A bit of flava:
There’s nothing new in complaining that students aren’t as good as they used to be, and so it’s easy to dismiss such complaints. But I happened to use a grading scheme that delivered hard facts. In assigning course grades, during-the-semester quizzes and final-exam scores were differently weighted depending on which was higher; so I was constantly comparing the two. When I began this in 1986 (having returned to teaching freshman chemistry after 8 years as an administrator), I thought I might have to change the practice, because most of the students were “acing” the final – as of course they should have done, the questions on the final being on the same material and the same type of multiple-choice question as on the quizzes. But then I began to see a progressive decline in the number of students doing better on the final, and the number of students who failed the course increased in startling fashion.Read the whole thing.
I offer this as indisputable evidence that students are now less willing or less able to study, to learn what quizzes have shown them they don’t yet know, to review the material systematically for the final examination at the end of the semester – what I had all my life thought was the commonly understood, taught, and practiced way of learning.
Wow.
ReplyDeleteAs I read the data, I realized that this prof is talking about my generation (X) coming in and loafing its way through his classes...and that it's only gotten worse with the Millenials.
I'm staring in the face the prospect that in the fall of 2013, I will start getting students who did not have textbooks--they had e-texts. So in preparation, I'm designing a longitudinal study (with considerable help, as I'm in the humanities) about what impact this will have on student engagement, grades, and retention. Next year (2012) will be the baseline data-gathering.
Thanks for sharing this.
Yes, thanks. I went to college in 1985, and while there were certainly slackers, they were not insolent about it, nor did they demand good grades for nothing. I think that's the key difference.
ReplyDeleteI'm teaching a class that I have not taught for 8 years. Among the differences: students e-mailing me to "explain the assignment" when I had done so multiple times in class and offered office hour time. Students who -- if their papers are any evidence -- simply cannot read the prompt instructions, or don't think it is necessary. Papers delivered to me with huge amounts of white space between paragraphs. Quarrels over the application of late penalties clearly spelled out in the syllabus. Papers showing the inability to do anything but summarize the plot of a literary work.
And yes, bimodal grading. I still have "A" and even "A+" students. But I have more "D" and "F" students than ever before, and not too much in between. And of course, I have to give "B" grades to what is "C" work to my eye, and "C" grades t what should be a "D." Even with that attempt to fill out the middle, the dreadful middle, it's striking.
I'm so with you, F&T.
DeleteI just worked my way through 15 lit papers yesterday--papers that summarized when I asked for analysis; papers that focused on one work to the exclusion of the other they were to connect it to; papers that didn't follow MLA format, despite my having physically handed them a handout from UW-Madison's online handbook on writing critical reviews and using MLA style; papers that came in at less than the 6-page minimum.
Out of the 21 handed in, there were no As; two were A-. A few in the B range, and a bunch of Cs and Ds. I know that a bunch of them waited until the last minute despite the fact that I'd given them 2 weeks to write it. I know this because several came in to see me the day before it was due with only a few paragraphs done.
I have decided that I will do what my next-door office neighbor does: She refuses to provide any assistance the day before an assignment is due--her assignments clearly state that if students want help, they have to make an appointment a minimum of 3 days before the paper is due. So far, she says, this helps the ones who really care and are trying, and it completely cuts out the piles of crap she was formerly dealing with when they came to her with 3 paragraphs of a 5-page essay the afternoon before the thing was due.
I do this, too. I schedule one-on-one conferences to end two days before the paper is due, so that way, they have to get going way ahead of the due date. It also allows me time to re-schedule ESL students to return when they need extra help, or call the Writing Lab to set up additional tutoring.
DeleteThat said, I also require conferences and sit through hours of them with individual students, so it's labor intensive. It also means that I scaffold everything for them (i.e. topic due and approved, some sort of outline due and approved, a first draft due at a certain time and glanced through, then final draft that I conference with them over, and then their ULTIMATE final draft). By that point, I usually have 2-3 A papers, 4-6 B papers, and the rest are Cs or Ds or even, occasionally, an F. But even with all of that, the papers are still pretty dismal.
I'm guessing that if I didn't conference with them, I'd have no A papers and all C, D, and F papers with long summaries and very little analysis.
Ohhh, genius! I wonder if I can get away with this!
ReplyDelete