Marc's was a most thoughtful message. I would like to address the part where he suggests that some people "just shouldn't be in college."
I taught for most of my ten year teaching career at UCLA, first both in the Psych department, where the average grade is C, and the Communication Studies department, where the average grade is B or B+ and almost as many students get A as B. But I've also taught at Community Colleges and non-traditional colleges, and right now I'm teaching a few classes at Neumann college in Pennsylvania, a Franciscan institution that prides itself on taking students who averaged C or D in high school and "giving them a chance" to make it in college I should add that I entered academia late in life--I'm 56 now, so I did most of my undergraduate work in the 1960s. I'm giving this long preamble for a reason. Having taken college classes 40 years ago, and having taught both the elite and the low-end of college students currently, I have given a lot of thought to changes in the quality of education over the years. I have seen the level of education in institutions shift radically. The quality of work in contemporary undergraduate institutions is similar to the quality that was expected of students of my generation in high school. The first year or two of graduate school now resemble undergraduate work of 40 years ago (I did my graduate work at UCLA, by the way). Moreover, there are many, many students enrolled in colleges currently who could never have been accepted 40 years ago. >From my teacher's perspective, I find it frustrating (maddening, actually) to teach under these circumstances, especially freshman classes. Students come in with no interest whatever in learning anything at all, lacking curiosity, hostile and sullen, maintaining that "Us vs. Them (teachers)" demeanor characteristic of high school students. (I admit that I didn't teach freshman at UCLA very often, so this may not be the case there, but I suspect it is.) However, looking at things more objectively, I can see that the entire purpose of college has changed over the decades, and what is happening is probably unavoidable, and perhaps (?) necessary. Colleges have become trade schools because trades have become more complex and more technological. People need to know more things to go to work than they used to. Employers won't hire people who have not demonstrated the qualities that are necessary for success in college. Liberal Arts have become increasingly marginal and considered by many (not by me) to be unnecessary. The notion that learning for its own sake is valuable is now quaint. So keeping people out of college because they lack intellectual skills or aptitude is a very different act now than it was 40 years ago. 40 years ago, such people could still look forward to useful employment and careers in areas that do not require higher learning. This is no longer true. The whole purpose of college has changed, and so the quality of student, and expectations teachers have of students have also changed. My two cents. Paul Okami ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marc Carter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, October 22, 2004 9:51 AM Subject: RE: improving student performance and grades through extra credit? Hi, All -- I don't have advice about this, but I do have some questions and comments. First, though, you should know of my incipient curmudgeonhood. I'm right on the edge. So, we present material to students, we generate exams that are based on material that we have largely covered (or at the least is available in the text), and we find that students by and large do poorly. I can at least add a datum to the discussion and mention that a mean of 50% in an intro class is certainly something I've experienced. A lot. There are a couple of things to note. Some students -- admittedly few, but some -- do very well on the exams. Either these students are freaks, or they're able to do the work and learn the material and show that learning on an exam. I'm not sure how fair it is to them if we do something that makes it possible for those who have not worked to score better. Somehow we have to maintain a way to recognize "outstanding" students. I agree that extra credit is a bad idea: if the students aren't gaining mastery of the material that the class is about, giving them credit for other work doesn't seem quite right. Adjusting all the grades often shifts the distribution up, but at some point we lose the whole idea of grades: grades should represent mastery of the material, and if someone is getting 50% of the material and walks out of a class with a passing grade, I'm not sure that's quite right, either. I do not like the idea of automatically discarding items that only a few students answer correctly; often those are the very items that we can use to discriminate the very good from the excellent or outstanding students. We have to look and see *which* few students have answered the question correctly. It seems to me that there (at least!) are a few of factors at work in causing poor performance. One, and this is especially true in new college students, is just an inability to study, or an inability to understand that college is hard and takes more time than high school. Often in high school most of the learning takes place in class; in college, understanding is the main aim of lectures and discussions, but the learning principally has to take place outside the classroom, in the loneliness of a textbook. So one thing that I do is explain that (perhaps too stridently) at the start of the year. Another problem is getting them to stay current, because when the exams roll around there's often too much material to learn in a single cram session. To that end I have frequent unannounced reading quizzes, but in those I allow them to use notes: if they read and make notes on the readings, they can deal with the quiz questions very well. And I'll often take questions from the previous class as well as the current class, to encourage them to periodically review their notes. That said, I'm not sure how much difference it makes. But I try. Another problem is that students who do realize that study takes time often don't understand *how* to study. To get at that, I often in intro classes start with the chapters on memory, and show them the data on study and how (relatively) easy it is to apply this to the class. This, for students who take it to heart, works. And if you do it at the start of the semester, when enthusiasm is highest, students can get into the habit of doing it that way -- often by the time chapters on memory come up in intro, they've settled into (bad) study habits. And then (here is where I expect to get some feedback!) there are just some students who probably shouldn't be in college, and my feeling is that inventing ways for them to pass my intro class doesn't really do them any good. Sometimes things just work out differently than we hope, and learning that is just part of life. And sometimes students who *should* be in college don't take it seriously, and need to learn that actions have consequences and they need to change something in order to make it work. These are fairly random musings, dashed off on my way to class. I don't know if they're at all helpful, but they're things that I've tried in an attempt to avoid having to fail a large proportion of my classes. But I *always* avoid extra credit. Cheers, m -- Marc Carter Baker University Department of Psychology Proud member of the Kansas Reality-Based Community --- The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. ----- Franklin Roosevelt ------------------------------------- Bike __o to _`\<,_ Work! (_)/ (_) ------------------------------------- -----Original Message----- From: Christine L. Grela [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, October 21, 2004 11:05 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences Subject: improving student performance and grades through extra credit? (sorry for any cross posting) Dear TIPSters, I think this topic may have been touched on before, but I would like to get some input. I have just had my Intro to Psych class finish their midterm exams, and overall, the class is scoring about 50%. In previous years, I have curved my exams (the high score so far is 115 out of 140), but I put a statement on the syllabus that grades would be determined by a 90, 80, 70% structure. However, given this scoring system, a good portion of my students are failing - which doesn't make either them or me happy. I don't want to reward students who haven't been putting time and effort into studying, but, on the other hand, I don't want to fail half of my class (or have them drop). So, does anyone have any recommendations? I was thinking of offering extra credit to students who corrected their own exams - but I wasn't sure how much to offer. I am also offering 10 points to students who completely a study guide prior to the exam. Again, I don't want to give credit to students who don't deserve it, and the midterm is only worth 30% of their grade, but it seems like they do need some additional help. Christine L. Grela Instructor of Psychology McHenry County College [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
