So first, my stern lecture about email etiquette has had a bonus effect - two more students have apologized (yes I had a rash of really rude emails), one unnecessarily, all students emailing about their test grades have done so from university accounts and included their full names, and all of the emails of started with a greeting. I didn't provide all that info in my lecture. They figured it out on their own. I took a leaf from here, and framed it as being pre-professionals and acting in a professional matter. It worked. They do KNOW how to behave even if they don't always DO it. Competence vs Performance in action.
I also had my first true honest to goodness plagiarism case that I could prove today. (I have had two other cases of cheating along the lines of having someone write the paper for them that I couldn't prove). I tried to put the fear of God into her. We talked about long term consequences to short term poor choices. Academic probation. Never do it again. I have no idea if I had any effect or not. No tears. No yelling. Not sure. I still have to write a letter for her file because even though we aren't going to pursue it up to the level of the college, I want to document it. Not looking forward to that tomorrow!
Showing posts with label teaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teaching. Show all posts
Friday, March 07, 2008
Thursday, March 06, 2008
RBOC Grading Jail Edition
- So I had two very interesting lunches this week with colleagues that I'll get around to blogging.. hmm over the weekend maybe. I want to process what I think happened at each one.
- My 3rd year review apparently went well. I won't know this for sure until next week either.
- I made an announcement today about professionalism in email because I had two different students flip out in email at me in the last week over VERY MINOR grade issues (along the lines of I don't even know why this was assigned anyway, but the grading was totally unfair and I absolutely can't imagine what you or the TA was thinking etc. etc.), two emails from random addresses with no name, and one that used IM abbreviations so much I couldn't figure out what they meant without googling the abbreviations. So get this, one of the students realized I was refering to her and apologized! Wow!
- I am in grading jail. I gave an exam last wed and promised students to return the exams in labs Thurs & Fri. I have graded 62 of 80 papers. I have to finish by 1:30 tomorrow. I can, but I don't want to.
- I can't tell you some of the funniest things from the exams without revealing field. But students are really funny when they don't know the answer and brain dump onto the page. Oh, I can tell one... We illicited things from subjects in our experiment....
- My grade distribution is currently 9 A, 20 B, 9 C, 14 D, 12 F. I expect most of the next 20 will end up in the B/D range from skimming short answer responses. Clearly the test was way freaking hard. Usually the distribution is more like 20 A, 20 B, 15C, misc D/F. If I curve so that the highest student get a perfect score, the distribution is: 19 A, 13 B, 14 C, 8 D, 5 F. Do I curve? For what it's worth the D students really didn't get it, but clearly many of them were almost C students and many of the B students were almost A students.
- I provide lots of small participation type grades on which students typically get perfect scores (a for effort and all that). Does that change your answer to curving?
Monday, February 11, 2008
Class Planning Frustration
In the middle of teaching class this week I thought of a fantastically improved layout of the material for the class. Big picture reorganization rather than individual lecture reorganization.
Unfortunately it involves taking the material of weeks 1-3 (which I've already taught) and redistributing that material throughout the material in weeks 4-8 (which I haven't taught yet). It won't help this term's class but hopefully will improve future classes. I think the students will find the info clearer, more straightforward and coming at them in bites the size they can more easily digest.
Essentially weeks 1-3 are theory. Weeks 4-8 are application problems. Reorganization is teaching content/data in week 4 with theory 1 & 2. Week 5, more practice on theory 2, introduce theory 3, and teach content data from week 5. This should lead to more problem sets. Teaching theories 1 or 2 at a time instead of in one fell swoop and giving the students the hooks to apply the theories to. No text books are organized this way, but I think it will work.
I keep trying to figure out how to apply this insight into this class's material but it seems not possible if we are still going to cover all material. How frustrating!
Unfortunately it involves taking the material of weeks 1-3 (which I've already taught) and redistributing that material throughout the material in weeks 4-8 (which I haven't taught yet). It won't help this term's class but hopefully will improve future classes. I think the students will find the info clearer, more straightforward and coming at them in bites the size they can more easily digest.
Essentially weeks 1-3 are theory. Weeks 4-8 are application problems. Reorganization is teaching content/data in week 4 with theory 1 & 2. Week 5, more practice on theory 2, introduce theory 3, and teach content data from week 5. This should lead to more problem sets. Teaching theories 1 or 2 at a time instead of in one fell swoop and giving the students the hooks to apply the theories to. No text books are organized this way, but I think it will work.
I keep trying to figure out how to apply this insight into this class's material but it seems not possible if we are still going to cover all material. How frustrating!
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Why do you teach [Applied Library Science] and how is academic freedom important to that effort?
As usual, I'm a little late to the party. I'm responding to a meme started by Dr. Crazy and continued by many many people who are mostly all listed here. Like Dr. Freeride the reasons why I teach vary according to the class itself.
My course load* consists of Introduction to Information Systems from a Users perspective - A large undergraduate survey course that is required for our major and also meets gen ed requirements, Advanced Applied Card Cataloging - a highly applied graduate course that is an elective and is outside my major research focus**, and Intro to Applied Librarianship - a graduate class that every student has to take in conjunction with their first practicum experience in a library. I teach the didactic part; their supervisors teach the applied part. Every other year I teach a graduate seminar on a topic of my choice, usually theoretical epistomology.
One answer which would be flip and not entirely true (but not entirely false) is that I teach because it is a job requirement and necessary in order for me to be employed in a way that allows me to do my research***.
Introduction to Information Systems from a Users perspective
This is a survey course and basically I get to spend 1-2 weeks on each major topic and by the end I feel like everyone knows just enough about everything to be dangerous. My unique stamp on this course is that I use it to introduce students to ways of thinking about things. I think (I hope?) that our understanding of how individuals develop mental structures to store information and access/apply that information in everyday life will change as these students continue through their professional lives. With that in mind, what I really want students to learn in this class is how to be good consumers of information. There are a few key things that I think they need to learn (because if they don't they'll be clueless in the future and it will reflect badly on our program) but really I want them to learn to approach research and research design well and be good consumers of information so that they can design useful ways of delivering that information in whatever format it is in.
Academic freedom is important in this class because it allows me to choose how to deliver the material (as lecture/as research articles) and choose which epistomology theories I want to highlight. I'd have a hard time teaching some theories with a straight face.
Advanced Applied Card Cataloging - In principle this is the 2nd course students take in this area, but in reality the only students who take it are those who haven't satisfied the requisite number of organizational classes in their undergrad. A few students do just love the topic and enroll though. The students are in their final semester of classes so they think they know what they need to know and want you to only teach them those things.
So I have a real mix of students and abilities and interest levels in this class. We do lots of problem sets. Where would you shelve THIS book? Given these filing numbers from an unknown library, discern the cataloging system being used and apply it to a new item. I truly teach this because it's assigned to me. I try to teach the students to see patterns more than anything else. When I have the opportunity I try to stretch them to think about things that they might not NEED to know, but will allow them to think in more flexible ways or approach a cataloging problem in a creative manner.
I'm not sure how academic freedom influences this class. It's something I just do and the current state of the theory is such that I just present it and they practice til they can do it. It's like elementary math - practice, practice, practice! Perhaps if this were actually the 2nd class for these students and/or they had an instructor who specialized in this area it would be less practice and more theory oriented and this would all matter. I'll have to puzzle over this a bit more.
Intro to Applied Librarianship This class is probably the one in which academic freedom matters the most to me. I was given a list of (rather disjointed) topics to cover and I organized them into as sensible a manner as I could imagine. Basically it's a class for everything that people think the students need to know but don't actually want to cover in their own classes.
Academic freedom allows me to emphasize things like, say selection of library materials and materials organization, over more practical information like, sharing materials with users. Again, it means I can put my own spin on the details and can help students to approach problems in a variety of ways. I'm still refining this class, but I do think that this class, of all of them, is the one that I've put my own stamp on. I try very hard to stick with the topics I'm supposed to cover but at the same time I try to stretch it to highlight the areas I think are important.
*I am clearly not a real librarian and I am making these course titles up. I am not sure if this cover really works, but it is what it is.
**Someone more senior than me teaches both the required and elective courses that are immediately in my area.
***As I read over the posts about why teaching, I realize that I'm very much in the right place for me - a research intensive university where I can expect my teaching to reduce as I get grants. I don't have the passion for it that others seem to. That said, I try to be good at it and constantly improving. And I do have clear ideas of what I want students to know and be able to do at the end of my courses, even if I am not passionate about the process. I take lots of ideas from other teachers - like how to effectively use small groups to support discussion, giving regular/limited feedback on writing up in a large class, speed dating for research proposals, and use of in class problem sets/examples. Nonetheless I struggle to create chemistry in a classroom and would just as soon skip the whole process if I could.
My course load* consists of Introduction to Information Systems from a Users perspective - A large undergraduate survey course that is required for our major and also meets gen ed requirements, Advanced Applied Card Cataloging - a highly applied graduate course that is an elective and is outside my major research focus**, and Intro to Applied Librarianship - a graduate class that every student has to take in conjunction with their first practicum experience in a library. I teach the didactic part; their supervisors teach the applied part. Every other year I teach a graduate seminar on a topic of my choice, usually theoretical epistomology.
One answer which would be flip and not entirely true (but not entirely false) is that I teach because it is a job requirement and necessary in order for me to be employed in a way that allows me to do my research***.
Introduction to Information Systems from a Users perspective
This is a survey course and basically I get to spend 1-2 weeks on each major topic and by the end I feel like everyone knows just enough about everything to be dangerous. My unique stamp on this course is that I use it to introduce students to ways of thinking about things. I think (I hope?) that our understanding of how individuals develop mental structures to store information and access/apply that information in everyday life will change as these students continue through their professional lives. With that in mind, what I really want students to learn in this class is how to be good consumers of information. There are a few key things that I think they need to learn (because if they don't they'll be clueless in the future and it will reflect badly on our program) but really I want them to learn to approach research and research design well and be good consumers of information so that they can design useful ways of delivering that information in whatever format it is in.
Academic freedom is important in this class because it allows me to choose how to deliver the material (as lecture/as research articles) and choose which epistomology theories I want to highlight. I'd have a hard time teaching some theories with a straight face.
Advanced Applied Card Cataloging - In principle this is the 2nd course students take in this area, but in reality the only students who take it are those who haven't satisfied the requisite number of organizational classes in their undergrad. A few students do just love the topic and enroll though. The students are in their final semester of classes so they think they know what they need to know and want you to only teach them those things.
So I have a real mix of students and abilities and interest levels in this class. We do lots of problem sets. Where would you shelve THIS book? Given these filing numbers from an unknown library, discern the cataloging system being used and apply it to a new item. I truly teach this because it's assigned to me. I try to teach the students to see patterns more than anything else. When I have the opportunity I try to stretch them to think about things that they might not NEED to know, but will allow them to think in more flexible ways or approach a cataloging problem in a creative manner.
I'm not sure how academic freedom influences this class. It's something I just do and the current state of the theory is such that I just present it and they practice til they can do it. It's like elementary math - practice, practice, practice! Perhaps if this were actually the 2nd class for these students and/or they had an instructor who specialized in this area it would be less practice and more theory oriented and this would all matter. I'll have to puzzle over this a bit more.
Intro to Applied Librarianship This class is probably the one in which academic freedom matters the most to me. I was given a list of (rather disjointed) topics to cover and I organized them into as sensible a manner as I could imagine. Basically it's a class for everything that people think the students need to know but don't actually want to cover in their own classes.
Academic freedom allows me to emphasize things like, say selection of library materials and materials organization, over more practical information like, sharing materials with users. Again, it means I can put my own spin on the details and can help students to approach problems in a variety of ways. I'm still refining this class, but I do think that this class, of all of them, is the one that I've put my own stamp on. I try very hard to stick with the topics I'm supposed to cover but at the same time I try to stretch it to highlight the areas I think are important.
*I am clearly not a real librarian and I am making these course titles up. I am not sure if this cover really works, but it is what it is.
**Someone more senior than me teaches both the required and elective courses that are immediately in my area.
***As I read over the posts about why teaching, I realize that I'm very much in the right place for me - a research intensive university where I can expect my teaching to reduce as I get grants. I don't have the passion for it that others seem to. That said, I try to be good at it and constantly improving. And I do have clear ideas of what I want students to know and be able to do at the end of my courses, even if I am not passionate about the process. I take lots of ideas from other teachers - like how to effectively use small groups to support discussion, giving regular/limited feedback on writing up in a large class, speed dating for research proposals, and use of in class problem sets/examples. Nonetheless I struggle to create chemistry in a classroom and would just as soon skip the whole process if I could.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
The definition of an introvert
So a friend and I were talking about the Myers-Briggs Personality scales. I'm skeptical of my own performance on all test things like this because I know to much about test design. Nonetheless I consistently score IN+two other letters (either TJ or FJ or TP - never FP) depending on my mood while taking the test. Does that mean I'm really INTJ? Anyway....I was complaining about how what I want to do and what I've learned to do are different and so I didn't know how to answer the questions... This friend said that he think of the Introvert/Extrovert distinction as a measure of where you get your energy. If you come away from large group events energized and revved up you are an E. If you come away exhausted and get your energy from one on one or individual activities you are an I.
Well, if there was any doubt, I know at the end of a teaching day that I am an Introvert. I am exhausted. It's not the mental exercise involved in prep. It's not that there were problems. It's that I am worn out by the performance aspect of it. I think this makes me a mediocre teacher because I don't really enjoy the part about standing in front of 100 students and talking. It's not stage fright exactly. Well, maybe sort of. I wish I knew how to overcome it though and really get into the acting part. I wish I liked talking at a room full of people.
Anyway, the semester is truly under way. And I'm exhausted on Day 2.
Well, if there was any doubt, I know at the end of a teaching day that I am an Introvert. I am exhausted. It's not the mental exercise involved in prep. It's not that there were problems. It's that I am worn out by the performance aspect of it. I think this makes me a mediocre teacher because I don't really enjoy the part about standing in front of 100 students and talking. It's not stage fright exactly. Well, maybe sort of. I wish I knew how to overcome it though and really get into the acting part. I wish I liked talking at a room full of people.
Anyway, the semester is truly under way. And I'm exhausted on Day 2.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
BookStore Drama
In the spring I teach 2 classes. A large undergraduate class (60?) on a survey of library theory and a small graduate class on applied library science - specifically how to determine what card catalog number a book requires and then how to arrange a library most effectively so that individuals can access the books.
Well, the undergraduate class now has 80 enrolled. And it creeps up everyday. There are 2 books assigned for this class. One that focuses on the theory behind selecting reading material, assigning card catalog numbers, and running programs. and one that provides a good reference for how others have done these things, has fantastic charts and graphs, but is totally out of date on the theory. The bookstore informed me that the second book is out of print because a 'new edition' has come out that isn't really all that new, just more expensive. So the bookstore was going to collect used editions of the old version - and they have now collected about 60 of them.
I think I'm faced with a set of choices:
1) allow students to use either edition and have my TA match topics/page numbers for the syllabus. This could work because the 'updates' are really adding a whole new chapter and the charts and tables are virtually unchanged. It can only work as a solution for this year.
2) switch to the new version wholeheartedly and send back all used editions and deal with the fact that students might not have the book the first week of class. This is an annoying choice because it promotes the scam that is revised editions. If I keep using this book, I'll have to do this next year anyway though.
3) ditch this book entirely. Scan in the most important charts to the web courseware. Identify chapters from other books to supplement the theory book so that there is both a presentation of the 'what' to do and the 'how' for each topic. I would love to do this, but I think that most students won't download and read scanned chapters and maybe can't handle the shifting voices that come from reading multiple authors. I also think I might bump up against fair use issues because there aren't so many other books to draw from.
I have until tomorrow to decide what to do since I have to keep the bookstore in the loop.
Well, the undergraduate class now has 80 enrolled. And it creeps up everyday. There are 2 books assigned for this class. One that focuses on the theory behind selecting reading material, assigning card catalog numbers, and running programs. and one that provides a good reference for how others have done these things, has fantastic charts and graphs, but is totally out of date on the theory. The bookstore informed me that the second book is out of print because a 'new edition' has come out that isn't really all that new, just more expensive. So the bookstore was going to collect used editions of the old version - and they have now collected about 60 of them.
I think I'm faced with a set of choices:
1) allow students to use either edition and have my TA match topics/page numbers for the syllabus. This could work because the 'updates' are really adding a whole new chapter and the charts and tables are virtually unchanged. It can only work as a solution for this year.
2) switch to the new version wholeheartedly and send back all used editions and deal with the fact that students might not have the book the first week of class. This is an annoying choice because it promotes the scam that is revised editions. If I keep using this book, I'll have to do this next year anyway though.
3) ditch this book entirely. Scan in the most important charts to the web courseware. Identify chapters from other books to supplement the theory book so that there is both a presentation of the 'what' to do and the 'how' for each topic. I would love to do this, but I think that most students won't download and read scanned chapters and maybe can't handle the shifting voices that come from reading multiple authors. I also think I might bump up against fair use issues because there aren't so many other books to draw from.
I have until tomorrow to decide what to do since I have to keep the bookstore in the loop.
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