Three days of classes in the first week. No classes on Monday because of the Labour Day holiday, no classes on Tuesday because of First Year Orientation. I wonder if the loss of classes for all college students is worth whatever is gained in the one day set aside exclusively for First Year Orientation.

My professional development programme includes taking the Kolb self-evaluation test, twelve questions to determine my learning style. After having seen the test and accompanying booklet, it is clear to me the college's whole professional development programme is based on Kolb's work. I did a little research and discovered there is a long list of researchers and research that rejects Kolb's theory. The basis of the criticism seems to be 1) the observations are not repeatable 2) the theory was developed before the observations 3) the theory and observations do not result in predictions. In other words, 1) my test results today may not be my test results tomorrow, 2) my test results will have no effect on the theory behind the tests, 3) my test results as a learner do not predict how I will teach others. I am going to run some tests and do some of my own observations.

First I am going to check the validity of the questions by answering the questions with random numbers. I should be able to write a programme that will generate hundreds of test results fairly quickly. If the questions have no bias then random answers should generate completely balanced results. However I also need to keep focused on my work with students.