Edcamp

It was very interesting to learn about Edcamp in class last week, as Edcamp takes the aspects of active learning and inquiry into conferences. At Edcamp conferences, topics are chosen by participants, and voted on by participants, as opposed to topics being decided for the participants. In Edcamp sessions, people can have an unstructured participant-driven dialogue and share their individual expertise and insight with others. This concept allows a full spectrum of people in education to share ideas with each other.

In class, we did a pseudo-Edcamp conference, and I participated in a session regarding whether or not schools should consider moving from a grade system to a pass/fail system for marking. There was healthy debate-style dialogue from people with different opinions and backgrounds. A big pro of the gradeless pass/fail system is that students can feel value in their knowledge and achievements by “passing,” rather than feeling less value by comparing their percentage to those above them. However, an advantage of the grade system is the ease with which post-secondary institutions and programs can select candidates. It was thought-provoking to hear opinions from both sides of the argument, and understand the complexity of the decision at hand.