\/-w- ^ ¦

VOLUME 4 : NUMBER 06 : FEBRUARY 21, 1986

BROTHER CAN YOU SPA

LIIThahy

KING EDWARD lassoed a Mustang
' u>

and made hay from Ain't Misbehavin.
LANGARA ate up the profits from 2 for 1 dinners

and theatre too'.

Now it's VVI'S turn to lead the search for the elusive

, to help needy

VVI students obtain an education.

The VVI Fund Raising committee is looking for ideas to raise money. If you
have any, please call Joe Brown 303, Dana Fister 439, or Jackie Sandy 216.
This committee is not proud; it will accept any (legal) ideas1

JS

CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD
At its February 19th meeting, the College Board elected Mrs. E. Jarvis as
Chairman of the Board, and Ms. C. Miller as Vice-Chairman for 1986. The Board
also moved to retain, for the time being, the current memberships of the
Board's standing committees: the Administration Committee, the Education and
Students Services Committee, and the Personnel and Staff Services Committee.

MORE COURSES
VVI has applied for a C.E.I.C. funded class of the Nursing Aide program

for the period from March to July of 1986.
VVI has also signed a contract for $12,000 to develop the "Automating the
Office Telecourse" program for the Telecollege consortium.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK
A real friend is someone who takes a winter vacation on a sundrenched beach
and doesn't send a cardl

VAncouvm

COMMUNITY
COLLEGE
Vancouver

Vocational Institute

TIME IS RUNNING OUT
The sale of tickets on the Mustang has reached $11,000 and if you haven't
bought your ticket yet now is the time to do so. You can't win without a
ticket', t

INSTRUCTOR DIPLOMA PROGRAM
The College Board approved a joint VVI and Oil proposal to offer the
Instructor Diploma program which is no longer available through UBC. The
proposal suggests a combination of correspondence and face-to-face

instructional delivery of the standard I.D. 101-104 courses by VVI and OLI.
The proposal, an excellent one developed by Brian Dwyer, has gone to the
Ministry which is receiving alternate proposals from other institutions as
well. A decision by the Ministry is expected soon.

HWR
HERITAGE BUILDING RESTORATION PROJECT
The Board approved the VVI Local Economic Renewal and Development (LERD)
Project to upgrade carpenters in the skills required for the restoration of
heritage buildings. The project is worth $100,000 over the next year and a
half. The project proposal was the excellent work of Mr. A.W. Griffiths and
others at the VVI.

HWR

AS FAR AWAY AS NEW BRUNSWICK
Counselling receives many interesting requests and queries . . . one of them

is this letter from C.B. in Dieppe N.B
"To whom it may concern,

As an 8th grade student in New Brunswick, I feel the responsibility to
inform myself about my futur. At 13 years of age, I like to make people
smile, laugh & feel wanted. Also, I would appeciate it for you to send me
that information about an "actress". My main interests & goals is to make

it to television. I thank you very much for your time & hope to see you
in the futur.
Sincerly yours, C.B."

So tell us Counselling, how did we reply to C.B.?

CONGRATULATIONS KARL
Karl Gregg of the Program Development Department has been officially appointed
to the M.O.E. Provincial Advisory Committee on computer technology. The main

task of this group will be to assist the Ministry in preparing a discussion
paper that will identify the current and potential issues facing the
post-secondary system, as various aspects of computer technology are adoptedin instructional environments.

**TAKE SPECIAL NOTE**
Effective immediately, the outgoing mail will be picked up at 11:30 am only.
Be sure to have your mail in the mailroom before 11:30 if it must be routed
that same day1.'.

LG
INSTITUTIONAL EVALUATION UPDATE
The Institutional Evaluation Steering Committee for VCC has spent eight months
in its task of appraising and evaluating our College system, and recently the
Steering Committee met with the Chairmen of the sub-committees to review the
final reports. The reports were based on surveys and extensive interviews,
and reflected a great amount of dedication, work, time and enthusiasm on the
part of all committee chairmen and members.

Once the review of the final reports has taken place, an extensive public
circulation of the draft will take place in April and May, encompassing open
forums and providing further opportunities for input from anyone in the
College Community.
It is expected that the complete report will be available to the External
Audit Team, selected by the B.C. Institutional Evaluation Steering Committee
of the Council of Principals, sometime Tn August.

HWR
LIBRARY NEWS
EXPO INFORMATION MANUAL
The EXPO '86 Information Manual is here'. The VVI Library carries a
subscription to this manual which, with regular updates, provides up to
date information on all pavilions, participants, exhibits, entertainment,

special events and programs of EXPO '86. It is available for your use in
the library — ask at the circulation counter.

TUESDAY FILMS - 12:00 NOON
March 4 ... SEE YOU IN THE FUNNY PAPERS
This documentary is a personal profile of Lynn Johnston, the witty,
articulate Canadian cartoonist who has captured a large and devoted
audience with her internationally syndicated comic strip "For Better or
for Worse". She talks of her career and of juggling fame and fortune with
her role as wife and mother. The film affords a glimpse of the real lives
that feed the comic strip - before they hit the funny papers.
March 11 . . .THEY CALLED ME STUPID
Dyslexia is a learning disability that affects language skills. When
children with this problem struggle and fail to learn to read and write,
few teachers and even fewer parents recognize what's wrong. The
"electronic ear", devised by Dr. Alfred Tomatis, is being used in a

Montessori School in Toronto, and is shown in this film to help children
to overcome this frustrating and perplexing problem,

and EYE
Inwardly, eyes may be the windows of the soul, but when the gaze is
directed outward, they become much more than organs for perceiving the
world around - they become also an instrument of involvement in all of

life's drama. In this highly imaginative animation film, one disebmodied
eye embarks on life's adventures.

NEW A/V MATERIALS
The National Nutrition Quiz PKU, Preventable Mental Retardation
College Algebra, Level 1 Living French
Hanging Doors Plane Geometry

and as promised, the conclusion of TESTING: IN PRAISE OF AMBIGUITY.

^Tlanned ambiguity is a technique that has to be learned by students. The following is a simphhed modus

^(l^Design a text study guide which requires students to make an active hunt tor specitic units ot information
and which leads them, like a road map, across dithcult teirain. _ .
(2) Design questions that tap this detailed knowledge My favorite form is a multiple true-talse question—
e g , "Which of the following is/are correct7"—that is followed by five statements
(3) Make some or all of your questions "window" questions—i.e., purposefully open to alternative
interpretations. For example:

Which of the following is/are true about Australopitheais afncamis?
a. Raymond Dart said it was a hommid.
b. Raymond Dart said it was a transitional ape, not yet human
c. W. Le Gros Clark said it was a hominid.
d. a, b and c
e. b and c

The ambiguity of the question stems from the history of the use and significance of the term "hominid" in
defining what it means to be human. When Dart found A africamis in the 1920's, the Neo-Latin term Hommuiae
was available in terminological literature to describe closely related primates, but it had not taken on its modern
emphasis on bipedahsm. When Dart wrote, paleontologists assumed that for an early fossil to be considered
human, it had to have a large brain, even though other aspects of its anatomy were primitive. The Piltdown
Hoax had a large cranium and ape-like jaw and was widely accepted until the 50's as the predicted transitional
form. A. africamis had too small a brain and was frequently interpreted as an infant chimpanzee whose skull
had not yet taken on the more massive contours of ape adulthood. What was puzzling about the post-cranial
remains of A. africamis was the clear evidence of bipedahsm The ilium of the pelvic inominates was broad and
flared, almost like that of modern humans A small-brained, bipedal creature was the reverse of the largebrained, skeletally ape-like creature which was the accepted model of early man. The same problem was
confronted in the 1930's and 40's with Homo erectus of Java and China Franz Weidenreich, who succeeded
Davidson Black as director of the site of Choukoutien, was an expert on the characteristics of the pelvis and foot
which make upright posture possible His classic studies of Peking Man supported Black's contention that
Peking Man was a primitive human, not a transitional ape, because he walked upright.
Technically, then, the answer to the multiple-choice question is "e." When W. Le Gros Clark called A.
africanus a hominid, he was using the modern label by which early forms are now recognized as being capable of
entering the human cultural niche and was expressing the modern emphasis on bipedahsm vs a large brain.
Dart called A. africanus a transitional ape ("pithecus") because at that time a large brain was considered more
definitive of humanness than was bipedalism. If during discussion of the exam a student defends the answer

"d" by recapitulating the history of the development of the concept of "hominid" and by stressing that Dart
emphasized the position of the foramen magnum (the "big hole" through which the spinal cord enters the
cranium) as demonstrating that A. africanus was bipedal, I give him full credit.
Why not just give an essay question on the evolution of the concept of hominid? Other teachers may find
essays more useful and reliable. I have found that when students have to struggle and fight for a point, they
are more likely to grasp the significance of an idea. An active confrontation of chaos makes cosmos more likely.
Also, this technique tends to make them more self-conscious about their thinking process I tell the students
that my purpose is not to trip them up with tricky questions; but to get them to examine the logical steps in
their reasoning by which they arrive at an answer. I reward them for dealing actively with ambiguity. I could
legitimately mark a "d" response wrong, but I would lose the opportunity to use the review of the test as an
added teaching device And once the students realize that the test review is a forum for display of logical
reasoning and mobilization of knowledge, they attack the tests themselves in a more relaxed, imaginative frame

of mind The discussions which follow are challenging and awe-inspiring in their display of applied knowledge
I accept only certain types of argument, and all arguments must be based on specific knowlege, not
hypothetical could-haves In other words, I am not promoting a relaxation of educational standards or an
individualistic definition of reality I want to stimulate imagination without relaxing standards. I believe it is
important, and possible, to teach the responsible use of the imagination
Susan Parman

Rancho Santiago College
For further information, contact the author at Rancho Santiago College, 17th at Bristol, Santa Ana, CA 92670