5 ms·

I never use paid materials in my courses but I understand the desire to use things like MyMathLab. We have a lot of students. Grading sucks and writing proble

by skh 8y ago

I never use paid materials in my courses but I understand the desire to use things like MyMathLab. We have a lot of students. Grading sucks and writing problem sets sucks. The pay isn’t good either. Especially for new faculty. For the most part at my college faculty want to do the right thing. The biggest push to use fancy websites like MyMathLab comes from administration. We are constantly having an administrator say things like, “A college in Colorado uses this website and they pass 70% of their students. You should use it too.” The forces at play go well beyond lazy faculty.

Someone1234 8y ago
College professors and the department are the gatekeepers, they pick the textbooks, they set the curriculum. Administrators might push something, but it is exceptionally rare for anyone outside of a department to dictate exactly what materials and resources they're required to use. As an aside is your argument: - Underpay - Being a college professor is hard - Administration made me do it Because that really was the smorgasbord of excuses. I have very little sympathy for #1 (see college tuition increases; unionize if you want a larger piece of the pie), #2 since the whole rest of the world manages without selling out, and #3 is pretty much everyone's job (i.e. standing up to bad administration decisions). We've had the same lame excuses for the last twenty years while the problems continue to get worse. Until incentives align, or the public correctly holds professors/departments accountable, this will continue and continue to get worse. None of the excuses here change that.
- skh 8y ago
  I am in a union. We do get pressure from administration. They can’t force me to use a given website but pressure does exist. You’ve made a lot of assumptions about me and what happens in departments. I’ve been in the job for 18 years and my anecdotal experience differs from your perception. I’m guessing you aren’t employed as a faculty member at a college. I don’t know if this is the case but your assertions feel like someone who is speaking about things they peripherally understand. Your first paragraph is just plain wrong. There have been a number of states that have legally mandated that there can be no more than one precollege level math course before being allowed to take college algebra. This is an example of effectively being told what to do whilst maintaining the veneer of faculty control. I do not think you really understand the situation. You made a comment about the rest of the world not selling out. You really think this? Google engineers haven’t sold out so to speak? Soldiers transporting people to secret prisons to be tortured haven’t sold out? When you use such hyperbole it’s hard not to read into your words anger and bitterness. It diminishes the quality of your comment. I reiterate, the forces at play are not as simplistic as you appear to think. And the solution definitely isn’t as simplistic as the one you gave.
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    > There have been a number of states that have legally mandated that there can be no more than one precollege level math course before being allowed to take college algebra. This seems... unlikely. By "college algebra", do you mean "a group is a structure with the following properties", or "x is called a variable"?
    - skh 8y ago
      In the United States college algebra is a course that covers things like the quadratic formula, solving basic exponential equations and things like that.
      - thaumasiotes 8y ago
        That's not true "in the United States". It's a euphemistic choice by colleges that are ashamed to say "remedial algebra". The same course is called "algebra" when you take it in middle school, "algebra" when you take it in high school, and "college algebra" (apparently) when you take it as a college graduation requirement. On the other hand, colleges do offer a different course called "algebra", which introduces group theory and is nothing like grade school algebra. >> there can be no more than one precollege level math course before being allowed to take college algebra The way you've defined "college algebra", it is a precollege level math course.
        skh 8y ago
        Well, I teach college algebra a lot and I teach it in the United States. I’m telling you what that term means in the United States. I don’t know what it means outside of the United States. Beginning Algebra and Intermmediate Algebra are the names for courses that cover basic algebraic topics at the pre college level. Do you think I’m lying or otherwise wrong? Go to the American version of Amazon.com and search for college algebra textbooks. Look at the table of contents and you’ll see that my description is accurate. In the United States courses that teach basic ring theory and group theory are usually called Modern Algebra or Abstract Algebra. You appear to have an axe to grind. Your apparent anger is misplaced. We are just discussing the names of things and not on the merit of those things.
iguy 8y ago
Maybe this is one more example of a broader pattern: if you're spending someone else's money, you pay much less attention to the price, and tend to prioritise side-benefits to you. That's why frequent flier programs exist: to bribe you into spending your boss's money one way. It's also (very crudely) why medical care is stupidly expensive: the doctor making the call is spending insurance money on things which don't even bother to have prices anymore. In which case the solution may be to align incentives better, rather just wishing that the people making decisions would have different priorities. For example, if college courses had to offer all-inclusive prices, they'd be a little more expensive, and suddenly administrators would be much more interested in creative ways to save money, and in pushing professors to do so.
- ethbro 8y ago
  It consistently amazes me how often we fail to guide policy by aligning priorities and allowing the details to be figured out. If faculty bonuses included a mix of pass rates, success in subsequent classes, AND textbook cost, this problem would go away. Don't blame logical actors for looking at the existing system making a logical choice -- especially when we have the power to change the system.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - thrmsforbfast 8y ago
    > If faculty bonuses Oy. Faculty don't get meaningful bonuses. Like, a $100 gift card to the university book store is a really nice gesture for someone who really went above and beyond. True story. Not only do they not get bonuses, but even their base salaries are often 1/2 or less of base salaries in industry. Meaning total comp can be as low as 1/3rd or even 1/5th for competitive applicants (100k vs. 300k is a pretty common spread in CS. The spread gets even larger for top-tier candidates because academia has a hard ceiling but industry is more than happy to throw 400+ and top-tier fresh phds...). >... included a mix of pass rates, success in subsequent classes, AND textbook cost, this problem would go away. It consistently amazes me that people underestimate the difficulty of perfectly projecting a high-dimensional approximation of an inherently unknowable quantity onto a single scalar. If it were actually possible to do what you prescribe, to reduce good teaching down to a measurable combination of measurable variables, then why on earth wouldn't we just replace all teaching with a reinforcement learning algorithm? Oh, and BTW, things like MyMathLab aren't even saving professors' time. They are saving graduate TA time. Those TA's are making 20k-30k a year. The reason that auto-grading software can charge a lot of money is that even horrendously underpaid graduate TA labor is extremely expensive compared to a software license. So, I think subjecting faculty to teaching metrics is probably a terrible idea, especially in STEM at lower tier universities. Recruiting is already hard enough. Doing so is not going to have the intended effect and might even cause a brain drain. Projects like this pilot are a much better idea. We should also have pilot programs for open-sourced auto-grading software and small NSF grants (e.g., $8k over 3 months -- a princely some for a grad TA!) to cover the cost of refreshing the question banks every few years.
nmalaguti 8y ago
Take a look at Knewton Alta[1] as an alternative to MyMathLab. It uses OER content and is aimed at being very affordable - $44 for 2 year access or $9.95 a month (cancel anytime, which is great for those 6 week summer classes). We have courses available in Math, Econ, Chemistry, and more on the way. The biggest change Knewton champions is mastery based learning by using adaptivity and just-in-time remediation. By encouraging students to reach mastery throughout the course, they learn more and do better on tests and assessments. We offer comprehensive analytics for instructors and administrators to identify struggling students for offline intervention. Many students love it for homework because they can get questions wrong, get remediation in the assignment, learn the material and still get a 100% on their homework. Disclaimer: I work for Knewton. 1. https://www.knewtonalta.com/why-alta/ https://www.knewtonalta.com/why-alta/
- skh 8y ago
  I did look at Knewton but wasn’t quite what I needed. I’ve come to the decision to never use paid materials for my classes.
  - nmalaguti 8y ago
    I’d love to learn more about what you were looking for and how Knewton might better meet those needs, even if Knewton ultimately wouldn’t be a product you’d use.
- hollandheese 8y ago
  How is this $44 better than MyOpenMath?
toast0 8y ago
> We are constantly having an administrator say things like, "A college in Colorado uses this website and they pass 70% of their students. You should use it too." My mom is a adjunct professor, and is also getting pressured about pass rates and graduation rates. It's such a strange metric, because passing (and by extension graduating) is a subjective indication of comprehension of the subject material, but they never talk about measuring that. It just feels so transparently like leaning on the scales and asking to just pass everyone so that you can attract more students($) because they know it's an easy place to get a degree. The problem is that if you do that, then industry will figure out the degree is meaningless, too.
- skh 8y ago
  Yes, long term it will be as you say. The only thing administration cares about is passing rate. None of them care to measure whether or not those who pass know the material. So....I pass more people than I want to.

by skh 8y ago

Someone1234 8y ago

College professors and the department are the gatekeepers, they pick the textbooks, they set the curriculum. Administrators might push something, but it is exceptionally rare for anyone outside of a department to dictate exactly what materials and resources they're required to use. As an aside is your argument: - Underpay - Being a college professor is hard - Administration made me do it Because that really was the smorgasbord of excuses. I have very little sympathy for #1 (see college tuition increases; unionize if you want a larger piece of the pie), #2 since the whole rest of the world manages without selling out, and #3 is pretty much everyone's job (i.e. standing up to bad administration decisions). We've had the same lame excuses for the last twenty years while the problems continue to get worse. Until incentives align, or the public correctly holds professors/departments accountable, this will continue and continue to get worse. None of the excuses here change that.

skh 8y ago
I am in a union. We do get pressure from administration. They can’t force me to use a given website but pressure does exist. You’ve made a lot of assumptions about me and what happens in departments. I’ve been in the job for 18 years and my anecdotal experience differs from your perception. I’m guessing you aren’t employed as a faculty member at a college. I don’t know if this is the case but your assertions feel like someone who is speaking about things they peripherally understand. Your first paragraph is just plain wrong. There have been a number of states that have legally mandated that there can be no more than one precollege level math course before being allowed to take college algebra. This is an example of effectively being told what to do whilst maintaining the veneer of faculty control. I do not think you really understand the situation. You made a comment about the rest of the world not selling out. You really think this? Google engineers haven’t sold out so to speak? Soldiers transporting people to secret prisons to be tortured haven’t sold out? When you use such hyperbole it’s hard not to read into your words anger and bitterness. It diminishes the quality of your comment. I reiterate, the forces at play are not as simplistic as you appear to think. And the solution definitely isn’t as simplistic as the one you gave.
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  > There have been a number of states that have legally mandated that there can be no more than one precollege level math course before being allowed to take college algebra. This seems... unlikely. By "college algebra", do you mean "a group is a structure with the following properties", or "x is called a variable"?
  - skh 8y ago
    In the United States college algebra is a course that covers things like the quadratic formula, solving basic exponential equations and things like that.
    - thaumasiotes 8y ago
      That's not true "in the United States". It's a euphemistic choice by colleges that are ashamed to say "remedial algebra". The same course is called "algebra" when you take it in middle school, "algebra" when you take it in high school, and "college algebra" (apparently) when you take it as a college graduation requirement. On the other hand, colleges do offer a different course called "algebra", which introduces group theory and is nothing like grade school algebra. >> there can be no more than one precollege level math course before being allowed to take college algebra The way you've defined "college algebra", it is a precollege level math course.
      - skh 8y ago
        Well, I teach college algebra a lot and I teach it in the United States. I’m telling you what that term means in the United States. I don’t know what it means outside of the United States. Beginning Algebra and Intermmediate Algebra are the names for courses that cover basic algebraic topics at the pre college level. Do you think I’m lying or otherwise wrong? Go to the American version of Amazon.com and search for college algebra textbooks. Look at the table of contents and you’ll see that my description is accurate. In the United States courses that teach basic ring theory and group theory are usually called Modern Algebra or Abstract Algebra. You appear to have an axe to grind. Your apparent anger is misplaced. We are just discussing the names of things and not on the merit of those things.

iguy 8y ago

Maybe this is one more example of a broader pattern: if you're spending someone else's money, you pay much less attention to the price, and tend to prioritise side-benefits to you. That's why frequent flier programs exist: to bribe you into spending your boss's money one way. It's also (very crudely) why medical care is stupidly expensive: the doctor making the call is spending insurance money on things which don't even bother to have prices anymore. In which case the solution may be to align incentives better, rather just wishing that the people making decisions would have different priorities. For example, if college courses had to offer all-inclusive prices, they'd be a little more expensive, and suddenly administrators would be much more interested in creative ways to save money, and in pushing professors to do so.

ethbro 8y ago
It consistently amazes me how often we fail to guide policy by aligning priorities and allowing the details to be figured out. If faculty bonuses included a mix of pass rates, success in subsequent classes, AND textbook cost, this problem would go away. Don't blame logical actors for looking at the existing system making a logical choice -- especially when we have the power to change the system.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- thrmsforbfast 8y ago
  > If faculty bonuses Oy. Faculty don't get meaningful bonuses. Like, a $100 gift card to the university book store is a really nice gesture for someone who really went above and beyond. True story. Not only do they not get bonuses, but even their base salaries are often 1/2 or less of base salaries in industry. Meaning total comp can be as low as 1/3rd or even 1/5th for competitive applicants (100k vs. 300k is a pretty common spread in CS. The spread gets even larger for top-tier candidates because academia has a hard ceiling but industry is more than happy to throw 400+ and top-tier fresh phds...). >... included a mix of pass rates, success in subsequent classes, AND textbook cost, this problem would go away. It consistently amazes me that people underestimate the difficulty of perfectly projecting a high-dimensional approximation of an inherently unknowable quantity onto a single scalar. If it were actually possible to do what you prescribe, to reduce good teaching down to a measurable combination of measurable variables, then why on earth wouldn't we just replace all teaching with a reinforcement learning algorithm? Oh, and BTW, things like MyMathLab aren't even saving professors' time. They are saving graduate TA time. Those TA's are making 20k-30k a year. The reason that auto-grading software can charge a lot of money is that even horrendously underpaid graduate TA labor is extremely expensive compared to a software license. So, I think subjecting faculty to teaching metrics is probably a terrible idea, especially in STEM at lower tier universities. Recruiting is already hard enough. Doing so is not going to have the intended effect and might even cause a brain drain. Projects like this pilot are a much better idea. We should also have pilot programs for open-sourced auto-grading software and small NSF grants (e.g., $8k over 3 months -- a princely some for a grad TA!) to cover the cost of refreshing the question banks every few years.

nmalaguti 8y ago

Take a look at Knewton Alta[1] as an alternative to MyMathLab. It uses OER content and is aimed at being very affordable - $44 for 2 year access or $9.95 a month (cancel anytime, which is great for those 6 week summer classes). We have courses available in Math, Econ, Chemistry, and more on the way. The biggest change Knewton champions is mastery based learning by using adaptivity and just-in-time remediation. By encouraging students to reach mastery throughout the course, they learn more and do better on tests and assessments. We offer comprehensive analytics for instructors and administrators to identify struggling students for offline intervention. Many students love it for homework because they can get questions wrong, get remediation in the assignment, learn the material and still get a 100% on their homework. Disclaimer: I work for Knewton. 1. https://www.knewtonalta.com/why-alta/ https://www.knewtonalta.com/why-alta/

skh 8y ago
I did look at Knewton but wasn’t quite what I needed. I’ve come to the decision to never use paid materials for my classes.
- nmalaguti 8y ago
  I’d love to learn more about what you were looking for and how Knewton might better meet those needs, even if Knewton ultimately wouldn’t be a product you’d use.
hollandheese 8y ago
How is this $44 better than MyOpenMath?

toast0 8y ago

> We are constantly having an administrator say things like, "A college in Colorado uses this website and they pass 70% of their students. You should use it too." My mom is a adjunct professor, and is also getting pressured about pass rates and graduation rates. It's such a strange metric, because passing (and by extension graduating) is a subjective indication of comprehension of the subject material, but they never talk about measuring that. It just feels so transparently like leaning on the scales and asking to just pass everyone so that you can attract more students($) because they know it's an easy place to get a degree. The problem is that if you do that, then industry will figure out the degree is meaningless, too.

skh 8y ago
Yes, long term it will be as you say. The only thing administration cares about is passing rate. None of them care to measure whether or not those who pass know the material. So....I pass more people than I want to.