How do professors handle students who would rather not be there—the disengaged, the unprepared, the slackers, or the merely uninterested? Five professors share their approaches.
Jason Fertig, Assistant Professor of Management, University of Southern Indiana
I aim to direct my energy towards students who are intellectually curious. I also want my “A”s to signal the production of something substantive.
To achieve these goals, I utilize pedagogy that arose out of my study of the martial art of Aikido. Aikido, in its physical practice, involves redirecting the force of an attacker to respectfully subdue the attack. I assert that teachers can increase their effectiveness “by absorbing the energy sent by their current students,” rather than meeting it head-on.
In conducting my classes, I offer a menu of assessments: tests, editorials, and papers. I tell students up front that if all they want is a C in the class, just take the tests and get 70 percent or higher (no need to write any papers). Thus, I accept, rather than fight the idea that some students are just there for the piece of paper. Then, I aim to make that piece of paper a valid measure of the holder’s skills.
The tests are reliable in measuring competency; passing the class certifies a basic level of proficiency (there is no free-riding just because one opts out of the papers). Additionally, having fewer paper submissions allows me to read only papers from students who really want to write them, and to coach those students towards mastery.
This practice is efficient and reliable. The efficiency comes from the direction of mental energy towards motivated students. The reliability comes from the design of good assessments. Students that choose to do less work (i.e., no papers) earn lower grades, yet they cannot pass without demonstrating some competency. Proper evaluation is so critical in this age of grade inflation.
My grade distribution looks normally distributed around a C average at the end of the semester, and it’s always amazing that students choose to get a C rather than do any work to get higher. It’s too bad that won’t get on their transcripts.
Patricia Cerrito, Professor of Mathematics, University of Louisville
In the fall of 2008, I introduced mastery requirements into my College Algebra class. Students who turned in shoddy work just had to redo it. This policy requires more time and effort on my part because I see the student’s work multiple times instead of just seeing it once. However, the improved results make the extra work worthwhile.
All the exams were pass/fail, but passing required a score of at least 80 percent. There were eight tests in the 15-week semester, and students had many opportunities to take tests on older material. Students received their final grade based on the portion of the material that was mastered. Students were also required to complete a homework set each week to keep them focused on the subject matter.
Many of the students were determined to achieve an A grade; some took tests on the same material as many as five times before passing. Mastery didn’t always come easily, but most students were willing to work hard to achieve it. They came to the tutoring lab more often and devoted more time to the homework sets.
Only 16 students out of 150 withdrew and 35 percent achieved the grade of A, which required mastery of all course material. Typically, only 5 percent of the students enrolled in College Algebra achieve an A. In the past, the combined withdrawal rate plus the rate of failure usually ranged from 35-50 percent in the course, but with mastery learning, my failure-plus-withdrawal rate was under 20 percent.
Students are enrolled in College Algebra to complete a degree requirement. Almost none of the students actually wants to be in the class. Not all of them appreciated the mastery concept. A few believed that they could not achieve the 80 percent threshold at any point and let me know that they thought I was grading this way just to set them up to fail. Fortunately, only a small minority were unwilling to work within the framework I set up, and who wanted a passing grade regardless of effort. Most were willing to try, and most rose to the challenge.
These comments are adapted from Dr. Cerrito’s April 7, 2009, article “Grading, the Old-Fashioned Way”.
John Baden, Chairman, Foundation for Research in Economics and the Environment
When I taught at Indiana University, I would give an early exam and grade it hard. I evaluated writing as well as logic and factual content. Because I didn’t teach required courses (some had interesting titles such as “The Political Economy of Communal Societies), there was no departmental pressure to maintain student numbers; the courses were idiosyncratic and ephemeral, intellectual desserts not main courses. If students wanted to drop the class, that was okay with me.
In the 1970s I ran the Environmental Studies program at Utah State University. This was an interdisciplinary department that attracted students from across campus. Few students were sympathetic to my classical liberal perspective and many considered themselves liberal-leftists. They were children playing war against markets, property rights, and the rule of law.
My grading policy was well known and included on my syllabus for each course.
I always assigned short essays, never multiple-choice exams, and some students received Ds and Fs. In their view, the grades reflected my “conservative” bias, or, among more sophisticated graduate students, my “false consciousness.”
I developed a standard, two-part response to their complaints.
First, if they wanted, I would ask two economists in the College of Natural Resources to reread their essays and give me their critiques. These economists, although friends, were dependent on governmental grants from state and federal agencies and hence not sympathetic to my approach. But they had credibility among students.)
As a second alternative, they could submit their essays to any edited paper or magazine. If it was published, they would receive an A. (Given the paucity of edited publications, this may not be a viable option today for anyone can publish anything on the web.)
I don’t recall ever changing a grade.
Marcia Smith Marzec, Professor of English, University of St. Francis
Fifteen years ago, we began a program of three core courses, required of all freshmen and sophomores. One of the courses was designed to introduce students to the “great books” and to the perspectives of various cultures that preceded us. Originally, we chose an anthology consisting of excerpts from classic Western thought and a short paperback of a Greek play. It was our intent to give students selections from a given culture’s philosophy, theology, poetry, drama, history, etc.
But our student evaluations were abysmal: We were told that the literature was boring, the readings were too hard, there was too much reading, and, most important, the syllabus was confusing and the works disconnected from one another.
We drastically revised the course and came up with a phenomenal success. Students now read only ten texts, but they read them in their entirety.
The first day of class, we go over the syllabus, which includes the following description of the course: “The course…will contain a thematic emphasis: What is the nature of human life? What is the ‘good life,’ i.e., what is the best way to live? What is the relationship of the person to others, to the world, and to God?” Afterward, we ask the students for a “writing sample,” using the prompt: “What is the good life?” or “What is necessary for happiness?”
Homework for the next class includes reading a modern essay by William J. O’Malley entitled “Happiness.” When students arrive for that class, I have a list of all the items I have culled from their previous writing samples, such as financial security, a career one enjoys, being loved, and so forth. This leads to discussion. I am happy if in this class period we can merely ferret out the many issues that the course will address: happiness, love, free will, evil, suffering.
The course readings start with Gilgamesh, and Genesis and go on to include Plato’s Symposium, Euripides’ Iphigeneia at Aulis, the Aeneid, the Book of John, St. Augustine’s Confessions, Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, St. Bonaventure’s Itinerarium, and Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde.
The students are able to see clearly the thematic unity of the course. One wrote, “This course’s syllabus was arranged well in that it started with a basic idea that progressed and deepened with each reading.” Another observed, “What I liked about the course was that each idea was introduced in a different way. The books we read had many of the same topics, but each touched on a unique aspect of the issues.”
The course evaluations, the discussions, and the students’ daily logs have shown us that the revised course has been successful, that it is getting students to intregrate knowledge, and to synthesize ideas, particularly on the subjects of love, free will, and the nature of the human person. The course is still a work in progress, but at least we know that we’re on the right path.
Tim Clydesdale, Professor of Sociology, College of New Jersey
As a sociologist, I have interviewed hundreds of teens and young adults, in order to better understand their lives and social worlds, as they graduate from high school and enter various post-secondary institutions. I have also talked with college alumni to learn what knowledge our graduates retain and what skills they actually use.
Intellectual curiosity is not dead among youth, just dormant. Despite minimal subject retention, students do make cognitive gains as a result of their educational experience, and these gains can help them understand and appreciate more complex lines of argument. Also, I have seen young adults grow enthusiastic about new fields of study because these fields were presented in an engaging manner. Educators need to change their expectations of students, but efforts to simply raise them will backfire, as lowered expectations are deeply embedded in the institutional patterns of schooling.
I suggest, rather, that educators create new expectations about what students can learn and do. These new expectations should begin with helping students identify their interests and then move to (1) engaging those interests to develop cognitive and communicative skills, (2) connecting those interests to existing bodies of knowledge, and (3) applying knowledge in practical and creative ways.
As a result of my interviews with high school seniors and college freshmen, I have upgraded my expectations in freshmen-level courses, because freshmen expect substantially more difficult courses in college than they had in high school. I also begin with sociological studies of social identity and interpersonal relationships because they engage incoming students far more than macrohistorical theories of social order. And I draw from teen and college student culture to illustrate sociological concepts.
My interviews with recent college graduates pushed my attention (and standards) for writing, speaking, and analysis even higher, as these skills are critical for the workplace and graduate school. Developing these skills, along with quantitative and problem-solving skills, deserves more pedagogical attention than covering a set of valued disciplinary “facts.” The latter undergo constant revision, while intellectual skills are essential for productive living in a knowledge society.
There is, to be sure, a common core of knowledge that every culture must transmit if it is to persist. But that body of knowledge is far smaller than curriculum experts suppose, and its retention will be higher if students find their education to be generally interesting, engaging, and above all useful.
Yes, I am quite concerned about the consequences of narrowed perspectives among American young and American society in general, but I am convinced that educators waste their breath if they challenge these during the first year after high school. During that year, the vast majority of young adults are too involved in daily life management to manage anything else. The prime years for challenging American youth to broaden their perspectives are the sophomore and junior years, both in high school and college.
Tim Clydesdale’s thoughts are amplified in his book The First Year Out: Understanding American Teens after High School (University of Chicago Press, 2007).