That said, I went back through 5 years' worth of grades in my LMS. This semester's average grade is the lowest I've had since I started keeping track of grades in the LMS.
There is a -4% difference from last semester (Fall '11) to this semester. Fall '11 was a -4.5% change from Spring '11. This semester has the highest number of Fs (7/44), or 16% of students who were still enrolled past the drop date. Because a passing grade for this course (for credit towards the degree/transfer) is a C, the number of students with a C-, D+, or D must also be factored in. That brings us to 10/44 who did not earn a C, or 22.7% of my students.
This course is not rocket science. It is not hard to pass with a C--I do not go out of my way to flunk them. They are flunking themselves.
And I'm damned if I know why. Why the rate has jumped. Why the level of disengagement I am dealing with seems to have doubled.
Please understand, my students (many of them) are first-generation. Many of them come to us from the bottom quartile of the graduating high school class. Many of them didn't even think they'd be going to college, until they looked around in the "real world" and realized that their job prospects (around here) involved fast food, hotel service, or gas station attendant. Not that there's anything wrong with those jobs. Just that many of them thought "I don't want to be 40 and working at the KwikTrip." So they came to college.
They came underprepared. They are underserved by NCLB, but some of the blame also lies with them. They do not engage in their high school classes (and in no way, shape, or form am I blaming high school teachers--I have seen their jobs, and I wouldn't want them). So even when their high school teachers are teaching what they'd need to succeed in college, they're not listening. They are checked out, but they pass anyway. They have deadlines, but they can still turn stuff in late for partial credit. They can sit a test, get a "0" and take it again.
Then they come here, to our open admissions institution (which by the way does not mean that we have no standards--a lot of our students need the remediation that EMH seems to think we should just get rid of). Many of my students this semester had tested into the course below the one I teach; they took that course, and managed to pass. Then they sit in my classes, and they take NOTHING from them. And before anyone yells at me that maybe they have other stuff going on in their lives that makes it hard to do their work, I would like to point out that I know this.
However, I think that that's basically a bullshit excuse. Last semester (the semester where 5/45 students failed because they didn't turn in work), I had a student turn in work from his hospital bed even though I told him that I would allow an Incomplete--that Incompletes are made for his sort of situation. He wanted to do the work. The most memorable case to date was a student whose 5 year-old daughter had had 48 brain surgeries since her birth. This student came to class, then drove to the children's hospital an hour and a half away when her child suddenly started having seizures again. I told her to take an incomplete--she refused. She drove back and forth to go to her classes. She did the best work she could under the circumstances, and earned a B in my class. I think of those students when I hear the bullshit coming from students about life being hard and I should cut them some slack.
The students I had this semester were not new first-years. They'd already been through at least one semester, so it's not like they could claim that they didn't know what a college class was like.
Yet they do.
Time and again, I get reflective letters that say "I knew college would be hard, but I didn't know how hard. And this class was harder than others because you had deadlines that we had to meet and I couldn't just turn stuff in whenever I wanted and still get credit."
Like Hiram, I am baffled.
What happened?
Is anybody else seeing this sort of a drop-off? I mean, besides me and Mike Judge?
/Chrome out
There are those once-in-a-blue-moon semesters when everything goes according to Hoyle and there are those semesters when the turnip truck backs up over the load it dropped and spins its tires. From what I've seen and heard over the years these things just cycle that way.
ReplyDeleteThis too shall pass. Or not. And then repeat the course again, perhaps with a better result. Or not.
They can get the remediation at adult night-school.
ReplyDeleteJust watched the video. LMAO'd at the hepatitis IQ test.
ReplyDeleteHow about a step forward, instead of stepping back?
If we continue to provide that remediation at the CC's, instead of moving forward with other things, then our society is going to continue to collapse into an idiocracy.
I mean, we have to pull the plug at some point unless people actually ENJOY teaching these classes.
I haven't gone back and done the math (and am equally unqualified to do so in any sophisticated way), but I think I'm seeing a small but steady uptick in the number of students who fail by just.not.doing.the.work (and in some cases, enrolling but never showing up at all, or soon ceasing to do so, but not dropping/withdrawing). My class is a writing class, there are no exams and few smaller credit-earning activities which one can b.s. one's way through, and showing up to class without doing any work would mean, many weeks, facing group members annoyed at the student's failure to do any work toward an ongoing group project. A few manage to contribute minimally to the group project, but fail to complete even the first stage of the big, carefully-scaffolded, semester-long individual research-based paper/project.
ReplyDeleteI'm torn. In some ways, it seems to me to be a good thing that I've created a syllabus that requires students to be engaged if they're going to come to class at all. But the slowly but steadily rising number of "stopped attending"s that I'm entering at the earliest opportunity at the end of each semester is a bit discouraging (and retention is beginning to be a buzzword on my campus, as at many others).
Oh my heavens yes...retention!
DeleteMost of the Fs (all of them) are "stopped attending" or "showed up but never turned anything in".
And I talk to our Student Services director, and the Associate Dean, and it's all "up with people" but I am frankly at a loss. What more can I do? (I didn't point out above because it sounds like bragging, but I got nominated for a student-sponsored teaching award this year...I'm a good teacher, and many of them get what I'm laying down...but the number that isn't getting it is going up, and I don't know what else to do.)
I sent out "early warning" of failing grade forms for ALL of the students in danger of not passing with a C. It made NOT A JOT of difference--waste of time.
I'm just frustrated right now. It will pass.
I posted elsewhere about the unbelievably low marks I entered this term: 5, 3, 1, and 0. Yes, out of a possible 100%. These were students who enrolled in the course and the tutorials, but then disappeared. Those grades don't include the guy who only showed up for the midterm and final exams (max. 40% of the final grade). Another student I wrote about, who wanted his mark "bumped up" a couple of percent to make the cut-off average didn't bother to submit a couple of assignments -- and opted not to take advantage of available bonus marks.
ReplyDeleteBecause I teach in a biz skule, and it's a big class, I don't go out of my way to remind the students that they need to submit work, attend class, write exams, and so forth if they wish to earn grades. (However, our College office *does* send out emails to students reminding them about drop deadlines.)
I was a crap undergraduate, writing most of my papers in the weeks between the end of classes and the beginning of finals. (Many of those paper remain unclaimed to this day!) However, I never pulled a disappearing act.
I've only been teaching for a couple of years, but a record number of students failed my class this semester, most of them for just not meeting standards. A few failed for not showing up and/or not turning in work, but most of them just wouldn't put in the time and effort necessary for passing the class.
ReplyDeleteI started teaching in 2000. I taught at the same school until 2007. I taught a variety of courses, but the writing quality of the students dropped in that time. Their ability to pay attention and take notes disappeared wholesale. The quality of the students at that school dropped as the school bragged about rising SAT scores!
ReplyDeleteThis has been a long time coming. Some of us saw it years ago. It is both comforting and saddening to see it spoken of so often here.
The quality of the students at that school dropped as the school bragged about rising SAT scores
DeleteYes. In the past few years that I've been a grad student, the average ACT score among undergrads at my school has soared something ridiculous--now clocking in at an unfathomable 29.5 or something (I say unfathomable because I read these students' papers). Our admissions rating is the most selective it's ever been. We're on our way to becoming a public Ivy!
Until you realize how the admissions process actually works. Sure, it's difficult to gain admission as a fall semester freshman--but if you log some hours over at the community college and apply undecided, you are admitted, no questions asked. Half our transfer students don't have a 3.0 at community college. A percentage of those students don't have a 2.0. Best part is that the university never has to report those pesky 19 ACTs and 1.7 GPAs to USNWR.
Only 10/44? Lucky you, I'm thinking. In one of my classes this semester, 15/22 failed. Some of them even showed up consistently up to the last day of class - they just never turned in any of the work! It's one thing to stop coming to class, but this? I'm totally hiramed. Of course, I work at a CC, where the usual pass/fail ratio for writing classes is about 50/50. (I think that class was abnormally bad, too. In my other identical section, only 9/23 failed.)
ReplyDeleteIt was a strange semester, actually. I used a new, harder book (I'm always changing it up, which is not good for me, really) and amped up the difficulty of the essay assignments. But I was also nicer and more laid-back during class, and because I was just going to grade their portfolios at the end of the semester, I only gave comments on essays that students turned in, and no grades. So students kept showing up, because they thought I was nice. I had attendance far above normal at the end of the semester. But many fewer students actually turned in work.
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ReplyDeleteMy solution: shoot the stupidest students, or just give them to me.
ReplyDeleteMy labor camp system needs ditchdiggers.
YES to the dropoff in the past 5 years. I am teaching a course I have not taught since 2004 and the difference in writing skills (same exact assignments) is unbelievable.
ReplyDeleteHiramed. Hiramed! I love it! Please to add to the glossary and I promise I will use it.
What we can expect from our students has been in decline since the '60s. Henry Bauer documented a decline fairly well in the '90s, here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bus.lsu.edu/accounting/faculty/lcrumbley/study.htm
I can't document it since I change my exams, but I think there's been a sharp dropoff in the past five years, too. I can think of several causes peculiar to the most recent years: NCLB, the rise of social media such as Facebook, and especially the rise of smartphones, which have made text messaging so much easier.
I can spot an open laptop computer in class. I can't always spot a student texting. They've become quite proficient at hiding it in their laps, particularly in large classrooms. And so MANY of them do it! I feel like Hercules against the Hydra: cut off one head, and two grow back in its place.
RE Students texting--I tell them that if I look out and they're looking down at their hands moving in their laps and smiling, they'd better be texting.
DeleteAnother version is that if I see your lap glowing in the dark, you'd better be the Second Coming of Jesus Christ Himself, or you're OUT.
I've modified my stance slightly on motivating students vis a vis what I call the Israeli method.
ReplyDeleteAfter high school, mandatory military service for two years, in a non-combat specialty unless the individual requests it. The individual is exempt from this with a 3.5 GPA or better. If it's 3.4, too bad. Should've tried harder.
After two years of dealing with people with standards, who don't negotiate, and to whom there are only results or excuses, I think students might have a better appreciation for their professors' time.
If they need further motivation, they go to Strelnikov.