Category Archives: Education

Grade Entitlement

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Entitled, which points to an article in the NY Times

I have an inbox filled with student email saying “I studied really hard for the quiz..” (so why didn’t I get an A?).

This post might sound cynical, but I must not be completely cynical because this surprised me:

Nearly two-thirds of the students surveyed said that if they explained to a professor that they were trying hard, that should be taken into account in their grade.

Ah, yes, I remember it well when I was TA-ing in grad school. I was somewhat desensitized to the problem by my time in the navy, because there was simply no room for changing grades. Student feedback (aka whining) was irrelevant on that point — you were judged by how much knowledge you demonstrated on test day, and that was about it. If you were borderline, you might buy some extra time by passing a verbal grilling in an academic review board, but that didn’t actually change your grade; it merely gave you additional time to pass some tests and raise your average.

In grad school I was a TA the modern physics class, which included a lot of students trying to get into the engineering program. When I passed out the first set of graded labs, there was howling and gnashing of teeth. “A 7? I can’t have a 7! I need to get accepted into the engineering program!” My answer was, “Do better next time.” I had pointed out the shortcomings in the lab reports, so there was ample information how to get a better grade. The funny thing was that my evaluations came back as being a really tough TA, while the other TA for the course remarked how easygoing and laid-back he was (literally a surfer-dude). But the also professor told me that grades from my section were actually higher than his. Tough love wins in the end.

From the article

At Vanderbilt, there is an emphasis on what Dean Hogge calls “the locus of control.” The goal is to put the academic burden on the student.

“Instead of getting an A, they make an A,” he said. “Similarly, if they make a lesser grade, it is not the teacher’s fault. Attributing the outcome of a failure to someone else is a common problem.”

As I’ve noted before, in the students’ view, good grades are earned by the student, while poor ones are given by the professor. Looks like Vanderbilt is pushing to change that concept.

Hot Fun in the Summertime

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10 Awesome Summer Internships for Science Students

The National Science Foundation sponsors hundreds of summer programs, which allow sophomores and juniors to get their first taste of real labwork. Most of them last ten weeks and pay more than 3,000 dollars to cover your living expenses.

NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) search page

Opportunities are not just for college students. The Office of Naval research runs the Science and Engineering Apprentice Program (SEAP) for high-school students, and the Naval Observatory is a participant, as are a number of other DoD labs

We’ve had an intern in our program, and also when I was at TRIUMF; there’s always the question of whether you will get net work out of a student in a short time frame such as this. You really need to have projects lined up that can be done with the kind of backgrounds that the students will have, without requiring a lot of oversight and intervention, and that has a good shot of completion. On the other hand, if you have any decency you don’t want it to be complete drudgery — it’s not an opportunity to let the undesirable work slide downhill, unless you have a tiny heart made of Grinchonium. (But if you do that, word will get around and you won’t get any interns anyway. The grunt work is really for grad students, if you have them, who are more of a captive audience, where you can sell “cleaning the diffusion pump” as an initiation/hazing, that you won’t have to do once the next student is tricked recruited) My main interaction with the SEAP students has been in helping them print out the posters for their presentations they do at the end of their internship, since our division has a plotter, where they learn a valuable lesson in Murphy’s law: if you wait until the morning of the session, there will invariably be a problem printing the poster out.

Copy, Paste

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A couple of reviews and discussions about My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture by Susan D. Blum

It’s Culture, Not Morality

The book, about to appear from Cornell University Press, is sure to be controversial because it challenges the strategies used by colleges and professors nationwide. In many ways, Blum is arguing that the current approach of higher education to plagiarism is a shock and awe strategy — dazzle students with technology and make them afraid, very afraid, of what could happen to them.

I wrote this post myself, I swear

Prof. Says Plagiarism Is More Complex than We Thought

I Don't Give a Damn About My Bad Reputation

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when “bad reputation” is good

Recasting the bad reputation the profession of research professor has.

How would you react to this statement: “Many aspiring swimmers are not pursuing olympic careers because doing so would require spending 30, 40, 50 hours in the pool, in addition to weight and flexibility workouts. This single-minded, work-ethics focus of otherwise talented athletes gives olympic competitors bad reputation – we need to work on funding alternatives, such as support for olympians who can afford to spend only half of that time in the pool”

A Day in the Life

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I was reading Wal-mart approach to college education? at incoherently scattered ponderings, and the latter half brings something to mind.

If you read comments to the article – one thing is for sure, regular people have no idea what faculty do all day long. Apparently the impression is that we teach a class (takes what – an hour three times a week?) and then we sit in our offices like fat cats eating donuts.

I know they don’t just sit around. But if the general impression is otherwise, how about a call for academic science bloggers to post a typical day, or chronicle a particular day that seems fairly typical. I see that Sciencewoman has provided a guest post recently. If you see this, consider yourself tagged and please do so, and also spread the word. If you already have at some time in the past, post a link in the comments.

Are You the Keymaster?

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Gatekeeping at Faraday’s Cage

[I]t bothered her that in the sciences and engineering there are often classes used as “weeders”, the principal being that the “unfit” are not able to survive the rigors of the fundamentals classes and will drop out before too much time and money has been invested by either party.

The teacher called this “gatekeeping”. It’s a concept with which I am familiar because, unfortunately, I’ve been on both ends of it. I also have a lot of mixed feelings on the topic, and it helped me to hear that this philosophy bothers other people.

Gathering Data

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ZapperZ asks about a possible “marker” for becoming a scientist in Astronomer Looks Back at Telltale Childhood, namely, jumping out a window with an umbrella to see if one can fly, after having watched Mary Poppins.

OK, now that’s freaking scary because *I* too did almost the same thing AFTER I watched Mary Poppins (hum… does this mean that Mary Poppins is a good indicator of future scientists?)

I didn’t try this — not even tempted. I’m not particularly fond of heights. Some few extremely low altitude stunts involved bicycles, but I never had all that much daredevil in me. I was able to injure myself doing more mundane things.

Rhett and Chad discuss strategies for learning student names. They both admit to being terrible at learning names. Add me to the list. When I was in the navy I had the advantage that nametags are part of the uniform, and the students also had name signs on their desks. (That helped a little less as my vision drifted away from being 20-20 and before I got glasses)

Is it a prerequisite to teaching physics that you be bad at learning names? Three data points here!

She's Not The Big, Bad Wolf

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Stephanie reviews Who’s afraid of Marie Curie? by Linley Erin Hall.

Many interesting topics are highlighted, including

There is also a very good summary chapter on the research on gender differences in scientific ability. As you might have guessed, males and females are more similar than they are different on most (but not all) aspects of mind. She reviews the questionable ability of standardized tests (like the SAT) to demonstrate gender differences that are real (boys tend to score higher on the SAT than girls, but girls’ SAT scores tend to underpredict their grades in college math classes).

One thing I have complained about in discussions on gender equity is that many arguments simply assume that males and females are identical, and focus discussion elsewhere. Nice to see someone investigating the matter as part of their discourse.