Clearly our education system is in a period of transition. Economic shortfalls have led to educational budget cuts and legislative action, which will continue in several parts of the country. However, the greater transition is one that is much larger in scale and that is much less visible. Cultural change. Apathy has slowly crept up on us, and now students enter college with much different expectations than in the past. This leads to tension as educators are "in it for the learning," but students are not necessarily so. I have trouble putting my finger on why some students come to college at the time that they do; other students are clearly motivated to learn. The fact is, students of all kinds enroll. In this context, I am teaching Earth Science this semester, an introductory core science survey class for non-geography majors. The course is designed for freshman. Weather permitting, after several ice and snow days, we have made it through the first section. Here are some observations on the first month or so of class that led me to run a two-part experiment.
Attendance the first day was pretty good, enrollment shows that the class is full, which means that I can gauge attendance in a relative sense by the proportion of empty seats in front of me. Within two weeks, attendance stabilized at about sixty percent; it did not even mildly jump prior to the first exam. The questions on my mind included: where are these people? And, how will they be able to pass the first test?
A separate observation has to do with those students who attended; strategies for learning were quite diverse. I was impressed when one individual came up to me after class and conveyed to me that he was trying to come up with an effective study strategy; he voiced that he was rusty as a student (though he is young), and that he discovered that reading prior to lecture was better than reading after. Although this came as no surprise to me, I was really happy to see that this young man was thinking about what he was doing. He was trying! However, I was also struck (again) by the fact that so few students know how to study, making it all the more impressive that this person was trying to learn.
Others do not try very hard at all; many come in late, others have full-length dialogues with one another during my lecture, which is rude to those around them (more important) and disrespectful to me (also important). Some students text, others are online; I began to make my predictions for the first test. 40% of the student were not attending regularly, probably half of the remainder were not tuned in. I predicted that they would fail the first exam on average.
The first exam was a slow-motion train wreck. An average of 58% (without the 0% tests weighed in), far more Fs than Cs, no As, lots of discomfort during the test, some angry, confused reactions. As I watched these people take the exam, I asked myself; "Can I recognize good students?" I decided to try an experiment, since I had not known students long enough to bias sampling. I picked roughly ten people whom I recognized, and when I looked at them, I questioned "did I have a positive impression or not?" I put a small mark on their exam, and compared their test scores to the average for the class.
Based on these results, I can recognize good students. The 12 individuals I selected averaged 71%; their scores were significantly higher than the class average, with large effect size for the difference. I was relieved to find quite a bit of variability in my sample (43% to 88%). No doubt, the test was a hard one, but some people did well, and I was able (on average) to recognize them.
What habits did they exhibit? Well, they had been present, or I would not have recognized them. Second, I tend to notice attentive students who are taking notes, because fewer and fewer students do so. They were present, they were attentive, and they took notes. How could I encourage this in other students? I am not a fan of curving tests for no good reason, and poor performance is not a good enough reason. The typical curve gives free points for shoddy work. I decided to make a post-test pop quiz for two purposes. First, I needed to show the students that they are not actually (on average) "in it to learn." Those who truly want to learn the material might have a natural angry reaction to a frustrating first test, but they would look back over the material and try to figure out what they had trouble understanding. The quiz would allow me to highlight that process. Second, I added the number of points correct on the quiz to Exam 1 test grade. Those points were not free; they had to be earned.
The quiz may have helped provide some awareness for some students, but it did not help accomplish the ultimate goal of encouraging better classroom and study habits. I used to curve first exams by telling students "I'll curve this test as much as the class average improves on the next test" to encourage better study habits. Attendance is so poor this semester, however, that the good citizens who come to class would be hampered by those who never come. This semester I enlisted the help of the UNT Learning Center, which provides workshops on note taking, time management, and test taking. I set a bar (about a C grade), and told students: "if you reach that bar on each of the remaining tests" and if you "go to the Learning Center" and take one of their workshops, then I'll let you drop your lowest test score for the semester.
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