Does it have to be the right answer?
Published on Oct 12, 2006 at 5:02 pm.
12 Comments.
Filed under college teaching.
One of the other professors here was telling me about an interaction that she’d had earlier with one of her students. The discussion then drew in yet another professor. We seem to have the same sorts of issues. The faculty and students seem to be having a difference of opinion as to what the students are doing here. The faculty think that the students are here to get an education. The students think that they are here to get a piece of paper saying that they attended classes. Here lies another difference of opinion. The students seem to think that a diploma means that they attended classes at college. The faculty think that the diploma means that they learned something at college.
So, just what was this interaction that brought all this on? Well, apparently she had given the students a problem to work on, and she had given them time to work on it. When time was up, the students weren’t done, so she gave them more time. Eventually, she told them to just put down their answer and turn in their papers. So, one student wanted to know if it mattered what answer they put down. Apparently, this student was of the opinion that any answer would suffice as long as they had worked on the problem and tried to get an answer. The idea that there was only one correct answer seemed to foreign. Also, there was an expectation that they would get credit for simply doing the exercise.
I get that, too. Students sometimes seem upset that I actually grade homework instead of just counting how many problems that they do. They think that they should get credit for just writing down things, right or wrong. Likewise, in lab, they seem upset if I expect them to get the correct measurement of some property that they are supposed to be measuring. Likewise, students seem to expect to be able to pass an exam just by turning it in.
So, where do they get this idea that participation is the only thing that matters? Don’t they understand that the whole point of the assignments and exercises is to help them learn the material? One of the other profs pointed out that the students the last couple of years seem to be very lackadaisical about their education. They show up, they don’t do homework, and they don’t study. They tend to want to drop by class whenever they feel like it (if they feel like it) and leave whenever it suits them. Worse, this attitude isn’t confined to undergraduates. Earlier today, I had spoken with someone else who confirmed my observations that even graduate students seem to have this same approach to their studies. And, we have even had the same problems with some of our part-time faculty who are fresh out of graduate school.
So, does this mean that I am getting too old to understand the current generation of college students? Am I being too demanding to expect them to do things and to actually learn something?
Oh, and this reminds me of a student who wrote a letter to the editor of the campus paper a while back. This student was complaining that she didn’t understand why she had to take math classes. Apparently the math classes stifled her creativity, since there is only one right answer permitted. Hmm. I wonder what her checkbook looks like …
-Astroprof
Andrew on October 13, 2006 at 5:35 pm: 1
This is quite a sad but,also a rather disturbing post.Unfortunately,this free ride attitude is also running rampant outside of the classroom.Many young adults seem to think,everything should be handed to them without any personal expense.How frustrating it must be to teach in a classroom,who’s students expect a passing grade without any work involved.It seems that the youth of today are only looking at the now and not at the biggest picture of all…their future!.Their doesn’t seem to be any pride.No sence of accomplishment.No ambition.Argh!!!.I can only weep for the future.
Apparently,we were raised with a different set of values than todays kids.Nothing was handed to me.If I wanted something,I had to earn the money to purchase it.This is where the sence of accomplishment and pride are born!.
Keep your chin up.Their are fellow bloggers that appreciate your knowledge!.
Andrew
oldcola on October 16, 2006 at 12:23 pm: 2
“So, where do they get this idea that participation is the only thing that matters?”
Olympics?
Yeah !
Coubertin’s:
“The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.”
a little night musing on October 16, 2006 at 9:59 pm: 3
“The students seem to think that a diploma means that they attended classes at college. ”
Oh man! If only our students thought it meant that they *attended* classes! They seem to think that a diploma means that they *registered* for classes. Attendance? That’s just unreasonable!
The Ridger on October 17, 2006 at 8:46 am: 4
Just yesterday on a bus back from College Park I heard a student on her cell phone saying she just couldn’t manage to get up at 7 to get to her 9 o’clock class, so she just hadn’t gone three times last week (or that day). But she hadn’t missed anything, since there isn’t any homework or papers, just discussion…
If I had a class in which I assigned no homework or papers and grading was based on classroom participation, missing 60% of the classes would result in an F… I wonder how hard her instructor is?
avidea on October 17, 2006 at 7:13 pm: 5
This is the effect of the conservative influence in popular culture.
Global Citizen on October 17, 2006 at 8:43 pm: 6
Oy. you went and got me started. I’m not a Prof - yet - I’m an instructor. I am in a doctoral program and I teach at a community college. After a 20 year career in Laboratory Medicine, I am teaching the basic sciences to nursing students. I have started announcing the first day of class that they will be expected to learn in my classes, the exams will not be open book, they will have a real midterm, they will have a comprehensive final, and some people in the class will fail. There will be quizzes at my whim and they will not merely get credit for showing up even though I do take roll. When I tell them how it will be day one, usually three or four get up and go to the records window to get into another section.
I encourage this; I do not want lazy nurses in my classroom or on the floors after school. In my career as a Lab Scientist, I dealt with RN’s for 20 years who would be more aptly described as Royal Nitwits than Registered Nurses.
But really - who wants a nurse running IV’s who can’t get her head around the ideal of molarity?
Astroprof on October 18, 2006 at 1:40 pm: 7
Avidea, I am not sure that you can lay this all at the feet of one group. You have one side of the spectrum using the schools to teach their agenda rather than the basics, and the other side responds by mandating “accountability,” which is always defined as stupid standardized tests. The students end up knowing only how to take tests. Also, there seems an attempt to make students “feel good”, by making things easy. One school district here abolished the grade of D because of emotional harm that it does to the kids. Then, they announced how good they were doing because the school’s GPA went up the following year (everyone who would have gotten a D instead got a C). So, I think that the source of the problems is systemic throughout the schools. It will take a major change to fix, and I fear that such changes will not be forthcoming.
avidea on October 18, 2006 at 2:54 pm: 8
I should have written the influence of Republicanism in popular culture where self-gratification is the central and exclusive motivation.
Conservatives as a whole think that facts don’t matter, what matters is proof that you can pay for something and, to them, that’s all a diploma is.
The problems you mention with the faculty are likewise the result of the influence of popular conservatism, a phenomena where non-conservatives have swallowed the agenda Republicans claim for them and find themselves working determinedly to validate nonsensical positions because they think this is having a public dialogue or conversation. Which it isn’t, because, to a Republican, it’s all a big joke and if you seriously engage in the dialogue they set for you, the joke’s on you.
leetcharmer on October 23, 2006 at 11:52 am: 9
I am a student in one of your classes — I know of the epidemic you speak of, first hand — but I don’t support it. I found an article here that may be of interest to you as to why students of today may be behaving as you have described.
http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm
Stephen on October 23, 2006 at 5:49 pm: 10
Kids are kids. Maybe they just want to see what they can get away with.
(Never use a preposition to end a sentence with.)
When i was in (engineering) school, i was interested in gaining competence. That’s not the same as good grades. So, when it was clear for one class that only half of the homework could be done in the given time, and that half done homework did not get a passing grade, and that it was really bloody clear if it was right or not, i stopped handing it in. Fortunately, enough work could be done so that the tests could be passed, and passing the tests was good enough. Oddly, there was homework past the last exam, and in the follow on course, it was clear that i was the only one who had done even half of it, in a course with 110 students. How? There was an exam the first day. Four questions. I got a 97%. The next highest score was 67%.
If i was there for grades, i might have argued what the 3% was all about.
average professor on November 1, 2006 at 2:46 pm: 11
avidea, puh-leeze. I agree with astroprof, there is fault at all points in the political spectrum. And if you are trying to say that college faculty are, in general, strongly influenced by Republican viewpoints, then you and I have had vastly different experiences.
I have the fortune to teach courses in two distinct disciplines, one in engineering and one in non-engineering technology, and it’s interesting to me how different student attitudes towards grades and performance are. The engineering students are usually pretty “type A”, and generally feel like the main thing is to get the right answer (even if they don’t really understand the answer). The technology students seem to think that the main thing is to just know basically the way things work (even if they don’t pay enough attention to be able to get the right answer).
I appreciate having to deal with both types of students, because it makes me a better facilitator to both styles of students. I want the engineers to not only know how to get the right answer, but also why sometimes there is no “right” answer or several “right” answers, or “right” answers that don’t work anyway. And I want the technology students to know that usually the answer matters.
Astroprof on November 1, 2006 at 4:04 pm: 12
Average Professor, I agree. There is a distinct difference in the mentality of the physics and engineering students from those that are technology students. There is an even bigger difference between those groups and the average non-science major. I have taught all three groups, and it keeps me on my toes!
But, the biggest problem with all of them is that they are coming to college having been trained only in how to regurgitate material on poorly written standardized tests. They are not taught to understand the material.
The other problem is that, in an attempt not to leave anyone behind, classes are slowed down to accomodate the slower students. This leaves the top students unchallenged and bored, and ill prepared for what they will experience in college. I honestly don’t know how to fix the system, but I do know that it is broken. And, worse, it just seems to get more broken with any attempt to fix it. I think that is because the people fixing it fall into two groups: those that don’t understand education, and those that understand educational theory, but don’t understand the subject matter. Those who know both the subject matter and how to teach it are ignored.