
probable Red Measles at VVI and blood test verification of the disease will
not be available for two weeks.

With this in mind, the staff at the Vancouver Health Department, and the VVI
Health Services Department, feel it would be prudent for anyone under the age
of twenty-eight to review their immunization records to verify that they have
been properly immunized against Red Measles with live vaccine.
If there is any doubt about this, such individuals should check with their
family physicians or discuss the situation with the nurse, Pat Smith, or
myself.
Graham Burns, M.D.

Health Services

OOPS
A mistake was made in the publishing of the Train the Trainer scheduling last
week. Please note that the Course 1519, Evaluation of Learning, which was

shown as running from July 30 to July 4 should actually read as running from
June 30 to July 4. The course isn't really a year long, it is only 4 days Monday, June 30th, (Tuesday, July 1st is a holiday), and Wednesday, July 2nd
to Friday, July 4th.

WK
FIRE DRILLS
Fire drills for the VVI carnpus are to be held quarterly, and fire plans are
designed and fire drills are executed as a means of proper evacuation from a
building so that everyone's safety is assured. Safety for one another is
something we should all be concerned about.

Over the past month, new FIRE SAFETY PLANS for the VVI campus were
distributed. Please make sure that you are familiar with the contents of
these plans as everyone at the VVI is involved with them in some way.
To make sure that everyone is familiar with evacuation routes, report stations

and other matters relating to the evacuation of the building, there will be a
controlled drill sometime in late February. (You will be advised of the drill
ahead of time). Make sure that you know what it is you are do when you hear
an alarm. Also make sure that all students know what is expected from them.

People exiting from the building must do so in a manner that will assist in
keeping stairways and exit doors clear, and once outside the building everyone

must move past the sidewalk to be clear of falling glass should there be any.

GBC

LOST AND FOUND
Please ensure that any articles found within your area are immediately
forwarded to the security guard's office. We have had several problems
recently where the security guard has been asked for items that have been lost
and has had to answer that they had not been found. Much to his embarrassment
the "lost items" found their way to his office from another department about a
week later. For any clarification on the process of forwarding lost and found
items, please refer to Policy and Procedure 1.4.4.3.

RGS
WELCOME
A warm VVI welcome to Bonnie Craig who has been appointed to the position of
Coordinator I for the Dental Hygiene Program. Bonnie hails from UBC with
several years teaching experience in Dental Hygiene. The start date for this
two year program is September of this year.

MJB
THE CASE OF THE MISSING DISHES
We have a problem with wayward dishes wandering away from the cafeterial The
biggest problem is that employees appear to be aiding and abetting this
exodus. Please be reminded that dishes are not to be removed from the
cafeteria area and that the Security Guards are assigned to monitor the

situation. It is especially difficult for the Guards to control dish
absconding by students though when it is apparent that employees pay no
attention to the rules. A case in point - last week a Guard challenged an

instructor who was wandering off with a tray full of dishes and was pointedly
ignored - and this was in full view of a cafeteria full of students.

One inventive and adaptive department has solved this problem for themselves
in an ingenious way . . . they take their own plates to the cafeteria, have
their meal put onto their own dishes and proceed from there to where ever they

1 ike

RGS

"What's the slop du jour?1

tj (Tpv Published by the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Developmer
With support from the W K Kellogg Foundation and Sid W Richardson Foundation

TESTING: IN PRAISE OF AMBIGUITY
In April of 1972, I began my battle with ambiguity. Hired fresh out of graduate school, I walked into an
amphitheater which contained 200 students and launched into an exposition of the essence of anthropology
Teaching, I thought, was the clear, methodical, unambiguous delivery of ideas, learning was the assimilation of
ideas
I perceived the burden of clarity to be on the teacher. Students, I assumed, were like sponges—dry, empty,
their very cells eager and prepared to slurp up the moisture of knowledge. I stayed up every night writing and
rewriting lecture notes. Each day I followed the same format: present the principles, give examples, show
relationships with other principles. The students were eager; this was a time when interest in anthropology and
the social sciences in general was high.
Halfway through the semester, students asked when they were going to be given their mid-term exam. 1 had
forgotten about exams, but quickly wrote 20 essay questions which asked them to integrate various elements of
the course. "Compare and contrast alliance theory and descent theory. Give examples." "Describe and
critique five theories which explain the universal occurrence of a concept of incest in human societies." "What

are the possible evolutionary relationships between Australopithecus robustus in South Africa and Homo habihs in
East Africa?"
I had a graduate assistant to whom I entrusted the results of two hours of frantic scribbling. He called early
Sunday morning, voice bleary with lack of sleep. "I can't grade these things!" he finally blurted out. "Didn't I
give you a copy of the text?" I asked, with the pitilessness of an 18th-century encyclopedist who assumes all
knowledge can be contained within the covers of a book. He brought the pile of papers that morning,

relinquishing them with a gesture of distaste and relief. He also gave me the pages and pages of criteria he had
developed to grade the exams.

I came out of my own grading session greatly humbled. What was I looking for in the answers? How did I
weigh these various criteria? That night I slept restlessly. I dreamed of a vast map criss-crossed with roads,
over which a beacon of light danced. I awoke from the dream in great excitement. The map was knowledge;
the light was teaching; my function was to illuminate specific roads and cities. I had been too broad, too
ambiguous, casting light over huge regions, entire nations. I called my graduate assistant the next morning and
told him I had resolved the problem. I was going to develop less ambiguous questions, be more precise in
pinpointing the exact unit of information required for a correct response. He said he had just changed his major
to computer science.

Ten years later, I had reduced ambiguity by at least a factor of 10. I prepared study guides, like maps over
my dream landscape; I developed an enormous bank of questions (true-false, multiple choice, and identification),

keyed to the study guides, which could be graded by computer. I knew that this type of testing did not tap all
the functions of learning but perceived it to be primarily useful in introductory classes in which the main goal
was learning the names, dates, and concepts of a discipline. To give students practice m writing and creative,
analytical thinking, I developed the film essay (described in Vol VI, No 26 of Innovation Abstracts).
And then something happened to change my thinking about the "objective" tests I had developed Over the
years I was constantly refining my questions. Recognizing that many questions might still be ambiguous, 1
always allowed a discussion period after the exams had been graded if students gave a reasonable explanation
of why they had given a "wrong" response, I gave them credit tor it and used their input to rehne my
questions. Finally, it dawned on me that the most valuable aspect of my "objective" tests was the
opportunity—provided by ambiguous questions—for students to exercise their analytic and imaginative skills in
confronting and organizing knowledge. I then began to work directly toward planned ambiguity

. rules for planned ambiguity follow next issue.

Community College Leadership Program, The University of Texas at Austin, EDS 348, Austin, Texas 78712