Hi all, I'm pretty new to CM, although I've been lurking around it for a while. I recently had a conversation with a snowflake about how to study for my basketweaving 211 course that I had to share. I doubt that it's really novel, but I needed to get it off my chest.
Zeke: So, tell me how you study for this course.
Snowflake: Well, I usually start studying a couple of days before the exam.
Zeke: No, I don't mean how you review for exams. Tell me what you do each day during the week.
Snowflake: Oh, I don't do anything.
Zeke: Really? So what do you do with your time?
Snowflake: I usually just watch YouTube.
Zeke (After counting to 11 because it's one more): Well, that won't work for basketweaving 211. Unless you want to flunk.
Much later, at Zeke's home...
Zeke's Offspring: Zeke, why do you drink so much?
Zeke: Because, I'm a professor.
I have discovered that the only way to get them to study every day is to assign written homework for each class session. It's a pain in the neck to grade all those assignments but at least this strategy makes sure that they do the readings for every class meeting.
ReplyDeleteI do something similar, but some of them still don't do anything.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Clarissa, weekly assignments, computer graded. Missed assignments decrease final letter grade some set amount (like B- to C+ for every four missed etc.)
ReplyDeleteIt sounds childish, but seems the only way to get them to keep up with the readings and lectures.
Some students definitely have an "if I'm coming to class (at least sometimes), I'm taking the class" mentality. As I've mentioned before, this is one of the things I like about online classes: the illusion is harder, if not impossible, to maintain.
ReplyDeletePresumably this mentality also explains the fact that those of us who teach classes where 85%+ of the course grade is determined by papers occasionally run into students who think there might possibly be a way to pass the class without writing the papers. Needless to say, there isn't.
It probably all boils down to the consumer mentality: "if I've registered and paid for the class, I deserve credit for it."
I find daily short reading quizzes has the same effect. It makes discussions much more productive, too, because I know they're being silent because they're shy, not because they haven't done the reading, so I can press harder.
ReplyDeleteWhat refreshing honesty!
ReplyDeleteZeke's Offspring: Zeke, why do you drink so much?
ReplyDeleteZeke: Because, I'm a professor.
Congratulations, Zeke, on distilling academic "life" into two sentences.
You think we can make YouTube less enticing by posting lectures and readings on there?
ReplyDelete@ Contemplative
ReplyDeleteI'll do it!
I hate reading quizzes, and my students love them. "It makes me keep up!"
ReplyDeleteLike that's my responsibility.
I had this conversation last academic year:
ReplyDeleteCan we have some review sessions to help us prepare for the exam?
No, I need the rest of the class sessions to cover topic X.
But, how will we prepare for the exam?
The weekly online assignments took you through each topic in the course, up until now.
But, we just guessed at the answers or copied.
I give daily reading quizzes, but I'm not sure that it does anything to increase the actual reading that students do. It does serve to lower their grades, though, if they don't read, so that's a plus.
ReplyDelete@Sultans - I'm pretty sure that's what a large contingent of students in my classes do too. It's always interesting to have questions on the exam that are almost identical to the online homework. I frequently see class averages in the 80's or 90's on HW, but down in the 50's or 60's for the "same" question on an exam. Naturally there are probably some other explanations, but I do think copying other's work is at least partly responsible.
ReplyDeleteThe one time I taught literature (so far), I gave reading quizzes. Random reading quizzes, usually two per week. The students bitched in my evals that it "wasn't fair" that the quizzes were "always" on Monday because that "didn't give [them] enough time to read."
ReplyDelete*headwall*
@Zymurgy -
ReplyDeleteThe homework questions are randomized, so guessing is likely more work than actually learning the material.
I do warn them that not doing the work themselves is likely to lead to failure and quote a study at MIT to them.
I think that they just like to feel that they have put one over on me.
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Prof. Pritchard and his colleagues illustrated the point in a study of cheating behavior by M.I.T. students who used an online system to complete homework. The students who were found to have copied the most answers from others started out with the same math and physics skills as their harder-working classmates. But by skipping the actual work in homework, they fell behind in understanding and became significantly more likely to fail.
From the NYT:
Cutting and Pasting: A Senior Thesis by (Insert Name)
By BRENT STAPLES
Published: July 12, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/opinion/13tue4.html?_r=1