It feels wrong to me if most of my students fail. Traditionally, the class I'm teaching has a failure rate of at least 10% each semester. I currently only have one student failing (3%). Granted, they still have to take the final, and that could change things, but only 2 are in danger of failing. Most probably they'll get close to the grade they got on the first test (unless they study less). But of course, who knows!
I include a lot of assignments so that tests aren't weighted so heavily. I give extra credit because 1) they like it and 2) it gets them to do more work. If they do more work, they think more.... if they think more, they generally do better on tests and remember more.
I changed one assignment that NO ONE ever passed to be one that I helped walk them through and then they wrote a paper discussing it. It didn't seem like a good use of our time to give an assignment (the old one) that I knew they couldn't do. They would have disliked it and I would have really disliked grading it!
When I teach, I spend a lot of time thinking about what I will want them to remember in 10 years. These are the issues I test over. I don't generally test over the small details, but the big picture issues. I don't kid myself and think they'll remember the itty-bitty details. They won't. Some of my students still fail the tests, but a lot do really well. The average grade on the last test was a LOW B.
I don't think I'll get "tougher" or "meaner" but next semester, I do think I'll change my grading scale from 89-100, 78-88, 67-77, to 90, 80, 70. That change would make the average test score a C. I will also be making some changes to get them to to read the book. It drives me crazy that we can't have discussions, and when I ask questions they look at me blankly.
I think next semester I will have more confidence in what I'm doing and how to get them to learn even more. I don't like to just lecture. I don't think any one learns anything. I really don't like the bored faces I get. Does any one really like lecture? Does any one think they learn well from lecture?
2 comments:
Hey again! Thanks for answering the questions... very interesting. I am looking forward to the potty training post.
I love this: "I will also be making some changes to get them to to read the book. It drives me crazy that we can't have discussions, and when I ask questions they look at me blankly."
I can relate from a different point of view! I am one of the few who always do readings for classes. I have attended a few classes where I am obviously the ONLY person who has done the reading, and therefore the ONLY person who is answering questions!! It's always a little weird, but at the same time, at least everyone is seeing how much they missed by skipping the reading.
Your question about lecture:
In my third year psychology class about Language Development I had Dr. Furrow as a professor. And this man could lecture! I imagine it helped that I was really interested in the topic, but even still, he was great!
I think that the best quality about his lectures is that they didn't sound like lectures - he just sounded like he was talking. The man has had a 30 year career in the field, and has done some serious research in his day... the text book referenced him! The material he was teaching us was second-nature to him, and as he talked to us about it, it made perfect sense.
Also, he didn't often lecture straight. He would often be asking questions in his lecture... every few days we'd have a group or individual activity to do in class. Or he would lead us through a calculation or assessment process, which required us to be doing the actual work as he spoke and explained. We sometimes would play games, or, he would give a verbal multiple choice quiz to review last day's work.
I should also mention that he has been teaching this course for many, many years... so he's got it pretty perfected.
Of lectures generally, I find them useful at times, for some things. I don't like courses where lecture is the only method used. But, I do find I am able to learn from them.
Final thought: with lectures, you just listen and write down (assuming you're taking notes). With participation and active cognition activities, you hear the information, then you process it, assimilate and accommodate it into your current knowledge, and use it to answer a question or figure something out. The longer you're working with the information, in the more different ways, the better you learn and understand it!
You get an A on that comment Alice! Heh. Can you come take my classes and be a plant in the audience? Seriously!
Since cognition (cog dev) is what I'm teaching, I try to use methods to engage my students from what we know...
I explain why we're doing things certain ways... I add in a whole meta layer to the class about how I'm teaching... And still they don't read.
Sigh.
I was excited yesterday, during the review, they didn't ask me many questions, they had review questions and they spent the hour with their book and discussing the questions. Maybe they are FINALLY understanding the book is a valuable resource.
I'll check out Dr. Furrow. :-) Lectures like that are great fun to listen too, and some of them may engage you so much you continue to think about them in a deep way, but you have to keep the active stuff going (as you said!).
Post a Comment