The Fora: A Higher Education Community

Quote from: Stockmann on May 13, 2025, 05:22:14 PMLOL, 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.

You're just not being flexible! /sarcasm

Quote from: marshwiggle on May 14, 2025, 05:27:38 AM

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.

And distance education was a thing long before the internet became ubiquitous. Some of the profs who taught me took paper-based distance ed courses in the early 90s. They were sent a course package by snail mail, submitted assignments by snail mail, and wrote exams at a local testing centre.

Quote from: MarathonRunner on May 14, 2025, 04:40:57 PM

Quote from: marshwiggle on May 14, 2025, 05:27:38 AM

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.

And distance education was a thing long before the internet became ubiquitous. Some of the profs who taught me took paper-based distance ed courses in the early 90s. They were sent a course package by snail mail, submitted assignments by snail mail, and wrote exams at a local testing centre.

Youngster. I knew people who took distance ed courses in the 80's where the lectures were on cassettes. (And with the snail mail submissions, etc.)

You had cassettes?   Luxury

Ugh. The despair of a student working harder to f***up on an assignment.

I gave the students an outline for the essay, transparently, because I wanted them to focus on the content and I want an easy time finding what I need to evaluate. The submission portal tells them exactly the four documents to upload - their essay and PDFs of the three sources they used because I want an easy plagiarism check. Dear Student submitted four separate essay-like docs and no sources. Possibly that's all that an AI generator could do with the instructions. I guess my strategy worked?

We have 2 more weeks & students are starting to burn out/crash & burn.

I wish I could email them a "choose your own adventure" scenario.

Getting an A? Hurray! Keep up the good work & you'll be just fine.
Getting a B? You're doing great! Hang in there & get ready for your final
Getting a C? Better buckle down, go to every class, turn everything in, do well on the final and you'll probably be OK. 
C- or D+? [polite version of "if your grade on the final is like your grade on the midterm, you will not pass this class"]
D or lower? [got a time machine?]

Honestly, it is HARD to fail [baskets lab].  But a lot of you are managing to do so because you are skipping easy assignments, leaving questions blank on the worksheets, failed the "if you've been paying attention you will pass" midterm, or just not going to class.

Tl;dr Want to pass? You have to DO the class

I'm responsible for [baskets lab] every term.  I'll be seeing a lot of repeaters.

How not to succeed in a lab: https://www.gocomics.com/looseparts

I'm holding extra office hours this week since students are working on their presentations.
How many students so far?
Zero

This doesn't bode well

How many of your students do you think, at this juncture, could actually benefit from coming in to chat about the presentation, vs. those for whom it would just simply be too late, and those who will ace it anyhow?

I think this graduating student's final paper might be best described as "aggressively not formatted". Like, they had to put more energy into not using what they've learned in previous courses and formatting it so thoroughly not the discipline standard. It does track with their overall approach to the course, including not using the formatted template doc provided.

Students, I can *easily* tell if you have used AI to answer questions on your assignments.  The answers are vague, often wrong, but very well written.  Plus, I am entirely capable of putting the prompt into Grok/ChatGPT/etc and seeing what it generates.

We have given you all of the resources you need to answer these questions.  You have to USE them.  Yes, it's harder and takes longer, but so is learning anything new.

Did you really think I wouldn't notice or wouldn't call you out?

Dr. "Didn't fall off the turnip truck from the country this morning" Geneticist.

Quote from: teach_write_research on May 28, 2025, 09:45:52 AMI think this graduating student's final paper might be best described as "aggressively not formatted". Like, they had to put more energy into not using what they've learned in previous courses and formatting it so thoroughly not the discipline standard. It does track with their overall approach to the course, including not using the formatted template doc provided.

I had one of those almost a decade ago. The formatting was a cross between Jackson Pollack doing a portrait and stream-of-consciousness writing. Each paragraph would be indented or not, depending on Stu's mood; indents varied, so Stu must have hit the space bar at random. Justification was a foreign concept for Stu--it appeared that the Enter key was hit whenever Stu wanted to move on to the next line. Even the left side of the page was shaky at best. Stu made the mistake of complaining to Chair not only about the D for the course, but also about my teaching. When I showed Chair the copy of Stu's paper, Chair was livid, and wrote an appropriately curt response to Stu's complaint, copying me, noting that the paper should have earned a failing grade. The "Works Cited" page demonstrated Stu's unfamiliarity with the content and formatting for this page, despite the my going over this material over the course of several classes, and assignments, including essays where students had to include secondary sources. That was one of the most disruptive and unengaged students ever.

I met with the student who used AI on the assignment.  They admitted to it.

I asked have you watched the video to go with the assignment? no
Did they read the lab manual? no
Did they ask their TA or me for help? no

They did say that they regret the just copying and pasting, rather than actually reading the reply

*Bang! Bang! Bang!*

frickin' SkillSurvey recommendation form!

Quote from: teach_write_research on June 03, 2025, 10:21:35 AMfrickin' SkillSurvey recommendation form!

OMG I loath those things! I lot of students from my lab apply for RA positions in labs at academic medical centers and they all use those, rather than just letting you submit a LoR like you would for regular university RA jobs, even though the questions often make little sense for a research position. I can't imagine the PIs actually like that system either but are stuck with it.