5 ms·

If most of the students did bad in the exam, the problem lies with the one factor in common: the professor.

by lagadu 7y ago

sharedfrog 7y ago
In this case, maybe (I haven't read the article). But generally, I'd be wary of saying this. It conflates a complex subject to a single, easy answer which, incidentally, abolishes students of any responsibility for their own learning.
- ggggtez 7y ago
  And it abolishes the professor of responsibility as well. Not to say the author is entirely full of it, but broad generalizations blaming the existence of cellphones for the problems of our entire culture is way too reductionist.
chinesempire 7y ago
> the problem lies with the one factor in common Why not having a family? Or living in the the same country? Or having the same educational system? Correlation is not causation.
- lagadu 7y ago
  - Because the original premise hasn't controlled for family, we can only work with the data we have - Because other students in the same country succeed - Because other students in the same educational system succeed That argument only works if you manage to isolate the conditions to almost perfectly match a group, mine was "this teacher, teaching this subject" and the data fits. Regardless, crying "my students use phones and all of them are failing" when there are students with other teachers that use phones as well and don't fail makes blaming phones an illogical conclusion.
  - chinesempire 7y ago
    > - Because the original premise hasn't controlled for family, we can only work with the data we have I don't think data says what you imply though > Because other students in the same country succeed [citation needed] The teacher in the article poses an ipothesys - he has the suspect the phones might be partially involved in the problem So he puts the hipotesys to test - he asks his students what went wrong - they answered, according to the article quotes “We don’t understand what the books say, sir. We don’t understand the words.” - he asks them to not use their phones for 9 days, offering an extra credit as a reward after the test he collected results. Among the other, I'll quote the first one > “Writing a paper and not having a phone boosted productivity at least twice as much,” Elliott claimed. “You are concentrated on one task and not worrying about anything else. Studying for a test was much easier as well because I was not distracted by the phone at all.” It looks to me that they were actually having a problem which is not their professor. > Because other students in the same educational system succeed Are they? Across the Board, Scores Drop in Math and Reading for U.S. Students https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2019-10-30/across-the-board-scores-drop-in-math-and-reading-for-us-students https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2019-10-... > Regardless, crying "my students use phones and all of them are failing" That's not what he did, what you are doing is manipulative, it's a well know bias called "false premise" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_premise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_premise
memling 7y ago
> If most of the students did bad in the exam, the problem lies with the one factor in common: the professor. Class distributions vary significantly. I TA'd elementary computer programming for seven quarters.[1] Some classes were more engaged, some less. My worst was a TR 3pm: a quarter of the students failed. My best was a summer course in which I taught without a computer (except for the labs): the room wasn't equipped, so I printed the slides and wrote on transparencies. My N of 7 isn't significant (average grades ran from 72-82%, I think, and I don't know the standard deviation), but it's worth thinking about the problem more globally than your comment suggests. We often think of student grades statistically (work that curve!), but we rarely think about it with respect to a set of classes. It's likely that this professor has had classes that were very good and very bad and some that were in between. Reflecting honestly on my own career on the other side of the desk, I was not a very good student. I studied to pass tests, not to learn. I got a degree because failing me would have looked bad for the institution, not because I was particularly deserving. The humiliation of that experience turned me (I think and hope) into a life-long learner--and it informed my teaching in the classroom. Failure is one of the best teachers to those willing to learn her lessons. [1] We team-taught occasionally and always team-graded the exams (one question or section, depending, per TA) to help level the grading. We had a department policy that failing the final exam meant failing the course. We encouraged collaboration among the students on homework--less so on labs--reasoning that it would strike a balance between understanding the material and acquiring needed soft skills. Office hours policies were quite liberal: all students were welcome at all TA hours, so if you had an issue with your instructor you could visit the TA and supervisor. Complaints were taken seriously, and underperforming teachers were removed. My reviews were generally good, with the biggest complaints about my language. (I modified my class structure to spend a few minutes on vocabulary each day in response.) {{ Edit: typo. }}
- CrazyStat 7y ago
  As a TA I led computer labs for a large intro class for several semesters. One semester I got stuck with the 8am section, which I wasn't terribly excited about (especially since it was winter), but it turned out to be great--the section was smaller than the others because most students also didn't want to be there at 8am, and the students who did sign up for the 8am section were more motivated and self-directing than average. Having to be on campus ready to teach at 8am still wasn't great.
vezycash 7y ago
I've given the same tests to my students 3 times - word for word and many students still failed. The good students who cared raised their scores with each repeat. The non-nonchalant students sometimes, managed to score less. I don't keep my intention to repeat test questions secret. I do this to prepare them for pre-uni, university and professional exams which always reuse questions.
- learnstats2 7y ago
  I'm curious: In what way do you think this is preparing students, if they - in your judgement - do not appear to be learning from it.
  - vezycash 7y ago
    Is the statement below true? >pre-uni, university and professional exams ALWAYS reuse questions. Is solving past questions a useful SKILL / hack for student to learn? If you don't agree with these, then nothing else I say would matter. If other teachers repeated test questions, it would take less time for all students to adapt and benefit. I only taught in the first school for a term, the owner wanted me to stay but I had a better paying offer. Second school, two terms. By the second term, only 3 students consistently scored below 50% in tests. And of these three, one was extremely nonchalant. And remaining two were just slow. Make no mistake about it - all teachers repeat questions. It's just that it takes too long for a test question to show up in exam - so most would see the exam questions as fresh ones.
    - ggggtez 7y ago
      So... you include a discussion of getting "better offers" to indicate that your services are in high demand, as a signal that your teaching style must be good. You can leave that part out next time if you want to be taken seriously, because teaching for 3 terms at 2 different schools is hardly something to brag about. But I'm afraid it doesn't really address the problem at hand. What if your first exam was bad, and by repeating it, you were just repeating the same bad questions, teaching a useless skill of memorizing questions instead of understanding the material?
jccalhoun 7y ago
As a college professor I agree completely. I forget who I heard if from but I remember someone saying that if your class is failing the problem isn't the students it is your pedagogy. Certainly there are always individual students who fail but if most of them fail the midterm and it is only afterwards that you learn they don't understand the book then you aren't doing a very good job of tracking their progress and you aren't actually teaching them. I don't know how large his classes are. It can certainly be hard to monitor what students are doing in a large lecture hall but in a smaller class of 20 students or so I haven't had much difficulty with students who wouldn't put their phones away when I asked them to.

If most of the students did bad in the exam, the problem lies with the one factor in common: the professor.

by lagadu 7y ago

If most of the students did bad in the exam, the problem lies with the one factor in common: the professor.

In this case, maybe (I haven't read the article). But generally, I'd be wary of saying this. It conflates a complex subject to a single, easy answer which, incidentally, abolishes students of any responsibility for their own learning.

ggggtez 7y ago
And it abolishes the professor of responsibility as well. Not to say the author is entirely full of it, but broad generalizations blaming the existence of cellphones for the problems of our entire culture is way too reductionist.

chinesempire 7y ago

> the problem lies with the one factor in common Why not having a family? Or living in the the same country? Or having the same educational system? Correlation is not causation.

lagadu 7y ago
- Because the original premise hasn't controlled for family, we can only work with the data we have - Because other students in the same country succeed - Because other students in the same educational system succeed That argument only works if you manage to isolate the conditions to almost perfectly match a group, mine was "this teacher, teaching this subject" and the data fits. Regardless, crying "my students use phones and all of them are failing" when there are students with other teachers that use phones as well and don't fail makes blaming phones an illogical conclusion.
- chinesempire 7y ago
  > - Because the original premise hasn't controlled for family, we can only work with the data we have I don't think data says what you imply though > Because other students in the same country succeed [citation needed] The teacher in the article poses an ipothesys - he has the suspect the phones might be partially involved in the problem So he puts the hipotesys to test - he asks his students what went wrong - they answered, according to the article quotes “We don’t understand what the books say, sir. We don’t understand the words.” - he asks them to not use their phones for 9 days, offering an extra credit as a reward after the test he collected results. Among the other, I'll quote the first one > “Writing a paper and not having a phone boosted productivity at least twice as much,” Elliott claimed. “You are concentrated on one task and not worrying about anything else. Studying for a test was much easier as well because I was not distracted by the phone at all.” It looks to me that they were actually having a problem which is not their professor. > Because other students in the same educational system succeed Are they? Across the Board, Scores Drop in Math and Reading for U.S. Students https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2019-10-30/across-the-board-scores-drop-in-math-and-reading-for-us-students https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2019-10-... > Regardless, crying "my students use phones and all of them are failing" That's not what he did, what you are doing is manipulative, it's a well know bias called "false premise" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_premise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_premise

memling 7y ago

> If most of the students did bad in the exam, the problem lies with the one factor in common: the professor. Class distributions vary significantly. I TA'd elementary computer programming for seven quarters.[1] Some classes were more engaged, some less. My worst was a TR 3pm: a quarter of the students failed. My best was a summer course in which I taught without a computer (except for the labs): the room wasn't equipped, so I printed the slides and wrote on transparencies. My N of 7 isn't significant (average grades ran from 72-82%, I think, and I don't know the standard deviation), but it's worth thinking about the problem more globally than your comment suggests. We often think of student grades statistically (work that curve!), but we rarely think about it with respect to a set of classes. It's likely that this professor has had classes that were very good and very bad and some that were in between. Reflecting honestly on my own career on the other side of the desk, I was not a very good student. I studied to pass tests, not to learn. I got a degree because failing me would have looked bad for the institution, not because I was particularly deserving. The humiliation of that experience turned me (I think and hope) into a life-long learner--and it informed my teaching in the classroom. Failure is one of the best teachers to those willing to learn her lessons. [1] We team-taught occasionally and always team-graded the exams (one question or section, depending, per TA) to help level the grading. We had a department policy that failing the final exam meant failing the course. We encouraged collaboration among the students on homework--less so on labs--reasoning that it would strike a balance between understanding the material and acquiring needed soft skills. Office hours policies were quite liberal: all students were welcome at all TA hours, so if you had an issue with your instructor you could visit the TA and supervisor. Complaints were taken seriously, and underperforming teachers were removed. My reviews were generally good, with the biggest complaints about my language. (I modified my class structure to spend a few minutes on vocabulary each day in response.) {{ Edit: typo. }}

CrazyStat 7y ago
As a TA I led computer labs for a large intro class for several semesters. One semester I got stuck with the 8am section, which I wasn't terribly excited about (especially since it was winter), but it turned out to be great--the section was smaller than the others because most students also didn't want to be there at 8am, and the students who did sign up for the 8am section were more motivated and self-directing than average. Having to be on campus ready to teach at 8am still wasn't great.

vezycash 7y ago

I've given the same tests to my students 3 times - word for word and many students still failed. The good students who cared raised their scores with each repeat. The non-nonchalant students sometimes, managed to score less. I don't keep my intention to repeat test questions secret. I do this to prepare them for pre-uni, university and professional exams which always reuse questions.

learnstats2 7y ago
I'm curious: In what way do you think this is preparing students, if they - in your judgement - do not appear to be learning from it.
- vezycash 7y ago
  Is the statement below true? >pre-uni, university and professional exams ALWAYS reuse questions. Is solving past questions a useful SKILL / hack for student to learn? If you don't agree with these, then nothing else I say would matter. If other teachers repeated test questions, it would take less time for all students to adapt and benefit. I only taught in the first school for a term, the owner wanted me to stay but I had a better paying offer. Second school, two terms. By the second term, only 3 students consistently scored below 50% in tests. And of these three, one was extremely nonchalant. And remaining two were just slow. Make no mistake about it - all teachers repeat questions. It's just that it takes too long for a test question to show up in exam - so most would see the exam questions as fresh ones.
  - ggggtez 7y ago
    So... you include a discussion of getting "better offers" to indicate that your services are in high demand, as a signal that your teaching style must be good. You can leave that part out next time if you want to be taken seriously, because teaching for 3 terms at 2 different schools is hardly something to brag about. But I'm afraid it doesn't really address the problem at hand. What if your first exam was bad, and by repeating it, you were just repeating the same bad questions, teaching a useless skill of memorizing questions instead of understanding the material?

jccalhoun 7y ago

As a college professor I agree completely. I forget who I heard if from but I remember someone saying that if your class is failing the problem isn't the students it is your pedagogy. Certainly there are always individual students who fail but if most of them fail the midterm and it is only afterwards that you learn they don't understand the book then you aren't doing a very good job of tracking their progress and you aren't actually teaching them. I don't know how large his classes are. It can certainly be hard to monitor what students are doing in a large lecture hall but in a smaller class of 20 students or so I haven't had much difficulty with students who wouldn't put their phones away when I asked them to.