Employment Question. What Would You Do?

[Bootsie]

1 minute ago, regentrude said:

Me neither.

But it is important to look at the actual numbers and not go by the students' perception. I had multiple conversations with students over the years who were under the wrong impression that only a small portion of students ever pass my class. In reality, my pass rate (C or better) is 80%.

Yes: I have had situations where the average on an exam is 78-80% and students complain that "most of the class failed the exam".  

[Murphy101]

14 minutes ago, jdahlquist said:

For state schools, these requirements are often set by a governing body far removed from the professor, the department, or even the college.  I worked in a state in which there was pressure to increase college pass rates, similar to OP, and this was exacerbated by the fact that we had to accept all high school graduates and could not require remedial work, because it would increase time to graduation.  The state legislature found that students who didn't take remedial work, made As and Bs, and didn't drop classes graduated on time and got jobs.  So, the solution was not dealing with why students needed remedial work, why students failed, and why students dropped classes.  Instead, they thought if you just gave the poorer students As and Bs and penalized faculty when they dropped, then those students would be as successful as the good students.  

 

And  I think that’s both messed up and yet...

hmmm...

Is there any study showing if they were as successful? Is literally having the gatekeeping piece of paper a bigger factor than we think? Because while it shouldn’t be, I think we should look at whether it is and what that might mean about our employment/economic system.

[ktgrok]

2 hours ago, Murphy101 said:

 

Me too. I get the outrage and would have shared it at one point. But 6 years of having kids/spouse being in classes or being in them myself lately as dramatically tempered my outrage meter. 

I’ve just seen too dadblum many bad classes/profs who think failing students over stupid crap is some kind of ego boost for themselves.  While we talk on here about being devoted to doing what it takes to impart learning to students, the reality is many professors don’t care and many professors seem to think that if only 10% of their class passes, it somehow means they must have taught a rigorous class. No. It just means they didn’t teach anything to 90% of their class. 

I’m now of the stance that if the student is truly ready for the content and is putting in the effort, they should be learning it if that’s the case and they should be passing. If they aren’t ready for the class? If they aren’t doing the work? Okay. Of course they likely can’t and shouldn’t pass. But then, I’d argue they shouldn’t have been allowed to take the class to begin with either. 

And keep in mind that all my kids/dh are A/B students, excepting a random semester for each of them. If this is how we feel about it, I imagine that view gets stronger the worse the grades are. We have developed a fine tuned crap teacher radar to know when to drop within the first couple days, but sometimes a class can’t be dropped.  And wow do those classes make a semester and GPA tank.  

And there are a LOT of colleges that know damn good and well all those thousands of dollars students are racking up in debt to attend are likely students that won’t make it to sophomore. But it’s free easy money for the school. I don’t think it should be. If they know the students are likely going to fail, their should be some burden on them to either not take the student or meet the student needs for success at their college. 

My organic chemistry professor was like this. He was not...quite right. He wore one glove. He told us that it was best to learn organic chemistry in a particular order, but he'd gotten bored doing that, so he was going to just skip around to whatever he felt like talking about each day. He also tested on several more chapters of material than was done in any other section under any other professor, and decided it would be fun to have students memorize a bunch of stuff on top of that, while also trying to teach themselves organic chemistry because his lectures were insane. He had tenure though, so nothing to be done about it. Nowadays rate my professor websites would have at least warned me. 

1 hour ago, regentrude said:

and how would "allowed" be accomplished? The only preequisite for introductory biology or chemistry is a high school education. What's the college supposed to do to decide who is "allowed" into the class?

We already have placement tests for math and english, we could add a science one. 

[regentrude]

5 minutes ago, Ktgrok said:

We already have placement tests for math and english, we could add a science one. 

But you don't need any science prerequisite to succeed in introductory college science classes . They are taught from scratch. You need to be literate, have mastery of 9th grade level math, and be willing to do the work. There's nothing to placement-test. 

[EmseB]

18 minutes ago, regentrude said:

But you don't need any science prerequisite to succeed in introductory college science classes . They are taught from scratch. You need to be literate, have mastery of 9th grade level math, and be willing to do the work. There's nothing to placement-test. 

I was going to say that a certain score on the math placement exam might be a good requirement for college science courses, or a completion of college algebra.

I'm surprised it isn't a requirement actually. Placement exams were required at my community college, of course that was almost 20 years ago. But you'd be put into 000 level courses if you couldn't pass the placement exam for writing comp or math. I thought the math test applied to science courses as well, but maybe not.

[Murphy101]

24 minutes ago, regentrude said:

But you don't need any science prerequisite to succeed in introductory college science classes . They are taught from scratch. You need to be literate, have mastery of 9th grade level math, and be willing to do the work. There's nothing to placement-test. 

 

Are you saying we can’t placement test for literacy and 9th grade level math (Whatever that means? Betcha it isn’t what’s taught in most 9th grade classes here.) 

Because  I think we can place for that. In fact, I’d bet the means to do so is already available and the colleges are simply not using it. Because they would end up turning away thousands of $$ if they turned away that many students. 

Edited October 30, 2018 by Murphy101

[Murphy101]

3 minutes ago, EmseB said:

I was going to say that a certain score on the math placement exam might be a good requirement for college science courses, or a completion of college algebra.

I'm surprised it isn't a requirement actually. Placement exams were required at my community college, of course that was almost 20 years ago. But you'd be put into 000 level courses if you couldn't pass the placement exam for writing comp or math. I thought the math test applied to science courses as well, but maybe not.

 

 

It does here. The lack of a minimum score means you can’t take any college level courses. You have to take and pass with a C or better remedial courses first to get you to those college courses.

[regentrude]

34 minutes ago, Murphy101 said:

Are you saying we can’t placement test for literacy and 9th grade level math (Whatever that means? Betcha it isn’t what’s taught in most 9th grade classes here.) 

yes, and according to the poster to whom I replied, they already do that. She wanted an additional placement test "for science"

[ktgrok]

21 minutes ago, regentrude said:

yes, and according to the poster to whom I replied, they already do that. She wanted an additional placement test "for science"

The idea was in response to someone who asked how you can tell who is and isn't ready for a college science class. 

[RootAnn]

One college DD applied for this year places kids for science (specifically Chem, which is required for everyone,) classes based on the incoming student's ACT MATH score. Lower math score, lower chem class.

[regentrude]

27 minutes ago, Ktgrok said:

The idea was in response to someone who asked how you can tell who is and isn't ready for a college science class. 

In most cases, the problem is the willingness to put in the work. Students have completely unrealistic expectation how much time they should study in college (our admissions department collects data on that). They  don't believe it when we tell them they should plan to spend 2 hours outside of class for each hour in class.

Almost all problems of my failing students could be solved if they simply did the assigned work and attended class.

There is no placement test for that.

[Pen]

3 hours ago, Pen said:

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2017/05/10/trial-and-error-lehman-and-hunter-colleges-boost-chemistry

 

@Reefgazer

the above isn’t something you could do on your own. But I wonder if bringing it to attention of your administration that wants higher pass rates could be a step—as compared to just lowering standards. 

[BarbecueMom]

12 minutes ago, RootAnn said:

One college DD applied for this year places kids for science (specifically Chem, which is required for everyone,) classes based on the incoming student's ACT MATH score. Lower math score, lower chem class.

I had a near perfect ACT score in math and a 5 on my AP Calc exam.  I was incredibly unprepared for college level work though, and would have done quite poorly in a college-level science course.

I did get a degree, but didn't do well in non-major courses.  I didn't know how to read for information, didn't know how to study, didn't know how to write an academic paper, and quite frankly didn't know anyone who did.  I was raised by a tired single parent who still does not know what "NPR" means and votes based on who's better looking, so I had no hope of passing my Political Science Methodology course at age 19, even though I went to every single class.

I didn't know high schoolers had to read assigned books in English courses until I started posting on this board.  We did slideshows set to popular songs in honors English.  Every year.

I was good at taking tests.  That only goes so far.  Apparently.

[EmseB]

26 minutes ago, Pen said:

 

@Reefgazer

the above isn’t something you could do on your own. But I wonder if bringing it to attention of your administration that wants higher pass rates could be a step—as compared to just lowering standards. 

Pen, I read that whole thing and it seems like that whole program is the very definition of lowering standards, but it is hard to tell because the article discusses nothing about mastery, just pass rates. Pass rates can be manipulated any number of ways that have nothing to do with students being better able to grasp the material. It also doesn't seem to indicate whether exams were changed with the content of the course and how the content aligned to exams. Are the iClicker questions, for example, the same questions that are tested? The only thing I see there is that they changed the entire course and passing rates went up. That does not say anything for mastery whatsoever or how those students then went on to fare in higher level science classes long term.

I cannot fathom how 10-minute videos watched on one's own could possibly increase mastery over a professor doing a problem six different ways on the board and able to answer questions while doing so, unless we're talking about a really horrible teacher.

I need to watch the accompanying video to get more info, but it's 30 minutes long and I'm out to run errands at the moment. But I'm posting with the questions in case anyone has any ideas about pass rates and mastery of the material.

[Pen]

25 minutes ago, EmseB said:

Pen, I read that whole thing and it seems like that whole program is the very definition of lowering standards, but it is hard to tell because the article discusses nothing about mastery, just pass rates. Pass rates can be manipulated any number of ways that have nothing to do with students being better able to grasp the material. It also doesn't seem to indicate whether exams were changed with the content of the course and how the content aligned to exams. Are the iClicker questions, for example, the same questions that are tested? The only thing I see there is that they changed the entire course and passing rates went up. That does not say anything for mastery whatsoever or how those students then went on to fare in higher level science classes long term.

I cannot fathom how 10-minute videos watched on one's own could possibly increase mastery over a professor doing a problem six different ways on the board and able to answer questions while doing so, unless we're talking about a really horrible teacher.

I need to watch the accompanying video to get more info, but it's 30 minutes long and I'm out to run errands at the moment. But I'm posting with the questions in case anyone has any ideas about pass rates and mastery of the material.

 

I thought I read in it that the exams were not changed. 

 

When I looked back, I could not find that. 

 

However, the the first time I heard of using iClickers and a change away from traditional lecture model was iirc in a Princeton Alumni Weekly article.   My impression is it was hard for faculty to accept new tech, but seemed to help students learn better—without dumbing down. 

Edited October 30, 2018 by Pen

[Pen]

I don’t think this was the original article I saw, but seems related. 

https://paw.princeton.edu/article/are-students-focusing-or-dozing-clickers-catch-teaching-tool

[Murphy101]

4 hours ago, jdahlquist said:

In all of my years of teaching, I can't point to an example of a class where a majority of the students in a class did not pass.  DH was in an administrative position for a number of years, and as such, saw all course grade distributions, he never saw anything even beginning to approach a class where the majority did not pass. 

 

What about where they drop or withdrawal? Because I kinda consider that a fail too.  And many students who start to see the writing on the wall will decide to do that, which they should.  But it can obscure teaching problems.

Dh just dropped a class because the teacher mandated a study session at 3pm on Thursdays.  Dh is at work.  Teacher wouldn't budge and students had no way to know about that requirement prior to the second day of class when he announced it.  Suddenly a class of 38 is a class of 14. 

[Murphy101]

46 minutes ago, Pen said:

I don’t think this was the original article I saw, but seems related. 

https://paw.princeton.edu/article/are-students-focusing-or-dozing-clickers-catch-teaching-tool

 

 

Quote

Gáspár Bakos, assistant professor of astrophysical sciences, uses the clickers to encourage his students to think critically, to keep students engaged, and to review difficult material.

“The clickers lead to a lot of improvisation,” said Bakos. “If I see some scary answers, then I explain.”

and then there is me... the gal who thinks astrophysical science is interesting but not as interesting as wanting to know what are some of the scary answers he has gotten.

 

Edited October 31, 2018 by Murphy101

[Bluegoat]

2 hours ago, regentrude said:

In most cases, the problem is the willingness to put in the work. Students have completely unrealistic expectation how much time they should study in college (our admissions department collects data on that). They  don't believe it when we tell them they should plan to spend 2 hours outside of class for each hour in class.

Almost all problems of my failing students could be solved if they simply did the assigned work and attended class.

There is no placement test for that.

 

I think this is a huge issue in public education - kids have so little to challenge them, that even the ones inclined to academics have no clue how to work. They expect their first effort as a smart kid is all that is ever required, tand it gets them As.

[EmseB]

1 hour ago, Pen said:

 

I thought I read in it that the exams were not changed. 

 

When I looked back, I could not find that. 

 

However, the the first time I heard of using iClickers and a change away from traditional lecture model was iirc in a Princeton Alumni Weekly article.   My impression is it was hard for faculty to accept new tech, but seemed to help students learn better—without dumbing down. 

There might be resistance to tech, or there might be  pushback to the idea that college kids can't sit and focus for a class lecture without clickers to check in with answers or buttons or screens.

I am not a Luddite. I think tech has a place in the classroom. I am skeptical of short videos and iclickers and flipped classrooms raising *pass rates* to 80% without measuring any other metrics or even mentioning long term mastery or retention.

[Bootsie]

I have used iclickers in several classes, with varying success.  The student who I found it helped the most was the student who was on the tail end who would realize that 95% of the class got the question correct--so they were the real outlier; sometimes it would motivate that student to drop the class.  When you have a group of students who tend not to come to class, don't come prepared, don't bring paper and pencil, they don't come on time with an iclicker, either.  I also had a massive cheating problem when I realized I had 200 students in the classroom, but was getting 300 iclicker responses.  

[Frances]

3 hours ago, jdahlquist said:

I have used iclickers in several classes, with varying success.  The student who I found it helped the most was the student who was on the tail end who would realize that 95% of the class got the question correct--so they were the real outlier; sometimes it would motivate that student to drop the class.  When you have a group of students who tend not to come to class, don't come prepared, don't bring paper and pencil, they don't come on time with an iclicker, either.  I also had a massive cheating problem when I realized I had 200 students in the classroom, but was getting 300 iclicker responses.  

nm

Edited October 31, 2018 by Frances

[EmseB]

7 minutes ago, jdahlquist said:

I have used iclickers in several classes, with varying success.  The student who I found it helped the most was the student who was on the tail end who would realize that 95% of the class got the question correct--so they were the real outlier; sometimes it would motivate that student to drop the class.  When you have a group of students who tend not to come to class, don't come prepared, don't bring paper and pencil, they don't come on time with an iclicker, either.  I also had a massive cheating problem when I realized I had 200 students in the classroom, but was getting 300 iclicker responses.  

The study posted said there were only two instances of cheating found over  900 students. ?

But also the studies that have been posted have been so unfailingly positive (with the only cons being listed as oh, professors can't figure out what to do with themselves now, or oh, the professors are just reluctant to embrace new technology) that it just doesn't pass the smell test for me. It reads like a tech company has a vested interest in getting iclickers or software or something into colleges. Kind of the same way Google of course thinks it's a great idea for all elementary kids to have Chromebooks.

2 hours ago, Pen said:

 

I thought I read in it that the exams were not changed. 

 

When I looked back, I could not find that. 

 

However, the the first time I heard of using iClickers and a change away from traditional lecture model was iirc in a Princeton Alumni Weekly article.   My impression is it was hard for faculty to accept new tech, but seemed to help students learn better—without dumbing down. 

I just watched (most of) the video about the flipped classrooms. They assigned points to watch the videos. The students didn't even have to watch the entire video to get the points (just accessing the video recorded full credit). Which explains why, in the article, it emphasized that "some" students played the videos more than once or slowed them down to catch a point. I was wondering why that would be significant, but it's because probably some of the kids clicked and got their points for doing absolutely nothing. I mean, if you're rewarding points for clicking on links to videos of course pass rates are going to go up. I would guess there is some kind of point system with the iclickers too, but I haven't gotten that far.

The other thing that the student says in the video, having taken the clicker class, is that when she wasn't doing clicker classes she wouldn't do the reading for a science class because there were no real consequences to not doing so. She says the textbook was too dry for her to read and she really appreciated the short videos. Of course!! I mean, that's a given, right?  Who wants to read and study about states of matter in a book that'll you'll get no credit for when you can hop on the internet and watch a video for 2 minutes about it? So, we have kids who won't read a textbook, kids who aren't interested in paying attention during classes that aren't clicker classes...and we see it as a positive that we can raise pass rates of a class by giving them videos that are 2 to 10 minutes long that they get points to watch, and a class that essentially gives them more points for showing up and doing the clicker stuff. 

On the upside, in the video they did say the exams were the same between traditional and flipped classes. HOWEVER, when they showed data, they showed pass rates for the class itself, not the exams. So I can't fathom how giving extra points via videos and clickers wouldn't make the pass rates go up. 

I am intrigued by a teaching method that could move pass rates up by 50% and not change anything about the content of the course. I am concerned that by breaking said class up into short videos with points awarded for accessing, and clicker quizzes with collaboration as an expected means of answering questions for points,  we are further eroding students ability to focus well, read and listen for any length of time on their own. Something about all this makes me feel like we're feeding a kind of rewards system that I think is eerily similar to the dopamine hits one gets from engaging in social media and scrolling content on the internet. The long-term effects do not seem good to me.

[TCB]

8 hours ago, jdahlquist said:

Yes: I have had situations where the average on an exam is 78-80% and students complain that "most of the class failed the exam".  

The average on some of the tests of the Chemistry prof I mentioned has been around 60%, I think they said that one time it was 58%.

[Reefgazer]

8 hours ago, Murphy101 said:

That’s not true at our colleges/community college. 

They have to have a minimum score in maths on the ACT or SAT to take any science course at all and higher scores to take higher science classes. They also have to have a minimum score in language arts to take all other courses.

I’d argue they need to raise the minimum. For a starter effort anyways. 

Here's something to chew on regarding minimum test scores to qualify for admittance to a class:  At the college where I teach, students have to take and pass, with a minimum score, an English placement test in order to gain admission into any history or English course on campus.  If students don't pass the test, they must take and pass remedial writing courses first.  I just found out today that beginning next fall, everyone has to take the English placement test, but they will now be allowed into Freshman Comp regardless of their score on this test.  At that point, I don't know what the point of the exam will be.  At any rate, my DD is taking Freshman Comp this semester and the class is already taught at what I consider to be a middle school level.  I spoke with DD's Freshman English prof today (not as DD's parent, but as a co-worker) and she has no idea how she is going to hold the line at even this basic level when she will be faced with students who are unprepared to that degree.  She has told me most students can't handle basic grammar, can't follow simple instructions with examples, can't outline, can't compose a coherent sentence, think Wikipedia serves as sufficient source for a paper, can can't  use MLA citation format even when they are given examples.  As of right now, students have to pass a math placement test to get into math, but no test whatsoever to get into a science class.  They do need to raise minimum requirements, but that won't happen; in fact, requirements are heading in exactly the opposite direction. 

[ktgrok]

8 hours ago, TCB said:

The average on some of the tests of the Chemistry prof I mentioned has been around 60%, I think they said that one time it was 58%.

The organic chemistry professor I talked about - the one that just lectured on whatever topic he felt like, rather than going in any sort of order - specifically strove to have an average score of 50% on his exams. 

[Murphy101]

10 hours ago, Reefgazer said:

Here's something to chew on regarding minimum test scores to qualify for admittance to a class:  At the college where I teach, students have to take and pass, with a minimum score, an English placement test in order to gain admission into any history or English course on campus.  If students don't pass the test, they must take and pass remedial writing courses first.  I just found out today that beginning next fall, everyone has to take the English placement test, but they will now be allowed into Freshman Comp regardless of their score on this test.  At that point, I don't know what the point of the exam will be.  At any rate, my DD is taking Freshman Comp this semester and the class is already taught at what I consider to be a middle school level.  I spoke with DD's Freshman English prof today (not as DD's parent, but as a co-worker) and she has no idea how she is going to hold the line at even this basic level when she will be faced with students who are unprepared to that degree.  She has told me most students can't handle basic grammar, can't follow simple instructions with examples, can't outline, can't compose a coherent sentence, think Wikipedia serves as sufficient source for a paper, can can't  use MLA citation format even when they are given examples.  As of right now, students have to pass a math placement test to get into math, but no test whatsoever to get into a science class.  They do need to raise minimum requirements, but that won't happen; in fact, requirements are heading in exactly the opposite direction. 

Ugh. That’s an elfed up mess for everyone. 

[regentrude]

10 hours ago, TCB said:

The average on some of the tests of the Chemistry prof I mentioned has been around 60%, I think they said that one time it was 58%.

That number means absolutely nothing.

The instructor may curve at the end, there may be points for other assignments that bring up the grade, there may be other exams that bring up the all-exam average... having a  low test average says nothing about the overall outcome of the course or the quality of the professor.

 

[Bootsie]

2 hours ago, Ktgrok said:

The organic chemistry professor I talked about - the one that just lectured on whatever topic he felt like, rather than going in any sort of order - specifically strove to have an average score of 50% on his exams. 

Just as their is "evidence" that iClickers, low-stakes quizzes, online homework sets, etc. improve learning, there is also research supports that skipping around, not going in any particular order (especially the order o the book) is beneficial.  I have a friend who is a fifth grade math teacher that had to go to an entire seminar about how math should not be taught in any particular order; it is more engaging and interesting to students when the teacher jumps around, the book should not be used for structure, the professor should be innovative and do things differently each year, it is only a reference book that should rarely be used--Those statements are not my personal opinions (nor that of my friend). 

[Murphy101]

13 hours ago, Eliana said:

It is exactly those metrics (long-term retention and ability to apply knowledge more broadly) which indicate the success of some of the approaches Creekland described.   There are such studies being done and the teaching methods supported by those studies are more interactive, have multiple (short) classroom recall activities of quizzes, etc.   

 

My dh teaches adults in corporate settings for a living for the past 20 years. There are LOTS of proven affective methods that beat straight Socratic lectures and death by power point/print outs hands down.

Some people will claim those methods worked well enough in the past but that simply isn’t true. Only a small percentage of the population has long term retention and ability to implement the learned material with that method. For most of history, that small percentage of the well off were the only ones who completed college or had a chance to attend at all.  Now that more people are needing degrees and higher education, now that it’s no longer a socially viable option to just not deal with people who don’t learn that way - now we are seeing the limits of that methodology.

[Murphy101]

10 minutes ago, jdahlquist said:

Just as their is "evidence" that iClickers, low-stakes quizzes, online homework sets, etc. improve learning, there is also research supports that skipping around, not going in any particular order (especially the order o the book) is beneficial.  I have a friend who is a fifth grade math teacher that had to go to an entire seminar about how math should not be taught in any particular order; it is more engaging and interesting to students when the teacher jumps around, the book should not be used for structure, the professor should be innovative and do things differently each year, it is only a reference book that should rarely be used--Those statements are not my personal opinions (nor that of my friend). 

 

That makes my brain hurt. 

Some people are dumb and seem to promote dumb. (NOT you! Just a general yeah I’ve heard that before and it makes me SMH and sigh heavily.)

While there is value in web learning, the point is that it is WEB learning not scattershot chaos. It’s okay to not teach in a linear manner.  A straight line is not the only way things are connected, they can be spiral or web or rooms within a building connected. But they should still be connected in a clear identifiable manner. 

Edited October 31, 2018 by Murphy101

[Bootsie]

1 minute ago, Murphy101 said:

 

My dh teaches adults in corporate settings for a living for the past 20 years. There are LOTS of proven affective methods that beat straight Socratic lectures and death by power point/print outs hands down.

Some people will claim those methods worked well enough in the past but that simply isn’t true. Only a small percentage of the population has long term retention and ability to implement the learned material with that method. For most of history, that small percentage of the well off were the only ones who completed college or had a chance to attend at all.  Now that more people are needing degrees and higher education, now that it’s no longer a socially viable option to just not deal with people who don’t learn that way - now we are seeing the limits of that methodology.

Teaching adults in a corporate setting and teaching in a college classroom are very different.  Not only is the student's motivation often different, the desired outcome is different.  In a corporate setting, something specific that the corporation wants its employees to know is being taught.  Even teaching in an Executive MBA program, where all of the adults in the room are activity engaged in the work force and their employer is sending them to school, is different than when I go and teach a class in a corporate setting to many of those same adults.

A college education is to educate a person, which is a very different activity. It is about more than long-term retention of facts.     

[Bootsie]

21 minutes ago, regentrude said:

That number means absolutely nothing.

The instructor may curve at the end, there may be points for other assignments that bring up the grade, there may be other exams that bring up the all-exam average... having a  low test average says nothing about the overall outcome of the course or the quality of the professor.

 

DH talks about making a "10" (out of 100) on a physics exam in college--and he had the second highest grade in the class.  Years later he doesn't talk about the professor having a big ego, or being a poor professor, he talks about how much he learned, how challenged he was, how he learned discipline to tackle difficult problems.  

I have a colleague who teaches upper level investments courses whose average on exams is probably 50%, but he hasn't failed a student in years.  He tells students that there will be things on the exam that they have never seen and that he will be surprised if anyone in the class gets entirely correct.  But, he wants them to have the experience of thinking through possibilities of what might or might not work.  It is their approach and thought process that he is concerned about (not their ability to repeat at least 90% of the facts he has told them).  He is one of the most popular teachers in the university..  

 

[TechWife]

2 minutes ago, jdahlquist said:

Teaching adults in a corporate setting and teaching in a college classroom are very different.  Not only is the student's motivation often different, the desired outcome is different.  In a corporate setting, something specific that the corporation wants its employees to know is being taught.  Even teaching in an Executive MBA program, where all of the adults in the room are activity engaged in the work force and their employer is sending them to school, is different than when I go and teach a class in a corporate setting to many of those same adults.

A college education is to educate a person, which is a very different activity. It is about more than long-term retention of facts.     

This! My husband teaches in a corporate setting regularly and occasionally in the uni setting.  They are vastly different. The goals, content, abilities and interest level of the students is different. He is able to accomplish much more in the corporate environment, generally because the students are engaged and he is a mentor or consultant for them. I the uni environment, at the level he teaches the students are well into their course work - he isn’t teaching freshmen or sophomores, but engaging the students is much more difficult and they simply aren’t as motivated to do the work. 

In previous years he was able to accept more invitations to teach at the uni level, now the demands of his job keep him from doing so. He thinks doing adjunct work would be a great job in his retirement years, I think he might change his mind about that unless he can teach upper level courses. 

[Pen]

26 minutes ago, Murphy101 said:

 

My dh teaches adults in corporate settings for a living for the past 20 years. There are LOTS of proven affective methods that beat straight Socratic lectures and death by power point/print outs hands down.

Some people will claim those methods worked well enough in the past but that simply isn’t true. Only a small percentage of the population has long term retention and ability to implement the learned material with that method. For most of history, that small percentage of the well off were the only ones who completed college or had a chance to attend at all.  Now that more people are needing degrees and higher education, now that it’s no longer a socially viable option to just not deal with people who don’t learn that way - now we are seeing the limits of that methodology.

 

I don’t personally think it was all that effective even for those it was apparently effective for. 

 

[EmseB]

36 minutes ago, Pen said:

 

I don’t personally think it was all that effective even for those it was apparently effective for. 

 

Are you saying reading a text and listening to a lecture while taking notes is not an effective means of learning? Even for people who "apparently" learned something this way, they didn't actually learn this way?

 

(I'm genuinely asking, not snarking)

[Frances]

52 minutes ago, jdahlquist said:

DH talks about making a "10" (out of 100) on a physics exam in college--and he had the second highest grade in the class.  Years later he doesn't talk about the professor having a big ego, or being a poor professor, he talks about how much he learned, how challenged he was, how he learned discipline to tackle difficult problems.  

I have a colleague who teaches upper level investments courses whose average on exams is probably 50%, but he hasn't failed a student in years.  He tells students that there will be things on the exam that they have never seen and that he will be surprised if anyone in the class gets entirely correct.  But, he wants them to have the experience of thinking through possibilities of what might or might not work.  It is their approach and thought process that he is concerned about (not their ability to repeat at least 90% of the facts he has told them).  He is one of the most popular teachers in the university..  

 

I think the vast majority of STEM classes my son took in college were like this. And it was the same for my husband many years ago. He still recalls with fondness some of the interesting challenge problems on certain exams.

[TCB]

1 hour ago, regentrude said:

That number means absolutely nothing.

The instructor may curve at the end, there may be points for other assignments that bring up the grade, there may be other exams that bring up the all-exam average... having a  low test average says nothing about the overall outcome of the course or the quality of the professor.

 

Really? It says nothing? He does curve a lot at the end. I guess I always understood curving to be a way of correcting any anomalies like a test that was more difficult than it should be or whatever. If you are aiming correctly then the need to curve should be less. Anyway, if you read my earlier post you will see that I was not only commenting on his class test average but other things as well. I'm not understanding having tests where that is the average each time. I thought tests were supposed to check how well a student had understood the material. To me an average like that would tell me that they were not understanding it well for some reason and I would want to look for the reason or reasons. But I am not a professor so may have the completely wrong idea.

[Pen]

11 minutes ago, EmseB said:

Are you saying reading a text and listening to a lecture while taking notes is not an effective means of learning? Even for people who "apparently" learned something this way, they didn't actually learn this way?

 

(I'm genuinely asking, not snarking)

 

I am saying that I think that even though I graduated with honors from one of the top universities in the world, a lot of the methods (which were often straight up lecture and textbooks) could have been better.  Far better. 

Some of the teaching was abominable.  And as it happens, that included my first chemistry course. 

[regentrude]

2 minutes ago, TCB said:

Really? It says nothing? He does curve a lot at the end. I guess I always understood curving to be a way of correcting any anomalies like a test that was more difficult than it should be or whatever. If you are aiming correctly then the need to curve should be less. .... I'm not understanding having tests where that is the average each time. I thought tests were supposed to check how well a student had understood the material. To me an average like that would tell me that they were not understanding it well for some reason and I would want to look for the reason or reasons. But I am not a professor so may have the completely wrong idea.

No, it can simply mean he is using the test to differentiate and include challenging problems , and using the curve allows him to challenge the strong students without failing the average ones. It is a perfectly acceptable model and does not mean he is aiming "incorrectly". If an instructor has to use the straight test grade as the course grade, it will not be possible to differentiate at the upper end because every question must be easy enough not to require too much creativity and out of the box thinking. 

[Pen]

Socratic lectures IME were better than straight up lectures with passive note taking. I particularly learned a lot when called on randomly to answer—but that was emotionally stressful. 

I’ve never been in an iClicker situation, but a system that could incorporate having to (or getting to) answer as in a Socratic lecture, extended to more than one student at a time, and without the emotional angst of being in a hot seat with a hundred peers watching strikes me as possibly being of help in some cases. 

[TCB]

1 hour ago, jdahlquist said:

DH talks about making a "10" (out of 100) on a physics exam in college--and he had the second highest grade in the class.  Years later he doesn't talk about the professor having a big ego, or being a poor professor, he talks about how much he learned, how challenged he was, how he learned discipline to tackle difficult problems.  

I have a colleague who teaches upper level investments courses whose average on exams is probably 50%, but he hasn't failed a student in years.  He tells students that there will be things on the exam that they have never seen and that he will be surprised if anyone in the class gets entirely correct.  But, he wants them to have the experience of thinking through possibilities of what might or might not work.  It is their approach and thought process that he is concerned about (not their ability to repeat at least 90% of the facts he has told them).  He is one of the most popular teachers in the university..  

 

That makes sense, especially in upper level classes. I can't understand having tests with so many failing for intro classes, especially for new freshmen students. I do not believe that all students can make that leap from high school level to college level all at once at the beginning of their college education. I think it is a process for a lot of them. Also, what is the point  - to demoralize or scare them? I think scare tactics only work up to a point. My dd is doing great at college and getting very good grades and I think she is well prepared, but that is not the case for some. Another political science prof there told her class on the first day of American Government that only a very small % of students would get an A or B in her class - a set %, and so if they wanted or needed good grades they should drop her class. Apparently that week 99 students dropped the class. She also told them that she never votes because it doesn't make any difference!

 

ETA Ok so now I've read regentrude's answer above so understand a bit better. I'm glad I'm not in that class though!

Edited October 31, 2018 by TCB

[regentrude]

9 minutes ago, TCB said:

That makes sense, especially in upper level classes. I can't understand having tests with so many failing for intro classes, especially for new freshmen students. I do not believe that all students can make that leap from high school level to college level all at once at the beginning of their college education. I think it is a process for a lot of them. Also, what is the point  - to demoralize or scare them? I think scare tactics only work up to a point. 

At some point, you have to dispel the delusion that they are studying hard enough and know enough. Many of our students have been handed As on a platter in high school and have an overinflated sense of their own ability because nobody ever challenged them. Continuing to hand them easy grades will not be "encouraging", it will further an unrealistic sense of their accomplishments. Often, the first low grade in an intro chem or math test is the signal that, no, you can't get by with two hours of studying per week. This is especially important for freshmen who need to transition to college level work. Showing them what the expectations are is the only way to get that point across; it's not like nobody told them what they have to do, but they won't believe we really mean it until the first exams come back. (This is why my colleagues in chem and calc have a much harder row to hoe; I get the students in their 2nd or later semester, when they have passed these two classes)

We have been observing for two decades that every time our first exam average comes out comparatively low, students improve for the second one; conversely, every time our first exam has a high average, the second exam average is low because students become complacent and think they don't have to study that hard. Our student numbers are large enough so that averages mean something (500 per semester)

Edited October 31, 2018 by regentrude

[Bootsie]

2 minutes ago, Pen said:

Socratic lectures IME were better than straight up lectures with passive note taking. I particularly learned a lot when called on randomly to answer—but that was emotionally stressful. 

I’ve never been in an iClicker situation, but a system that could incorporate having to (or getting to) answer as in a Socratic lecture, extended to more than one student at a time, and without the emotional angst of being in a hot seat with a hundred peers watching strikes me as possibly being of help in some cases. 

An iclicker is nothing more than an electronic device for recording responses. It can be useful when the question is multiple choice--is the definition of money a, b, or c.  Or, it is good recording of information when the question is a fairly basic math question where students can input a numeric answer.  It is not good at providing the professor with any information of how the student got to that answer.  It is not got at challenging a student to think about how to frame a response.  It is not useful in a discussion of "what strategy might company explore to deal with exchange rate risk?"    It is not useful in helping students prepare for being in a board room where they must speak up and defend a position--things businesses want from graduates.

 

 

[TCB]

1 minute ago, regentrude said:

At some point, you have to dispel the delusion that they are working hard enough and knowing enough. Many of our students have been handed As on a platter in high school and have an overinflated sense of their own ability because nobody ever challenged them. Continuing to hand them easy grades will not be "encouraging", it will further an unrealistic sense of their accomplishments. Often, the first low grade in an intro chem or math test is the signal that, no, you can't get by with two hours of studying per week. This is especially important for freshmen who need to transition to college level work. Showing them what the expectations are is the only way to get that point across. (This is why my colleagues in chem and calc have a much harder row to hoe; I get the students in their 2nd or later semester, when they have passed these two classes)

We have been observing for two decades that every time our first exam average comes out comparatively low, students improve for the second one; conversely, every time our first exam has a high average, the second exam average is low because students become complacent and think they don't have to study that hard. Our student numbers are large enough so that averages mean something (500 per semester)

That's interesting and does make sense.

[Valley Girl]

12 minutes ago, regentrude said:

At some point, you have to dispel the delusion that they are studying hard enough and know enough. Many of our students have been handed As on a platter in high school and have an overinflated sense of their own ability because nobody ever challenged them. Continuing to hand them easy grades will not be "encouraging", it will further an unrealistic sense of their accomplishments. Often, the first low grade in an intro chem or math test is the signal that, no, you can't get by with two hours of studying per week. This is especially important for freshmen who need to transition to college level work. Showing them what the expectations are is the only way to get that point across; it's not like nobody told them what they have to do, but they won't believe we really mean it until the first exams come back. (This is why my colleagues in chem and calc have a much harder row to hoe; I get the students in their 2nd or later semester, when they have passed these two classes)

We have been observing for two decades that every time our first exam average comes out comparatively low, students improve for the second one; conversely, every time our first exam has a high average, the second exam average is low because students become complacent and think they don't have to study that hard. Our student numbers are large enough so that averages mean something (500 per semester)

Your first paragraph has been DS's experience in his first semester. He was a stellar student in high school and extremely hardworking. But the first few tests in a couple of classes kicked his butt. He told me he's had to change the way he studied. Whatever he's now doing works. I've heard from other kids as well that those first classes are a wake-up call.

Edited October 31, 2018 by Valley Girl
keep catching spelling errors

[Bootsie]

I have personally used iClickers in several different teach settings (and have presented my results at national conferences for business schools), so I am not against trying new technologies and methods.  But, IME this technology did not address the following problems:

1)  Students who did not come to class still did not come to class.  Those who came unprepared still came unprepared.

2)  Students who were college juniors and seniors and who thought 200(1 + .03) was equivalent to 200.03.  When math skills are this poor, it is difficult to teach finance.  

3)  Students who were college juniors and seniors and who did not know enough grammar to understand whether a verb was past tense or future tense.  They could not distinguish between  "Sally placed $100 in a savings account--how much will she have next year..." and "Sally wants to have $100 next year, how much does she need to put in a savings account today to meet that goal."

4) Huge cheating issues

5)  I was able to cover less material, holding top students back

6) It is difficult to accommodate students who are absent because of university excused absences or who have disability-based accommodations

7) students who did not see a correlation between their actions and the outcome.  Stakes had to be high enough that their responses using the iClicker really mattered (which watered down grading). Students who missed class, didn't get an iClicker until 3/4 of the way through the semester, or simply sat in class on their phones wanted "retries" to bring their grade up.  Students who were used to just showing up a few times a semester to take a test complained. 

I am using iClickers this semester in another class at a different school; a different setting is giving me very different results.  The problems that I listed above are pervasive at some (but not all) universities.  When someone is teaching in that environment it is an uphill battle; the problems go far beyond a professor's teaching methods.  

[Bluegoat]

2 hours ago, Murphy101 said:

 

My dh teaches adults in corporate settings for a living for the past 20 years. There are LOTS of proven affective methods that beat straight Socratic lectures and death by power point/print outs hands down.

Some people will claim those methods worked well enough in the past but that simply isn’t true. Only a small percentage of the population has long term retention and ability to implement the learned material with that method. For most of history, that small percentage of the well off were the only ones who completed college or had a chance to attend at all.  Now that more people are needing degrees and higher education, now that it’s no longer a socially viable option to just not deal with people who don’t learn that way - now we are seeing the limits of that methodology.

 

But the methodology is part of the content.  Being able to sustain attention to a lecture and understand that it is making a connected argument, being able to sit and read a text and follow up the threads you find in it, and reading where those lead you - all of those things are the reason that a university degree belonged to a particular kind of knowing and investigating.  

It's not true that more people now are needing university education.  People are needing entirely other kinds of education, but instead of pursuing that in the places where it fits, like on the job training, trade school, nursing school, etc they are destroying what is supposed to be going on in the university.

The push for more people to go to university had nothing to do with more people needing to go - it was a political decision made mainly for economic reasons.

[frogger]

1 hour ago, Bluegoat said:

 

But the methodology is part of the content.  Being able to sustain attention to a lecture and understand that it is making a connected argument, being able to sit and read a text and follow up the threads you find in it, and reading where those lead you - all of those things are the reason that a university degree belonged to a particular kind of knowing and investigating.  

It's not true that more people now are needing university education.  People are needing entirely other kinds of education, but instead of pursuing that in the places where it fits, like on the job training, trade school, nursing school, etc they are destroying what is supposed to be going on in the university.

The push for more people to go to university had nothing to do with more people needing to go - it was a political decision made mainly for economic reasons.

 

Was is made for economic reasons? And who made that decision? It feels like society as a whole valued one thing more than others and said others were less than. I don't mean monetarily, I mean more along the lines of aspirations and looking down on people without degrees. To economize, would mean that people chose things they were best at.  I suppose the schools themselves would want everyone clamoring to come to drive demand up so they could raise prices but not the rest of society.  

 

 

[Faith-manor]

Locally, the high school diploma became fairly worthless. There is so much hand holding, so much grade inflation, so much ridiculousness that a student can have a 4.0 and be rather low functioning academically speaking. There are TON of remedial classes with fancy names that count for graduation, and they've now dumbed down what is done at the tech center such that if one takes say the half day "agricultural science" path, one gets a credit of math, a credit of science, and a credit of English. The credit of math is awarded so long as "students have to count for some reason", and the credit from English so long as the student has to write a sentence or so each week. The credit of science may seem obvious, and for those that do engage in animal science and husbandry or crop science, they definitely are getting science. But it is very, very specific and not likely to say prepare a student for college biology. Often the entire class can be doing chores in the barn and repairing fences and such. Those are awesome skills to have, I don't bash that at all. But it counts on the diploma for juniors and seniors as 11th and 12th grade work. A lot of students who want to attend college are in this program or ones that are similar, so it does not serve them well, but administrators push huge portions of the junior and senior class into them because it is easy to graduate them and keep funding high. So the other half of the day they take an elective PE class, or health class - and their health classes are very, very easy - art appreciation or music appreciation, maybe a super basic psychology class or something. 18 credits, and they are out the door. And in their last two years six of those credits were easy enough to be passed by most middle school students if they have any motivation at all. The kids and parents are lied to and told these programs are "rigorous". The ones that seem to be good are those that are tied to future professional licensing. So the CNA course and the med tech course. Those have state board exams that have to be passed so the students have to study hard and they have to pass clinicals at the hospital where BSRN's tell them they are either doing a good job or NOT. The diesel mechanic program is another good one. But most are really, really bad.

Employers locally figure students need to have an AA/AS in order to prove competency enough for entry level work. Bachelor's for anyone who wants to even think of being in a higher position in the future. No bachelor's no promotion. And many of these jobs are not very high paying so it is scary to see kids go into debt to prove they know how to read. But that's how it is, and it won't change until our local school districts - and frankly much of Michigan education - stops passing the buck grade after grade, and dumbing down content to make graduating a matter of showing or as some students call it "doing the time".