Just for information's sake, more than a decade ago I helped to create
the University of Kansas' Center for Teaching Excellence
(http://www.cte.ku.edu), and like other teaching faculty at KU, I follow
its well-thought-out, professional recommendations with regards to
assuring the consistency and fairness of exam grading. The grading of
400 exams containing up to 3-4 short answers and 1-2 essays can take the
better part of 12-15 hours or more even when we obtain the assistance of
as many as ten highly knowledgeable grading assistants who are already
serving as GTAs in the laboratory portion of the course.
A grading rubric that defines the "best" or "preferred" answers to the
questions in any exam is created and provided to all graders (which
include the teachers of record): there can after all be only a small
subset of completely correct answers to any given question, such as the
correct direction of heat energy or material flows in counter-current
exchange systems, or the correct direction of water flow in a plant's
xylem, or the correct absolute value of Avogadro's number, or the
correct equation for exponential population growth, or the correct
balanced equation for photosynthesis, or the correct name for the enzyme
that catalyzes the breakdown of lactose, or the correct definition for
gastrovascular cavity, or the major taxonomic characteristics that are
considered to be unique to a specific Order of plants (I'm sure that you
surely must see my point here).
Typically one or two graders (including both of the faculty members who
are the teachers of record) are then assigned a certain question, and
exam grading proceeds. If there is any concern about a particular
student's answer for any particular question, then the entire group
stops and deliberates/discusses whether the particular answer under
consideration was either correct (100% credit), partially correct (for
partial credit), or incorrect (0% credit). The grading rubric is
provided electronically to all students taking the course after the
exam, and each student then has further recourse by making a formal
appointment with the instructors of record to discuss any and all
questions for which they might dispute the grading.
Just curious: did you intend for your tone in this message to be as
hostile to academia, and as intentionally and deliberately derogatory as
I perceived it? If so, very tacky, and one might wonder whether you
have ever bothered to read the literature on exam grading and learning
assessment methods, or whether you have ever actually taught in the
classroom? Please explain clearly to me, and also to the readers of
ECOLOG, how the extremely lengthy, objective, completely transparent,
and highly deliberative grading process above might constitute
"professorial laziness". It is unfortunately very easy in an electronic
forum such as this to write a three-sentence zinger that is completely
without basis or merit.
Val H. Smith
On 1/19/2010 2:29 PM, Meenan, James wrote:
Let me see if I have this clear. You criticize students for asking you to "just tell me what I
need to know" and then you grade their essay questions by using a rubric (tell me what I want
to hear) that is "interpreted" by a GTA. Professorial laziness?
-----Original Message-----
From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news
[mailto:ecolo...@listserv.umd.edu] On Behalf Of Val Smith
Sent: Tuesday, January 19, 2010 9:28 AM
To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU
Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] now I've seen it all: Decline in education
Dave, you are not being unreasonable at all. The responses that you
mention stem from intellectual laziness and/or short-term-oriented
learning strategies. I, too, have had my students say, "just tell me
what I need to know", and it is very clear that they indeed wish to
shovel in the information, play it back to me on an exam, and then purge
it from their memory banks. The "ideal" of obtaining a broad education
is largely irrelevant for a substantial portion of the student
population, whose goal is simply to pass their exams and to get
acceptable grades /*now*/.
They also consistently ask me to prune or restrict the lecture content:
if a fact, concept, or idea will not appear on the MCAT, for example, it
is deemed irrelevant because it does not help with their short-term
goals (these same students forget that my General Biology course is
required of all Biological Science majors, and not just pre-Health
Science majors). This problem is particularly apparent during the
general botany and the general ecology portions of my 400-student
General Biology class, but I help them to /*see*/ the relevance of this
material by, for example, pointing out that the human gut is
functionally an ecosystem whose microflora obeys the known principles of
population and community ecology. One could equally well create
teaching slides which refer to the literature that links ecological
principles to outbreaks of Lyme disease, or other human pathogens. If
you /*show*/ them how and why a key concept or fact is relevant, they
are less likely to complain about it.
I have stopped pandering to this attitude entirely: I have stuck with
question-driven, active learning methods, and I simply accept the
increased probability that I will likely receive lower evaluation
scores. I also make it very clear within the formal wording of my
syllabus that mine is a very demanding and highly interactive class, and
that all exams will be based upon a mix of multiple choice + short
answer + essay questions (even in the 400-student class; we hire GTAs to
grade the short answer and essay sections of these exams after providing
each of them with a formal grading rubric). If they choose not to
enroll, and wish to wait for a semester when my course has a different
professor, then that is their own personal choice. My teaching rigor
has not stopped students from nominating me for the best teaching awards
that KU offers (some of which I have indeed won), confirming that the
student population still contains a significant number of students
(including pre-Health Science) who really /*do*/ care about learning,
and who respect my methods. Thankfully, I have and am completely
supported by an Upper Administration at KU that strongly believes in
teaching rigor, and thus I do not risk reprisals; I fear that this is
not always the case in every U.S. university or college, however.
Best wishes,
Val Smith
University of Kansas
On 1/18/2010 2:18 PM, David M. Lawrence wrote:
I watched my evaluation scores decline when I switched to "active
learning." I got tired of lecturing from powerpoints that the
students could memorize, regurgitate on tests, and quickly forget.
Somehow, it was unreasonable for me to expect the students to show up
for the lectures prepared and willing to participate in class
discussions. It was even more unreasonable for me to refuse to "just
tell us what we need to know," when they couldn't answer very simple
questions that I'd toss out to stimulate discussion.
It was also unreasonable for me to expect them to ask questions
relevant to the material we discussed in class. I had students
complain they didn't learn anything from me, but it seems to me that
if they weren't asking questions -- either in class, on class
discussion boards, or via e-mail -- they couldn't have been trying
very hard.
Maybe I am unreasonable...
Dave
On 1/18/2010 12:17 PM, James Crants wrote:
On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 2:04 PM, Val Smith<vsm...@ku.edu> wrote:
I lay much of this decline at the feet of their parents, who seem to
care
progressively less and less about knowledge. I recall a particularly
notable incident from over a decade ago, when my youngest daughter's
grade
school Principal retired. The new Principal unilaterally decided that
Science Fair projects for grades 2-6 should become completely
voluntary,
rather than remaining as a formal requirement that had long been
embedded in
this school's outstanding science preparation curriculum. On the
day of the
science project evaluations, I expressed dismay about this undesirable
change to another parent, who at that time was almost 20 years my
junior.
Her response was to shout across the room to her husband, "John
(not his
real name), this guy thinks everybody should have to do a science fair
project, and /that this is all about learning science/!" and she
then turned
to me to say, "If everyone has to do a project, that lowers the
chance that
our child will win the Best Science Project award. That's unfair
competition." And she walked away.
As I was reading your post, I was hoping you would mention the role of
parents in any decline in the quality of the American education.
I think it started with the baby boom. After the Depression and
World War
II, parents wanted the best for their children, but by providing the
best
materially, many raised children with an inflated sense of
entitlement and
self-importance. When these children raised my generation,
self-esteem was
seen as the most important quality you could promote in a developing
mind,
so many of us grew up feeling even more entitled and important.
Also, since
self-important people like today's parents don't respect authority
figures,
parents now tend to side with their children over teachers when there
is a
student-teacher conflict. Worse, since the entire class is, on average,
not as prepared as it should be to learn the material you're trying to
teach, disgruntled students can look to low average performance for the
whole class to assure themselves that it's your fault if they don't
get high
marks. With students and parents both blaming you for low grades,
and a low
class average apparently supporting their arguments, it's easiest to
lower
your expectations and standards. (And you'll probably get higher
teaching
evaluation scores if you do.) When you do, you end up passing on
students
who aren't prepared for the next level of education.
I understand the importance of questioning authority, and Wendee
Holtcamp's
example of childbirth in American hospitals attests to that
importance (though I believe the doctors rush the delivery because
they're
trained to believe it's best for the patient, not because they put their
spare time ahead of patient care). However, there's an important
distinction between questioning authority and assuming authority is
wrong.
With respect to the original conversation thread, while I certainly
agree
that it's a problem that people with the appearance of authority are
making
BS claims on television, I don't think that's the only major threat to
scientific authority. Another threat is the widely-held perception that
any scientist who thinks they know more than you do about their area of
expertise is arrogant (and wrong). Because scientific knowledge is
contingent on future results, scientists sometimes find themselves
admitting
that they were wrong about something. Unlike pundits or politicians,
scientists can't blame some other party, and people will hold onto those
errors as evidence that we're not as clever as we think we are, so
they can
ignore us if they don't like our message. Also, some people just
don't like
smart people much, so mistakes made by smart people are cherished as
proof
that they aren't so smart after all.
Mind you, I have little evidence for most of the generalities I'm making
here, but this is just my model of why students seem to be less prepared
than they used to and why scientific authority doesn't get the respect I
think it should.
Jim Crants
