How do you manage ungraded student assignments?

Some questions for you in the “vlog” below:

Update: I’ve put the video “below the fold” because there is apparently no way to prevent Ustream embedded videos in WordPress.com blogs from autoplaying when you load the main page. Just click “Keep reading” and you’ll see it.

Filed under: Education, Teaching , class management, Education, homework, student work, Teaching, vlog

Student readiness in math

Update: Welcome, Carnival of Education readers. If you like this article, go have a look at my Top 12 Posts compilation page along with other articles about education, teaching, and math — and if you still like what you see, you can subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks!

I’ve heard a lot of the following kind of comment when I discuss curricular issues with people, whether in real life or in the blogosphere: “Sure, we’d love to teach [insert math topic here] to these kids, but they’re just not ready for that.” It came up in the comments on this post about putting geometry before algebra I in the K-12 curriculum (“Students aren’t ready to do abstract reasoning when they’re in the 7th grade”), and it’s come up in discussions I’ve had with colleagues about our freshman math offerings (we were discussing putting some treatment of Polya’s problem-solving heuristic in Calculus and giving students more difficult problems to solve, and the objection was that freshmen “just aren’t ready” for that).

I’m aware that there are psychological theories that establish how children attain different cognitive levels at different times of their lives, so there could be some basis for this idea. But a lot of the time when the “they’re not ready” argument comes up when talking about teaching, it’s just sounds like low expectations and a desire to rationalize the student-faculty non-agression pact. What do you think? Is “they’re not ready” is a valid curricular design principle or just a cop-out?

Update: Alright, so the last question above is loaded. Let’s try it a little more fairly: When is the “they’re not ready” approach valid, and when is this just a cop-out? For example, obviously students who haven’t had algebra I aren’t ready to learn algebra II. But if someone says, for example, that freshmen aren’t ready for proofs, is that psychology talking or is it just low expectations? I’ve heard that last example in the form of “freshmen aren’t emotionally ready” to handle lots of difficult problems, and I strongly suspect that that’s not based on sound cognitive psychology. But I could be wrong.

Filed under: Early education, Education, Student culture, Teaching , Education, Math, piaget, polya, psychology, Teaching

Wednesday morning links

Update: Welcome, readers from The FIRE! I’ve got more articles about free speech on campus and academic freedom which you might like to browse. Also take a walk through the Top 12 Posts retrospective page if you like.

• The importance of teaching kids to pay attention, over against the phenomenon of “multitasking”. Lord knows I’m trying to do this with my 2- and 4-year olds. [h/t Joanne Jacobs]
• What college administrators think about college faculty. The short version: Some admins think that faculty play too little of a role in campus administration, some think too much, but most think that faculty focus too much on their own territory and lack perspective.
• On the innumeracy of intellectuals. This is a juicy article and I will try to have more to say about it later. But I distinctly remember several colleagues in the humanities who at one time or another openly embraced their having no knowledge or enjoyment of math or science, often in full view of students whom we were trying to teach a lifelong love of learning. Intellectuals, if you prize education so highly, get a well-rounded one yourself!
• Some student journalists have earned themselves a bad reputation around this blog, but here’s a great example of a student journalist at IU-South Bend who is blowing the lid off an embarassing speech code case at IUPUI.
• Speaking of speech codes, here’s a piece on the death of parody on campus.
• Richard DeMillo is stepping down as dean of Georgia Tech’s College of Computing. I’ve blogged about Georgia Tech’s interesting new approach to the computer science major before, which was instituted on DeMillo’s watch, and its seemingly positive impact on computer science major enrollments. The interview at the link gives the strong impression that DeMillo’s resignation comes as a result of political struggles with the Provost, which is disheartening if true.
• India is developing its own $100 laptop, and this time it might not actually end up costing $200.
• According to a recent report, starting salaries for electrical engineers are up 13% from 2007, and starting salaries average around $56,000 per year — not including signing bonuses, which are more and more common and are reaching levels of around $4500. And that’s for a EE with just one degree; imagine what you could do with two!

Filed under: Education, Life in academia, Links, Teaching, Technology , demillo, Engineering, georgia tech, higher education, innumeracy, iupui, Teaching

“The faculty/student nonagression pact”

From a 2004 review by George Leef of Patrick Allitt’s book I’m the Teacher, You’re the Student:

[M]atters might improve considerably if the rest of the faculty were also fighting against the student aversion to reading, but few of them probably are. Allitt doesn’t say much about his colleagues, but I suspect he knows that many of them have given in to what Murray Sperber calls the faculty/student non-aggression pact: Students get light assignments and good grades in return for expecting little instructional effort from their professors. Allitt’s willingness to stay and fight when much of the rest of the faculty has surrendered is commendable, but if only a small number of professors insist that students read and understand, the college experience is just the skeletal remains of its former self.

The bolded passage is a dead-on appropriate term for much of what goes on under the guise college teaching and learning these days.

Sounds like a good book but one which might be too depressing to read just before the semester starts.

Filed under: Education, Higher ed, Life in academia, Student culture, Teaching , college, learning, students, Teaching

Geometry first

Jackie at Continuities is wondering whether the usual path through high school mathematics — Algebra I, then Geometry, then Algebra II, etc. — is out of order, and whether geometry ought to come first:

As far as I can tell the only difference between Alg II and Pre-Calc is that trig is taught during Pre-Calc and Pre-Calc introduces the concept of the limit. Functions are developed a bit more rigorously too.

The first semester of Algebra II is mostly a repeat of Algebra I as they’ve forgotten it with the year “off” during Geometry.

Why not then teach Geometry first? I’m talking about plane and solid geometry with an emphasis on reasoning, and right angle trig. Obviously there would need to be some supplementing needed (work with radicals, solving equations). Most students have “seen” the solving of equations in 8th grade (Have they mastered it? No, of course not).

I completely agree. It seems to me that the reason Geometry gets sandwiched between Algebra I and Algebra II is that people want to use algebra concepts in geometry. But I think that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case. If you look at the source — Euclid’s Elements — you will not find a drop of algebra in it. All the concepts that we, today, would label as being algebra or number theory or what-have-you are just latter-day retrofittings of Euclid’s ideas. Euclid himself phrased everything in terms of geometry, with the algebra and number theory done in terms of commensurable lengths and other geometric terminology. I wouldn’t go so far as to say Euclid knew nothing of algebra or number theory, but if you follow Euclid you don’t need algebra, as we know it, at all in your geometry.

That would leave a geometry course that is mainly about logical reasoning, cogent organization of facts, objective deductions from data, and clear exposition of an argument. One might add to this list the art/craft of forming conjectures from experimentation and then writing an argument in favor of your conjectures, which is astoundingly simple these days thanks to Geometers Sketchpad and other fun, low-cost dynamic geometry software packages. (My students who use Sketchpad in their student teaching report, to a person, that students really turn on when they use Sketchpad and do some very good mathematics, for 8th-9th graders.) This sounds like precisely the kind of foundation, and buffer zone, that students need to acquire before tackling algebra with a view towards understanding how it works rather than just memorizing facts. (Indeed, memorizing facts in algebra is quite hard unless you understand why the facts work.)

Of course, if you ask ten people whether they liked their geometry class in school, eight will probably say “no” and seven of those eight will say it was because of “proofs”. But I wonder what that really means. Perhaps, having gotten a taste of equation solving in algebra and therefore acquiring the “there’s only one right answer and I have 30 seconds to find it” mentality about mathematics, they are spoiled for ever encountering mathematics as it really is (which is something that geometry is a lot closer to than algebra I). Perhaps they had a geometry teacher who was not really good at, trained in, or interested in math at all — or someone who was like so many teachers out there who “just love kids” but who choose not to translate that love into teaching their kids how to think well.

But I think if you put a geometry class like what I described above into the hands of a competent, mathematically astute teacher with a mind to help his/her students become excellent thinkers, a year of that could very well change a generation of kids.

Filed under: Geometers Sketchpad, Geometry, High school, Math, Teaching , Elements, Euclid, Geometry, High school, Math, mathematics, Sketchpad, Teaching

Getting fired for helping students?

When you’re teaching a class and students are having trouble understanding the textbook, usually the responsible thing to do is provide them with some form of clarification in the form of a handout or some web links to additional resources. But apparently that’s a firing offense if you’re an adjunct faculty at Indiana’s Ivy Tech Community College:

Pejman Norasteh — like many adjuncts — didn’t have much control over the material he was supposed to cover [in his statistics class]. But students started to send him e-mail saying that the textbook was unclear. One student said he was getting “depressed” and giving up when he didn’t understand the required assignments. Another student wrote: “As usual, our textbook does a poor job of explaining concepts. I am adding this chapter to my list of examples of how poor our book is….”

In response to the e-mail messages and personal requests, Norasteh started handing out supplementary materials to cover the same subject matter as the textbook, but with his own explanations. While the students who complained were happy, some others were not. They sent e-mail messages to the division chair saying that they were being asked to do extra work on top of the syllabus because the supplementary materials were not mentioned on the syllabus as required reading. That of course was true, since Norasteh didn’t start the course thinking he would add to the reading beyond the textbook.

At that point, Norasteh received an e-mail from Mark Magnuson, division chair for liberal arts and sciences, and general education at the campus. Magnuson wrote that it was clear to him that “you are not using or following the syllabus or textbook,” adding that “all instructors, adjuncts and full-time, are required to use the syllabus and textbook in each course to meet the statewide agreed upon course objectives. Individual instructors do not have the option of straying from the syllabus and/or textbook.”

Ultimately, Noratesh was not kept on at the college. Never mind the fact that Noratesh was not “straying” from the textbook but merely doing his job as an educator to clarify the textbook and maximize the students’ learning experience.

There are actually two appalling things about this story. Perhaps foremost is the fact that Noratesh lost his job because he was doing his job, which is to teach students and give them the best learning experience possible. Apparently, according to Ivy Tech — which here in Indiana serves mainly as a transfer institution where students take courses and then transfer the credits to four-year colleges — the need for consistency in coursework trumps the need for clear exposition of the course content, which might (and frequently does) involve the instructor using his or her best judgment and creating materials of his or her own to supplement the standard materials. What’s more important here, Ivy Tech?

The other appalling thing is the reaction of those students who got upset because they were “having to to extra work”. God forbid that you should have to work harder than the absolute minimum to understand the course content — even if the absolute minimum, which involves using an impenetrable textbook, gets you nowhere. Will these same students be raising the same objections on their jobs after college if their bosses give them “extra work” to do or if they have to do “extra work” to make their clients happier? Shame on that attitude.

Final note for full disclosure: Jeff Fanter, Ivy Tech’s communications director who is mentioned in the original article, happens to be my next-door neighbor. He’s a good guy.

Filed under: Higher ed, Life in academia, Teaching , Higher ed, higher education, ivy tech, noratesh, Teaching

Updated Teaching Statement

Some time ago, I posted a very skeletal outline of a new Statement of Teaching Philosophy and got some good feedback. After struggling to write something that doesn’t sound like it came straight out of a Miss America pageant, I ended up throwing out the whole thing and starting over. After locking myself in my basement (my preferred location for really serious thinking and writing) for two hours, I had a totally new version of the document which I actually was sort of happy with. Only problem: It was four pages long in 10-point font. A few minutes ago, I finished a two-day editing process which got it down, barely, to two pages.

I’m hoping that you people out there can be kind again and read, review, and comment on this statement. The plain text version of the statement is “below the fold”. You can download a PDF of it here. Thanks in advance.

Filed under: Education, Life in academia, Teaching , Education, statement of teaching philosophy, Teaching, teaching statement

Letting teaching and research feed each other

Good article here at the Chronicle on balancing teaching with research, from a neuroscience professor who makes it work for him.

The reality of modern academe is that, no matter what your institutional affiliation, the time you can devote to research is being squeezed by multiple competing demands. No simple solution to that problem exists for any of us. But I have found that rethinking the nature of our professional commitments, such that teaching activities bleed into research ones (and vice versa), can be an effective way to reduce the time crunch. Academics describe their workload of scholarship, teaching, and service as if those were entirely separate entities. In reality, the line between teaching and research is usually much fuzzier.

Read the whole thing, in which Prof. Gendle writes at length about the potentially prosperous symbiosis between teaching and research. He points out three key scholarly skills which teaching reinforces: developing your presentation skills, responding appropriately to odd questions, and making connections across fields. He emphasizes his success in maintaining an active research agenda while keeping a “moderately heavy” teaching load, which for him is 5-6 courses per year. My teaching load is 8 courses (6 preps) per year, and to that situation Prof. Gendle says:

I am fortunate that my teaching load still allows some dedicated time for research. That may not be the case at institutions with teaching loads of seven or more courses in a single academic year. Teaching loads of that magnitude often pass a tipping point for most faculty members (myself included). With that many courses, there simply are not enough hours in the day to conduct classes, grade papers, etc., and still have time left for research.

Gendle is in the psychology department at Elon University, which is well-known for being an undergraduate institution with a reputation for engaging students in meaningful scholarly work.

Do any of you teach at institutions with a 7+ course-per-year teaching load, and still manage an active research program of some sort?

Filed under: Education, Higher ed, Life in academia, Scholarship, Teaching , academia, elon, higher education, research, Scholarship, Teaching

Jott as a diction-checking device

I’ve blogged before about Jott, the web service which lets you call in and leave a voice message, and then it transcribes it to text and emails it to you or others you want to contact. I use Jott quite often in lieu of a voice recorder for quick thoughts that might be actionable. When I want to catch an idea, I get my cell phone, hit “5″ on the speed dial to call Jott, then talk through my message. A few moments later, I get a transcribed version in my GMail inbox which then gets reviewed at my next GTD weekly review.

Jott’s capabilities as a speech-to-text converter are impressive, but it’s not perfect. When I get a mis-transcription, sometimes I wonder whether it’s Jott’s fault or whether it’s something having to do with how clearly I am speaking. Take this recent message for instance. I had just finished teaching a section on exponential growth and decay in my calculus class that meets this summer. I wanted to leave myself a quick note for my GTD review about things I needed to work on with the presentation for this section. Here’s what I said:

I need to edit the 3.8 presentation. The example on Newton’s Law of Cooling didn’t quite work. Need to add a question as to what the C represents in Newton’s Law of Cooling. It just went too long. I think one decay example, one growth example, one Law of Cooling and that’ll be enough. Maybe flesh out a little bit more what a differential equation is, they were a little lost.

Now, on the other hand, here’s what Jott thinks I said (differences are in boldface):

I need to edit the 3.8 presentation. The example on Newton block cooling didn’t quite work. Need to add a question as to what the C represents in Newton block cooling. I just went too long I think one decay example, one growth example,in block cooling that’ll be enough. Maybe flush out a little bit more for the differential equation is, they were a little lost.

“Newton block cooling“? I went back and listened to the voice message and, to me, I am clearly saying “Newton’s Law of Cooling”, but Jott went 3-for-3 in transcribing this as it did. That makes me wonder if my students would hear me say “Newton block cooling”. Students are more intelligent than a computerized speech-to-text processor, but still, if this advanced technology is convinced that I am not saying “law of cooling” but “block cooling”, there’s a pretty good chance I am not being clear enough.

So perhaps Jott would be useful as a diagnostic tool for a speaker’s enunciation and clarity — if there’s 100% agreement between what the speaker actually said and the Jott transcription, then there are no problems with clarity; otherwise, there might be.

Filed under: GTD, Profhacks, Social software, Software, Teaching, Technology , Getting Things Done, GTD, jott, public speaking, Social software, Teaching, web2.0

Observation

I’m looking back over my statements of teaching philosophy from 2001 (when I was searching for my current job), 2002, and 2003 and then comparing them with the new and improved one. I’m noticing that, back in 2001-2003, my teaching “philosophy” was more of a laundry list of pedagogical techniques that I engage myself in when teaching. “I use lots of active learning.” “I measure my students’ progress using a variety of assessment techniques.” “I am a firm believer in the use of computer technology in mathematics courses.” And so on.

Whereas, now, my focus is much more on the big picture — on what makes me who I am as a teacher, what makes me tick, what you will find in any instance of my teaching, regardless of technique or technology used, as well as what goes on behind my teaching. I am saying, “Here’s what drives me. Here are my core beliefs about education, teaching, students, and how it all fits together in the culture of education. And out of that, proceeds what I do in the classroom.”

So these days, when trying to express my philosophy of teaching, I am focusing less on what I am doing and more on how, why, and to whom I am doing it. I like that.

Filed under: Education, Higher ed, Life in academia, Teaching , students, Teaching, teaching philosophy