Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/59185
From Editors the Measuring Up Driver's license exams, Cosmo quizzes, Mensa questionnaires, Sudoku grids. Everywhere you look, there's another kind of test to measure your competence, assess your personality, or challenge your mind. Sometimes it seems as if the whole world wants to give you a score. The academic environment, of course, offers tests at every turn—admissions tests, midterms, final exams, and learning assessments. Unlike number puzzles and quizzes in magazines, these tests are serious, and seriously difficult, and sometimes even bright people fail to do well on them. One poor test-taker is psychologist Robert Sternberg, who describes his history in the book Practical Intelligence. He used to suffer from so much test anxiety that his grades dropped, he was labeled an average student, and he happily endured "life as a dum-dum" until an astute teacher realized his potential. Despite this early experience, however, Sternberg is a great believer in tests and their power to predict performance. As he explains in the article "Examining Intelligence," his goal is to broaden and supplement conventional admissions tests so that they measure practical and creative abilities in addition to raw analytical competence—and so that schools are able to identify the very best candi- dates for their programs. Students aren't the only ones being tested on an ongoing basis. Faculty must constantly be evaluated as well, although it's tricky to assess how much a professor contributes to the university. Don Osborn of the Ecole Supérieure du Commerce Extérieur, Pole Universitaire de Léonard de Vinci in Paris, has worked out a system to make the process simpler. In "The Faculty Scorecard," he presents a straightforward, easily adaptable tool that allows administrators to measure what professors bring to the classroom and how well they are carrying out the school's mission. Even those who perform magnificently on scorecards and admissions exams face social and ethical tests every day—in the workplace and in society. One such test that the business school community recently encountered was how to respond to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Students and faculty passed the exam with flying colors. They organized fund raisers, set up Web sites, and engaged in business competitions that would benefit small business owners wiped out by the storm. A few of those efforts are detailed in the "Headlines" section of this issue. The truth is, the world will always be rife with tests. Some will be administered by institutions wanting to gauge our brainpower. Some will be conducted by supervisors trying to measure our competence and skills. Some—like hurricanes and other disas- ters—will be offered completely at random, giving us no time to study in advance, and only our internal ratings systems will let us know if we've failed or if we've passed. Even people with test anxiety will have chances to ace those real-world exams. They're offered every day. s z 6 BizEd JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006