Teaching, Learning, and Education – Page 3

Quiz Time

As I return to classes, I would like to share an item that got lost in the holiday shuffle: a recent study “showed that giving brief online quizzes at every class meeting in an introductory psychology class boosted student performance.” I have no doubt that this will translate to many other classes.

Allow me to explain some of the obvious reasons this is so. First, by having a graded event every class period, the expectation is set that students must show up every day. You can’t just read on your own, show up for exams, and expect to get a good grade. Showing up in class gives students the chance to hear a different explanation than is in the textbook, the chance to ask questions and hear other questions answered, and additional exposure to sometimes complex subjects.

Second, not only does each student know he or she must show up to class, he or she must show up prepared! It is understood that you’ve got to read and study and make an honest attempt to understand what’s actually been covered so you can do well on that quiz. That’s a different mindset than rolling out of bed and slouching through class.

And finally, it gives the professor valuable feedback on what students understand — while the coverage puts this onus on the student, I feel it’s a two-way street. If the majority of students miss one question, the instructor can and should re-teach the material while it is fresh. A new angle on how to present the topic can be explored. Students then have a fighting chance of understanding the material before finals. In many disciplines, harder concepts rest on top of previously learned ones, so this step is vital towards keeping everyone on track.

So yeah, no surprise that daily quizzes are good for learning outcomes.

What I Learned This Semester

The fall semester is over and grades are filed. Let me fill you in on just a few new discoveries! Maybe it will help you impress a friend while watching Jeopardy someday. Ok, probably not.

General:

You can always find a place to park on campus for an 8 AM class. The bad news is that it’s still an 8 AM class.
It’s a little shocking how many people will simply stop showing up to class without bothering to drop.
Equally amazing is the number of people who plan on taking a hard class twice to get a better grade.
Online coursework takes discipline that many people simply don’t possess. “Oh, I don’t have to worry about those 3 assignments until December!” Right. That’s the same December when you have all those finals, remember.
You can’t expect people to know how to pronounce words in a language they don’t speak.
It seems like every new textbook comes with a DVD or passcode to a website of “helpful” study materials. Most of these are not quite as “helpful” as advertised.

History:

I had mistakenly thought the old Lincoln Highway followed the route of US 30 west to Oregon. Turns out it changes route numbers and goes through Northern Nevada.
If you tried to turn the events surrounding the Cal Neva in the late 50s and early 60s into a novel, nobody would believe it.
It turns out that Nevada voters in 2014 get to decide on a change to our State Constitution to allow greater taxation of the mining industry.
Most people don’t think to use hyperlinks in lieu of citations.

Spanish:

In a Spanish class, nobody expects you to know Japanese.
Flashcards are still important for learning a foreign language.
“Textbook/Workbook” is a nice way for a publisher to make everybody buy new books.

Anatomy and Physiology:

Reticular connective tissue looks a little like a cherry tree in blossom.
There’s an area of your brain that handles a reflex to turn your head and look before you even form the question “What was that streak of orange and roaring noise?” Of course in Vegas it’s a coin flip whether that particular combination is a tiger or a sports car. Likewise about which would be more dangerous to encounter while walking about.
Fancy color pictures of cadavers aren’t as useful as you’d think for learning anatomy.
Weight training does not produce more muscle cells, just muscle cells with more stuff in them.
Beta blockers are great for recovering heart attack patients, but lousy for anybody trying to improve their blood pressure through diet and exercise.

Ok, here’s the In Closing bits: you know I wouldn’t deprive you of a bunch of NSA, privacy, and Edward Snowden links, right?; on wages, fair wages, poverty, homelessness, and related issues; loophole; Palestinians; the next big fight in CONgress; worst CEOs; and just in time for Christmas, bad gifts.

ZOMG! He’s Asking About the Future!

My local news channel decided to cover some information about the Arapahoe High School Shooter, specifically using this “chilling” — that’s Channel 8’s descriptor, not mine — quote:

During a 2010 9NEWS town hall style debate, the then-freshman was selected from the audience to ask a question.

“What would you like your legacy to be,” Pierson asked.

Concerned about his own legacy even then, he told friends he had big future plans that were centered around his passion for speech and debate.

Right. So let me make sure I’ve got this right. Every kid who plans for the future might be planning something sinister for the future? Do we lock them up, maybe get them mandatory counseling so they won’t worry about planning for the future any more?? See, the thing that confuses me is that I’ve been told since I was 12 that “winners” and “successful people” have goals they work towards, perhaps even seeking to leave a “legacy” behind in the world. Does that make Napoleon Hill a subversive writer? What about Paul J. Meyer?

What about kids who “had very strong beliefs about gun laws and stuff”? Should we lock them up? Do we need a suicide watch on any student thrown off a school team? Is attending Bible meetings a warning sign?

It’s easy to force pieces into a puzzle when you know what it looks like at the end. Human brains are built for pattern recognition. “In retrospect, there were warning signs.” Sure, warning signs that would apply to millions of people who do not bring a weapon to school with the intent of killing someone.

Many thanks to all those who made this incident as short as possible with few victims. Let’s stop glorifying murder now, shall we?

More Things I learned

By the way, data released by the makers of the ACT confirm what I saw in person: many students simply aren’t ready for college. And it looks like I am not the only one who thinks some people should reconsider whether college is a good idea, especially if it means a mountain of student loan debt.

Life got in the way of full posts, so let me give you the Short version.

In Public Speaking class I learned:

I am a better than average speaker. I realize I should probably have known this already, but there are some really bad speakers out there. Hit Youtube and enter something like “persuasive speech” if you don’t believe me.
It is possible to speak for 5 minutes on almost any topic whatsoever, as long as you have some modicum of preparation.

In Sociology I learned:

Good science fiction/fantasy often deals with issues of sociology.
Sociology tries hard to be a scientific discipline, but it is saddled with some terminology that means something very different to the common person than to the sociologist.
Some people don’t want to hear that there might be more to their religion than the narrow doctrine taught in their place of worship.

In Biology I learned:

I should really have taken chemistry in high school.
Some people feel it is an instructor’s job to spoon feed information.
Red blood cells have no nuclei.
What it really means that HIV is a retrovirus.

No in closing today.

Things I learned

Last night, I completed my first semester of for credit college classes in a couple decades. Over the next few days, I will be sharing a few of the things that I have learned. Let’s start with generalities:

This is the sort of college where “admissions requirements” are pretty much “has a valid credit card.” As a result, there is a great variety of students: the fresh out of high school; the “holy crap my parents were right years ago when they told me I needed more education” crowd; more than a few recently discharged Veterans of varying ages; people embarking on an Xth career; etc.. In some ways, the place is remarkably like a less-funny episode of Community.
Some have the drive to succeed, and some just don’t. Some have the desire, but not the skill set. Some have the desire, but life gets in the way.
An alarming number of my classmates have woefully inadequate reading skills. That is despite the fact that free reading (and math) placement exams are available, and there are plenty of opportunities to improve one’s skills. Without the ability to quickly read and understand things like textbooks, assignments, and tests, a student is doomed.
Not surprisingly, the parking lot was much emptier the last week of class than the first week.
The irregular attendance of some of my classmates baffles me. They all paid good money for this class; you would think they would at least try to maximize their chance of passing!
Not all counseling departments are created equal. Some are there to get you the help you need — this is partly a matter of self-preservation, since that makes the student more likely to continue to pay tuition. Others are there to point out hoops that need to be jumped, come back when you’re done.

Next, we talk about my classes.

In Closing: book; or, we could admit that something that needs wheels is by definition not a carry on; or, we could enforce existing law; yeah I remember those days; blood pressure; what?; is this going to be what reins in drones?; 97% of scientists agree; and truth… Truthdogg.

Irrelevant?

Parts of the following are anonymized for what should be obvious reasons.

After class recently, I overheard a classmate loudly complaining that this particular class was “a waste of money” on material that “I’ll never use in [career].” I had other places to be, and better things to do than set this young person straight.

First, the class in question is a prerequisite to the degree program. You can’t even apply for the program until this class is completed with a decent grade — and by the way, many people fail this class. So even if the information does turn out to be “useless,” it has to be learned and learned well.

Second, the follow-on class — also a prerequisite — builds on this material and is extremely relevant to the career path in question. If you don’t understand the first class, there is no point in attempting to take the second class. I hope never to encounter someone in that career that didn’t understand the material in the follow-on class.

And finally, if my dear classmate would pay attention, it would become clear that the only irrelevant thing in the class is the attitude. At least this person does not pose serious competition for the seats in the program.

I had noticed that some of my class materials make an effort to relate classroom material to the real world. Nice, but I would have thought that some things are obvious. Clearly not. It turns out that many young people just can’t see the relationship between “what I am doing now” and “what I want to be doing a decade from now.”

This was reinforced by a pair of items I came across. Apparently there are people who think even the English language is irrelevant, despite the fact that any decent job will require reading and writing at a level far above what I am seeing in the classroom.

In Closing: inequality; weight loss; personal finance; if it isn’t safe and educational, it doesn’t belong in a school; pay attention to the bottom chart; quack; megacommute; and astronaut wisdom.

I think I have a better idea….

So Clark County School District — the 5th largest school district in the nation — has a “successful” pilot of a program to keep track of students on school busses. Parents can theoretically find out whether their kids got on the bus, and where the bus is. Roughly 700 of the 110,000 students who daily ride the bus got special ID cards and were tracked for 4 whole weeks. Clearly something short of a representative sample. However, “because of financial problems, the district has shelved any large-scale program.”

Good for administrators for realizing that there were concerns about losing passes, and concerns about the costs of the system.

However, here’s the thing. There’s already a great technology in the hands of many middle school students and virtually all high school students that parents can use to keep track of their kids. Better yet, there is absolutely zero cost to the school district for this technology; most parents willingly — nay, eagerly — pay for implementation and all necessary equipment. I personally tested it for 4 years within the Clark County School District Transportation Department, and I feel certain that other parents here and elsewhere have similar experiences. In one case, I was even alerted to a wreck involving the school bus. This of course not only delayed pickup, but changed the pickup location. Use of this amazing technology saved the school district the time and expense of individual notifications to parents in most cases.

It’s called a cell phone.

Stop trying to reinvent the wheel, and stop pretending that a child’s RFID tag is necessarily in the same location as the child.

In closing: good call; inconvenient truth for anti-porn crusaders; Heinlein; I guess none of the researchers ever played the “telephone game”, or they could have saved a lot of research; so some busybody docs and pharmacists think they know more about women’s reproductive health than gynecologists; support a political cartoonist; hackers, crackers, and black swans; Expert Ezra; what could possibly go wrong; income inequality; the Buffett Rule; sure, there’s no such thing as inflation; and Cat Heaven Island. Enjoy an early Caturday.

When Will They Figure It Out?

This is what happens when schools tolerate bullying.

Almost 30 years of the Same Old Story, and somehow the People In Charge don’t get it. We don’t need “weapon free zones” and “zero tolerance policies”; we need an atmosphere of acceptance and adults who are willing to say “we treat others with respect around here.”

Any questions?

In Closing: as C3PO said “The damage doesn’t look as bad from out here”; bad bosses make everything worse; Teller tells; that’s odd; interesting workout; Heist; Reich is right (as usual); Haw haw, the little anti-Semite jab is what really makes it funny; and one of the last Republican voices of reason is going home. It must be hard to be a woman and a moderate and a Republican all at once.

A few words and one picture about student loans

Let’s start with the picture. It’s big, but it will open in a new tab/window.

Okay, got that? It’s a “financial disaster.” On average, a young person with a new bachelors degree has a midsized sedan in debt. Students whose professions require graduate school often have a modest single family house of debt. Surely you can see how this might turn even the most altruistic graduate into someone obsessed with making money.

Now then, go ahead and read about one way students can avoid a lot of the debt treadmill.

Homework

There has been much wringing of hands over the “Achievement Gap,” which is “observed disparity on a number of educational measures between the performance of groups of students, especially groups defined by gender, race/ethnicity, ability, and socioeconomic status. The achievement gap can be observed on a variety of measures, including standardized test scores, grade point average, dropout rates, and college-enrollment and -completion rates.” [Emphasis mine]. One of the specific goals of NCLB was to measure and close this gap once and for all — a noble goal, even if the methods are questionable.

Now, I am far from the first person to point out that homework can make the gap worse, but let me give you some concrete examples.

Imagine a high school student. He arrives home, and his Mom is waiting for him thanks to a flexible work schedule. He gets a snack — teenage boys are universally always hungry — and sits down to work on homework for several classes. At one point he needs help with his foreign language work; Mom studied that language and certainly knows enough to help him through grammar and vocabulary. Later he uses internet resources to find a news article for another class. At one point he is stumped by a science problem. While Mom doesn’t know the answer, she suggests that it’s a topic that doesn’t change a lot and might be in Dad’s college biology book. When Dad arrives home shortly, he is able to help the student with mnemonics, or clever ways to remember all that information. Later, Mom cooks a healthy dinner, and later still everybody goes to bed at a reasonable hour.

Now let’s look at all the obstacles he did not have:

He didn’t worry about getting home from school safely, nor about his safety in his upper-middle class neighborhood
There was plenty of nutritious food in the house
He did not have to supervise the homework of younger siblings
He was not responsible for housework, such as starting dinner before Mom and Dad got home
Someone was there to keep him focused on the task at hand when necessary
He did not need to be at an after school job to help the family finances
He had all the resources to do homework, such as pencils, paper and reference materials
His parents were college educated and could in fact help when he had trouble with homework
His parents could afford tutoring services if they were necessary
He had access to a computer and high-speed internet
His parents were both willing and able to see to it that his physical and academic needs were taken care of.

It’s clear to see why homework is sometimes just one more academic obstacle.

In Closing: on the economy; on being ripped off; on Medicaid; on honesty and civility and history; on the free market; on climate change; lost wages; and oops.