Posted by
Steve on Friday, July 14, 2006 2:26:33 PM
Summer school is now about over and I am amazed at the ingenuity of students about getting out of work. If you give them a 5 page assignment, they will try to get by on 4.5 pages or maybe even 4.25. If you give them an assignment that requires some effort, they will do the minimum or less. I use chapter quizzes to help students learn. They can take the quizzes any time they want and as many times as they want to get the maximum of 5 points for that quiz. In over six years of teaching 2 or more classes per semester, only two times did everyone get the full 5 points for the chapters on that test. That to me is amazing. If I was given that opportunity, I would have made sure that my quiz scores were 5's. Now I must admit that 75% or more of the students do ge the full score. But some wait until the test to take the quiz, defeating the purpose of having them take the quizzes many times.
On research reports, my students are required to have at least 5 pages on the report. This is the body of the report, the title page and reference list is separate. In a class of 24 students, I will get 5-8 that are over 5 pages. I get about 10-15 that are between 4.25 and 5 pages and the rest are below 5 pages. With the topics the students have, like diabetes, they should not have a problem getting over 5 pages. With the paper being a research report, they should tell me what source they used to make claims in each paragraph. Over 50% fail to tell me their sources until I remind them. It is not as they haven't been told. It is in the instruction sheet and I tell them at least once a week until the report is completed. They still fail to follow instructions.
Students also like to play one instructor off against another one. My wife is teaching a couple of lecture classes. Another instructor is teaching the lab. Students will ask my wife for a special priviledge and get one message. If they don't like that answer, they go to the other instructor and try again. They will go back and forth until they get an answer they want. Sometimes they will say that the other instructor said one thing, and they really gave them essentially the same answer as the first instructor. This causes friction between the instructors until they get to talk. That is something the kids usually learn at home getting one answer from one parent and another from the other parent.
Most students are great. There are just a few that cause almost all of the problems. In my classes, there is one or two that cause 95% of the problems. Those I am glad to see finish my courses. The rest I am sorry to see them go.