Dr. Kling's mention of practice exams reminds me of a friend's experience in teaching one of his math classes.
A few days before each of his exams, he gave a practice exam, with solutions, to allow students to gauge their progress and see if there were areas on which they needed to seek help or do extra work before the real exam. On one occasion, he accidentally gave the practice exam again instead of the real exam.
There was a very bimodal distribution of scores, with some students leaving in half an hour and getting near-perfect grades, while others took the whole class period and showed no sign that they'd ever seen the exam before. It was quite clear who was putting effort into the class and who had more interesting things to do with their evenings and weekends...
I had similar experiences teaching. Often I would use a problem on the homework, go over it in class, use the same problem on a midterm (sometimes verbatim), go over it again in class, then have the same problem on the final. The number of students that got it wrong every time was sadly never zero.
“Also, I am a very ‘soft’ teacher. I do not cajole or threaten students to try to get them to do more.”
Honestly, this is probably the best approach if you are looking for long term engagement from your students for after they have completed your course. They will take the nuggets that you have provided and further develop them once they have more time. The university experience can be overwhelming with too many conflicting goals and limited time. In my experience, the professors that tried to slam everything down my throat because their course was deemed the “most important” were soon forgotten and so was the content.
After having moved to NTX from California, it took a few years to wrap my head around how the shutdowns for the most minimal of ice storms might make sense from an economics perspective. Short answer: the payback from a massive infrastructure investment in snow plows or 4wd vehicles probably isn’t there when the ice storms only occur approximately 1x per year. So, hunker down at home for a few days instead and enjoy the time with family.
Arnold, it sounds like you are doing a great job and have good students - even if things fall somewhat short of perfection. It makes me wish I were young again and could be one of them.
You may be a victim of the "assessment arms race", or using your horse analogy, the problem may be that the other lecturers are Methodists. Assessment frequency at American universities is incredibly high, students are always working through a queue of graded assignments. The lecturer who tries to construct a course which is not a mere series of graded assessments gets shortchanged when it comes to student priorities. This is one of the reasons that internationally there is increasing push back against high frequency assessment (which is already much lower than in the US).
Mixing higher level thinking with learning the basics is popular but tends not to work well. More traditional education systems tend to separate them. There is also a place for lecturing, especially when someone has many years of experience to share.
> I do not feel that I have obtained as much of the students’ out-of-classroom effort as I would have liked. I think that the course has more to offer than what they have exploited.
Do you know what the motivations for the students enrolled in your classes are? I can't remember if these were entirely optional classes for them to take or if they're mandatory towards some other goal. I'm curious for your sense of whether the students themselves are feeling like they're getting out of the courses what they wanted to. I've never been a teacher, but it has seemed like teachers have to wait for the handful of students they really connect with every once in a long while, where that extra intellectual interest is sparked.
On a much smaller scale, I had a similar experience with my brief stint teaching math in high school. I planned my classes with a lot of discussions and open-ended exercises, but after a few weeks, I realized I had been taking a LOT of knowledge for granted and had not been thinking about it.
One of the bigger surprises was what a brick wall it is to solve `3b+4=7` versus `3x+4=7`. Changing the letters just did not compute for most of the class, but I was so used to it that I just threw it in as a little extra mental exercise once in a while.
If you look at it a certain way, I figure this kind of thing can be a large opportunity for helping people out. All those things that you take for granted are things that will truly enrich these citizens lives if you can transfer it to them.
Dr. Kling's mention of practice exams reminds me of a friend's experience in teaching one of his math classes.
A few days before each of his exams, he gave a practice exam, with solutions, to allow students to gauge their progress and see if there were areas on which they needed to seek help or do extra work before the real exam. On one occasion, he accidentally gave the practice exam again instead of the real exam.
There was a very bimodal distribution of scores, with some students leaving in half an hour and getting near-perfect grades, while others took the whole class period and showed no sign that they'd ever seen the exam before. It was quite clear who was putting effort into the class and who had more interesting things to do with their evenings and weekends...
I had similar experiences teaching. Often I would use a problem on the homework, go over it in class, use the same problem on a midterm (sometimes verbatim), go over it again in class, then have the same problem on the final. The number of students that got it wrong every time was sadly never zero.
“Also, I am a very ‘soft’ teacher. I do not cajole or threaten students to try to get them to do more.”
Honestly, this is probably the best approach if you are looking for long term engagement from your students for after they have completed your course. They will take the nuggets that you have provided and further develop them once they have more time. The university experience can be overwhelming with too many conflicting goals and limited time. In my experience, the professors that tried to slam everything down my throat because their course was deemed the “most important” were soon forgotten and so was the content.
“even a tiny snowfall jeopardizes transportation”
After having moved to NTX from California, it took a few years to wrap my head around how the shutdowns for the most minimal of ice storms might make sense from an economics perspective. Short answer: the payback from a massive infrastructure investment in snow plows or 4wd vehicles probably isn’t there when the ice storms only occur approximately 1x per year. So, hunker down at home for a few days instead and enjoy the time with family.
Arnold, it sounds like you are doing a great job and have good students - even if things fall somewhat short of perfection. It makes me wish I were young again and could be one of them.
I agree with Thucydides. When you try new things, not all of them work. But good for you for really thinking through how to do it.
I love the Quaker horse joke. It will now be part of my repertoire.
You may be a victim of the "assessment arms race", or using your horse analogy, the problem may be that the other lecturers are Methodists. Assessment frequency at American universities is incredibly high, students are always working through a queue of graded assignments. The lecturer who tries to construct a course which is not a mere series of graded assessments gets shortchanged when it comes to student priorities. This is one of the reasons that internationally there is increasing push back against high frequency assessment (which is already much lower than in the US).
Mixing higher level thinking with learning the basics is popular but tends not to work well. More traditional education systems tend to separate them. There is also a place for lecturing, especially when someone has many years of experience to share.
> I do not feel that I have obtained as much of the students’ out-of-classroom effort as I would have liked. I think that the course has more to offer than what they have exploited.
Do you know what the motivations for the students enrolled in your classes are? I can't remember if these were entirely optional classes for them to take or if they're mandatory towards some other goal. I'm curious for your sense of whether the students themselves are feeling like they're getting out of the courses what they wanted to. I've never been a teacher, but it has seemed like teachers have to wait for the handful of students they really connect with every once in a long while, where that extra intellectual interest is sparked.
Your father was also a great teacher. I loved his course on the politics of rapid change.
On a much smaller scale, I had a similar experience with my brief stint teaching math in high school. I planned my classes with a lot of discussions and open-ended exercises, but after a few weeks, I realized I had been taking a LOT of knowledge for granted and had not been thinking about it.
One of the bigger surprises was what a brick wall it is to solve `3b+4=7` versus `3x+4=7`. Changing the letters just did not compute for most of the class, but I was so used to it that I just threw it in as a little extra mental exercise once in a while.
If you look at it a certain way, I figure this kind of thing can be a large opportunity for helping people out. All those things that you take for granted are things that will truly enrich these citizens lives if you can transfer it to them.
You don't say whether your exams can be answered using AI. Enquiring minds want to know.
FYI your "social code" link is 404.
Arggh! It should say soccode.vercel.app
In Australia, the whole "AI/Chat" debate is really heating up re authenticity of student work..
with some disturbing recent reports viz:
'How Australia’s university students are using to AI to cheat their way to a degree | The Australian'
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/weekend-australian-magazine/how-australias-university-students-are-using-to-ai-to-cheat-their-way-to-a-degree/news-story/2bd02fe5c5dce5c74914fc01bf883df0
I doubt there are many IMT readers able to get past the paywall.
https://archive.md/RKLgc
Thanks
I just put this prompt into the free version of ChatGPT- & got an extensive readout. The irony is unmatched! https://www.theaustralian.com.au/weekend-australian-magazine/how-australias-university-students-are-using-to-ai-to-cheat-their-way-to-a-degree/news-story/2bd02fe5c5dce5c74914fc01bf883df0 Summarise this article and emphasize key themes
Possibly just as well, it’s so depressing.