Summer Plans

My blogging will be hit or miss for the next month, as I take the kid to Germany to stay with the grandparents for a while. Before leaving, I have a book chapter to finish, which may consume most of my blogging time. I had thought I'd try to find an assessment director or equivalent at University of Cologne to interview about the Bologna process while I'm there. We'll see if that pans out.

I blogged a while back about the Dunning-Kruger Effect, and I'm still mulling it over The original paper is here, and a video for popular consumption can be found here. Some questions are:

• How does this affect the results of knowledge surveys?
• Given the findings, there seems to be an absolute characteristic of expertise. That is, at some critical point in knowledge level, one can accurately self-assess. What would allow us to predict what that level is ahead of time?
• Can we teach self-assessment as a skill separate from the domain of expertise?
  

Just thinking about the commute, it would be great if every driver were given a realistic assessment of his or her ability to negotiate the highways!