The Fora: A Higher Education Community

Quote from: fishbrains on May 10, 2025, 02:27:30 PMStockman--Prepare yourself for some which-came-first-the-chicken-or-the-egg kind of discussions.

Admin: "Students who are more engaged in active learning are more likely to succeed."

You: "How can we engage them in active learning if they don't attend class?"

Admin: "Students who are more engaged in the active learning process are more likely to attend class."

You: [beginning to fashion a weapon out of paperclips with your trembling fingers] "But if they don't attend . . ."

Admin: "If they are active learners, they are more likely to attend."

You: "But . . ."

Admin: "And therefore more likely to succeed."

You: [head explodes. all is darkness and eternal peace]

Have fun!

Gaaaah!



Unless everyone is doing active learning, it is HARD to do the work to convince the students that active learning is good for them.  If the admin wants to actually help, they would pay for pedagogy & active learning workshops/conferences/retreats. Support good change.

RE: students doing objectively worse

I chart avg and median score for my exams and final grades, and the medians this semester weren't all that lower than the previous 3. The biggest difference is that the 70-89% range shrank, with only a few more As and a lot more Ds and Fs. Usually no one outright fails (survivor bias, as the bad students usually drop. Not so in 2025).

A few factors: attendance was not great overall, a resistance to buying the readings in print copy / students relying on electronic copies generally did less reading, and change in academic misconduct that allowed the college to adjudicate ChatGPT papers (I had 6 cases out of 75 students).

Anecdotally faculty across the college see the same issues: absenteeism, apathy, laziness. Most attribute it to the COVID years. I'm not drawing any concussions yet (my grades have risen since 2020) and I tend to think this semester is an anomaly. But I also suspect it's a result of changes in our recruiting and admission policies

Quote from: RatGuy on May 11, 2025, 04:51:08 AMAnecdotally faculty across the college see the same issues: absenteeism, apathy, laziness. Most attribute it to the COVID years. I'm not drawing any concussions yet

Appropriate for the topic thread, even if unintentional

Quote(my grades have risen since 2020) and I tend to think this semester is an anomaly.

A thought just occurred to me. Is it possible that due to social media there may be much more term-by-term or class-by-class variation in behaviour, as people are much more influenced by what they think their immediate peer group is doing?

If so, the roller coaster will get worse over time.

My Spring term Freshmen are struggling.  They came in low in both math and writing so they've been taking "preparation classes".  The ones that passed those are now taking bio + lab and chem + lab.

I'm putting in more scaffolding and reminders than usual.  The average on the midterm was lower than previous quarters.  Fewer really high As and more students in danger of not passing a class where it is HARD to fail (as long as you go to class & complete the assignments you're going to pass the lab).

My current best guess is that since these students were in middle school when the pandemic hit, they missed out on learning the essential science/reading/math foundations.  And just passed on through to graduation. 

Quote from: RatGuy on May 11, 2025, 04:51:08 AMRE: students doing objectively worse

[...]

Anecdotally faculty across the college see the same issues: absenteeism, apathy, laziness. Most attribute it to the COVID years. I'm not drawing any concussions yet (my grades have risen since 2020) and I tend to think this semester is an anomaly. But I also suspect it's a result of changes in our recruiting and admission policies

It's not the Covid pandemic. We've raised a generation of idiots, and universities now admit students who would not have earned high school diplomas fifty years ago.

I'm in the USA.

I'm just gonna skip right over the weirdness of the replies, and get to the result.

Here is what the students actually did.  Measure in inches (to the nearest 1/2 inch), later realize they were supposed to use metric, and then convert.  So, lots of duplicate values b/c of the lack of precision in the original measurements, followed by ridiculous precision b/c they don't understand significant digits.

Conclusion: Headbanging without malfeasance.

Quote from: FishProf on May 11, 2025, 11:20:11 AMI'm just gonna skip right over the weirdness of the replies, and get to the result.

Here is what the students actually did.  Measure in inches (to the nearest 1/2 inch), later realize they were supposed to use metric, and then convert.  So, lots of duplicate values b/c of the lack of precision in the original measurements, followed by ridiculous precision b/c they don't understand significant digits.

Conclusion: Headbanging without malfeasance.

So, just supreme doofus behavior + poor math skills. 

Quote from: the_geneticist on May 11, 2025, 12:00:47 PMSo, just supreme doofus behavior + poor math skills. 

Spot on.

Students are working on their projects.  Today, we asked them to brainstorm possible questions they could ask & answer using the class set of data.

stu: so, I can use just my [basket]?
me: no, you need to choose a variable from the class data and analyze all [baskets] from that category.
stu: this is very open ended!  Just choose a variable? Like temperature? [note that is NOT one of the variables in the data set]
me: ah, no. [explains with more detail]
stu: Do you have example questions?
me: yes, look at the project guidelines.  There are 2 examples
stu: I'm so confused.  Can I just use my [basket]?
me: no
stu: can I do [not the project]?
me: no
stu: but what you are asking sounds hard.  Can't I just use my [basket]?

Oh stu, if only saying "but that sounds hard" was a way to get out of learning new things

Today's Timeline
0830 - Final Exam begins
0930 - Student emails claiming she overslept and can she come to the test now and have the full testing time
1005 - I see email and reply exam ends at 1230
1130 - second email from student, if I came now, do I get the full 4 hours?
1205 - I reply no, exam ands at 1230
1235 - Student email, I didn't want to interrupt the people taking the exam

so, you'll just fail the course? 

Quote from: FishProf on May 13, 2025, 01:24:30 PMToday's Timeline
0830 - Final Exam begins
0930 - Student emails claiming she overslept and can she come to the test now and have the full testing time
1005 - I see email and reply exam ends at 1230
1130 - second email from student, if I came now, do I get the full 4 hours?
1205 - I reply no, exam ands at 1230
1235 - Student email, I didn't want to interrupt the people taking the exam

so, you'll just fail the course? 

Possible she may have failed it if she took the exam.

Well within the realm of possibilities.  Most likely she would've done -meh-. 

Hmmm.... spork and geneticist are both right.   

We were graduating from hs kids who could not have gotten a college diploma 40 years (that was when I graduated hs, and I saw many such kids, though fewer of my hs classmates went a/o completed a college degree than could have done so successfully).   Many of the deficits I and others around here, of American hss, were in embryo then, some of them were probably already in adolescence (although there are a few things about hs ed in this country that have actually improved since then-- we could probably brainstorm as to what those things might be).  The stark variegation in hs quality was at least as bad then as it is now, too.

That said, well, the pandemic changed things about k12 ed, and more or less none of those changes were for the better.  We can whine about cell phones in classes, helo parenting, TikTok, etc etc etc, up the wazoo, but none of these things have been as pernicious in effects on k12 ed, at least in this country, as was covid.   And while people seem to be realizing that maybe one should not let kids play with cellphones in class, or, indeed, maybe the 6yos do not need smartphones in the first place, Americans seem to have entered into a great forgetting wrt covid (and not just wrt education AND covid), and neither party seems to want to do anything of substance to rectify the educational deficits caused thereby.   And every year we do not do that is a year lost for most of the affected children.

LOL, fishbrains. Yeah, I can totally see that happened.

Quote from: the_geneticist on May 10, 2025, 03:57:53 PM

Quote from: fishbrains on May 10, 2025, 02:27:30 PMStockman--Prepare yourself for some which-came-first-the-chicken-or-the-egg kind of discussions.

Admin: "Students who are more engaged in active learning are more likely to succeed."

You: "How can we engage them in active learning if they don't attend class?"

Admin: "Students who are more engaged in the active learning process are more likely to attend class."

You: [beginning to fashion a weapon out of paperclips with your trembling fingers] "But if they don't attend . . ."

Admin: "If they are active learners, they are more likely to attend."

You: "But . . ."

Admin: "And therefore more likely to succeed."

You: [head explodes. all is darkness and eternal peace]

Have fun!

Gaaaah!



Unless everyone is doing active learning, it is HARD to do the work to convince the students that active learning is good for them.  If the admin wants to actually help, they would pay for pedagogy & active learning workshops/conferences/retreats. Support good change.

Well, yes, they arranged for a workshop.... on days and at times I have class. Not sure how that's supposed to work or who's going to sign up, since probably just about everyone in that Chair's fiefdom is teaching on those days and at those times. I'm sure it will be our fault somehow.

Quote from: kaysixteen on May 13, 2025, 04:07:14 PMHmmm.... spork and geneticist are both right.   

We were graduating from hs kids who could not have gotten a college diploma 40 years (that was when I graduated hs, and I saw many such kids, though fewer of my hs classmates went a/o completed a college degree than could have done so successfully).   Many of the deficits I and others around here, of American hss, were in embryo then, some of them were probably already in adolescence (although there are a few things about hs ed in this country that have actually improved since then-- we could probably brainstorm as to what those things might be).  The stark variegation in hs quality was at least as bad then as it is now, too.

That said, well, the pandemic changed things about k12 ed, and more or less none of those changes were for the better.  We can whine about cell phones in classes, helo parenting, TikTok, etc etc etc, up the wazoo, but none of these things have been as pernicious in effects on k12 ed, at least in this country, as was covid.   And while people seem to be realizing that maybe one should not let kids play with cellphones in class, or, indeed, maybe the 6yos do not need smartphones in the first place, Americans seem to have entered into a great forgetting wrt covid (and not just wrt education AND covid), and neither party seems to want to do anything of substance to rectify the educational deficits caused thereby.   And every year we do not do that is a year lost for most of the affected children.

I think all of those factors influencing the decline of high school education were basically accelerated by covid. Just like online learning was a thing before covid, where the technology and infrastructure saw rapid advancement due to covid, in the same way all of the challenges like cellphones got amplified by people basically living online during covid.

Covid was more "catalyst for" than "cause of" the problems.