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Leadership is the art of getting someone to do something because they want to do it, if I might steal from Eisenhower. As a college instructor, I've spent a of

by beej71 3y ago

Leadership is the art of getting someone to do something because they want to do it, if I might steal from Eisenhower. As a college instructor, I've spent a of time thinking about how to get students to not want to cheat versus detecting cheating. (I feel the latter is a losing game for me.) One online school I worked for initially had no grades, back in their early days. There was literally zero incentive to cheat. You had to do the hard work or you couldn't get a job, end of story. It was beautiful, and worked great. Where I work now requires grades, and I don't have handy job interviewers to act as my graduation gate. It's a struggle, for sure.

jfengel 3y ago
You had to do the hard work or you couldn't get a job, end of story. Sounds great, but I feel like there's a piece I'm not seeing there. Your school had a stable of interviewers who wanted specifically to work with your graduates? They effectively served as the ultimate graders, assessing how much your students learned? Presumably with your personal recommendation? That's awesome. I wish more places would hire based on an in-depth understanding of the candidate's capabilities. That's a hard skill, but potentially yields a lot of "bargains" by finding new people with potential but not demonstrable experience.
- beej71 3y ago
  It wasn't a stable of interviewers that the school had (though later we partnered with Triplebyte for a bit, IIRC)--it was just the real life interviewers we match-made with for our students looking for work. Trial by fire. The students were motivated to learn the material in part because they weren't competing against the school (e.g. for higher grades). They knew we were just a tool to help them learn good skills as rapidly as possible so they could get paid in a job as rapidly as possible. There was no concept of "I have to get good grades and that will translate to a good job". There were no grades. They had their eye on the interview and the skills, period.

by beej71 3y ago

jfengel 3y ago

You had to do the hard work or you couldn't get a job, end of story. Sounds great, but I feel like there's a piece I'm not seeing there. Your school had a stable of interviewers who wanted specifically to work with your graduates? They effectively served as the ultimate graders, assessing how much your students learned? Presumably with your personal recommendation? That's awesome. I wish more places would hire based on an in-depth understanding of the candidate's capabilities. That's a hard skill, but potentially yields a lot of "bargains" by finding new people with potential but not demonstrable experience.

beej71 3y ago
It wasn't a stable of interviewers that the school had (though later we partnered with Triplebyte for a bit, IIRC)--it was just the real life interviewers we match-made with for our students looking for work. Trial by fire. The students were motivated to learn the material in part because they weren't competing against the school (e.g. for higher grades). They knew we were just a tool to help them learn good skills as rapidly as possible so they could get paid in a job as rapidly as possible. There was no concept of "I have to get good grades and that will translate to a good job". There were no grades. They had their eye on the interview and the skills, period.