Random Thoughts Thread

[Luke]

I remember my favorite professor in grad school. She had what was considered the hardest class. She never used power point.

Replace "She" with "He" and that was my favorite professor.

Dr.Simmerly busted my balls, but lived up to his promise of taking my wife and I out for a fancy pants dinner if I scored 97% or higher in his class (never accomplished before). Dude was brutal. I don't think I ever gave him a first draft that scored higher than a 23%.

But he would point out every single stinking mistake, and not just point out the mistakes, but explain why they were mistakes. Ya know, like a professor should.

"Students accepted to this program do not fail courses. Professors in this program fail to teach the students. I have never had a semester where I didn't drop a third of my class load, which motivates me to be a better teacher".

Guy is a beast: http://www.ecu.edu/cs-bus/faculty/simerlyr.cfm

His last bit of advice to me:

"You and your wife are young, brilliant, and naive. Don't take that as a dismissal of your intelligence, but don't think that getting an A in my class makes you smarter than my previous students.

Both of you sell everything. Everything but clothes for a week. Move to China, teach English. You need no requirements. Have your wife work with kids, you work with a business where teaching English will land you a management position (he didn't specify how that would work). Save your money, and you will be paid very well, move back to the States and bank in on teaching Chinese to leaders in business. I had to travel left and right, but when I got back from China I was making between 10-20k a week (and he wasn't pulling my leg)".

I will also always remember asking him "If you were making well over a million a year, why teach?"

His answer "Kids are fucking stupid. No offense, you are smart, but you are still pretty dumb. Kids like you need to be smarter, and that's my job".

I will add that during our dinner, he did nothing but compliment my wife and bust my balls. But he paid the check, so there ya go.

[Blu]

I remember my favorite professor in grad school. She had what was considered the hardest class. She never used power point.

Replace "She" with "He" and that was my favorite professor.

Dr.Simmerly-McAwesome delivers a deep well of professional advice...

How many of these fine points of advice did you heed Luke? I'm curious!

[J T]

Have you ever wondered if the guy that invented running was just trying to recover from tripping over his own feet and brush it off like nothing happened.

[Luke]

I remember my favorite professor in grad school. She had what was considered the hardest class. She never used power point.

Replace "She" with "He" and that was my favorite professor.

Dr.Simmerly-McAwesome delivers a deep well of professional advice...

How many of these fine points of advice did you heed Luke? I'm curious!

My wife teaches English as a second language, so there is that. After almost a year after getting my degree I got a job as director of e-commerce for an established company. So far, so good.

The best advice my professor gave was the same my Father has given me: Think!

[J T]

JT, college students' classroom expectations, work ethic, understanding of higher education, etc. is absolutely different than ours were when we were in school for many, many good reasons (change in primary and secondary school, changes in tech integration, changes in parenting, etc.) that don't make them inherently worse. Plus, we are/were the rare exception that went to grad school - we weren't representative of the typical college student in our own undergraduate days, and so comparing our past experiences or efforts to those of our students today is just an inane exercise in frustration that ignores context and perspective.

I'm actually not saying that it should be like it was in my day. There are things that are a lot better now, and that is due in large part to the available technology, which I do incorporate into what I do. My class is screencasted and podcasted, my website is updated regularly, slides or lecture notes are posted daily, there is a class messageboard, online up-to-date grade info, online handouts, readings, and assignments, a course e-mail account manned by all TAs and myself for questions, there are 5 office hours throughout the week, and other times can be scheduled at request, students are given study guides and practice exams, there are writing assignments, hand-written and computer-analyzed data projects, group discussion sections, computer labs, demonstrative videos, guest lecturers, assignments that require students to use their own creative ideas, topical research examples, in-class demonstrations, and bonus materials that will allow students to go deeper into topics not covered in this course if they want to. And though I use PowerPoint as a skeletal structure for my lectures, I incorporate my own humor and experience as a research and clinician into every topic I teach.

I do a ton of work for this course, so you'll have to excuse me when I get a little irritated that they just keep wanting more from me so that they can do less.

I think that as technology has pressed on and the cultural norms have shifted that we have forgotten some important aspects from the past. There is learning value in having students play a more active role in their education and study, but there is now more of a norm that it is the professor's job to provide all the structure. While structure does help students digest content, it doesn't really teach them how to structure content to make it digestible for themselves, which is an important skill for learning that cuts across disciplines. In other words, handholding is fine and good for awhile, but at some point it stops helping a student prepare for life, and starts making them dependent on others to structure their life for them. As an educator that bothers me, but the cultural norms have shifted that way and if I react back by making students do more of the work to structuring their education, it is not well received.

Students coming into college now were raised to believe that all that matters in your education is test performance because so much emphasis is placed on standardized testing (which I would be fine with if there were some other metrics involved that captured the important aspects of education that you don't see in those tests). They also exist in a time where there is major financial insecurity: the economy is terrible, jobs are scarce, and student tuition (and therefore loan debt) is spirit crushingly expensive. Of course they just want to get the grade and move on. I get that. I just also see the value of being educated beyond your test scores, and I find the whole situation kind of frustrating, even though I am generally and genuinely proud of my students and see how intelligent and sophisticated they can be when given the right opportunities to demonstrate that.

[dsheinem]

JT, college students' classroom expectations, work ethic, understanding of higher education, etc. is absolutely different than ours were when we were in school for many, many good reasons (change in primary and secondary school, changes in tech integration, changes in parenting, etc.) that don't make them inherently worse. Plus, we are/were the rare exception that went to grad school - we weren't representative of the typical college student in our own undergraduate days, and so comparing our past experiences or efforts to those of our students today is just an inane exercise in frustration that ignores context and perspective.

I'm actually not saying that it should be like it was in my day. There are things that are a lot better now, and that is due in large part to the available technology, which I do incorporate into what I do. My class is screencasted and podcasted, my website is updated regularly, slides or lecture notes are posted daily, there is a class messageboard, online up-to-date grade info, online handouts, readings, and assignments, a course e-mail account manned by all TAs and myself for questions, there are 5 office hours throughout the week, and other times can be scheduled at request, students are given study guides and practice exams, there are writing assignments, hand-written and computer-analyzed data projects, group discussion sections, computer labs, demonstrative videos, guest lecturers, assignments that require students to use their own creative ideas, topical research examples, in-class demonstrations, and bonus materials that will allow students to go deeper into topics not covered in this course if they want to. And though I use PowerPoint as a skeletal structure for my lectures, I incorporate my own humor and experience as a research and clinician into every topic I teach.

I do a ton of work for this course, so you'll have to excuse me when I get a little irritated that they just keep wanting more from me so that they can do less.

I think that as technology has pressed on and the cultural norms have shifted that we have forgotten some important aspects from the past. There is learning value in having students play a more active role in their education and study, but there is now more of a norm that it is the professor's job to provide all the structure. While structure does help students digest content, it doesn't really teach them how to structure content to make it digestible for themselves, which is an important skill for learning that cuts across disciplines. In other words, handholding is fine and good for awhile, but at some point it stops helping a student prepare for life, and starts making them dependent on others to structure their life for them. As an educator that bothers me, but the cultural norms have shifted that way and if I react back by making students do more of the work to structuring their education, it is not well received.

Students coming into college now were raised to believe that all that matters in your education is test performance because so much emphasis is placed on standardized testing (which I would be fine with if their were some other metrics involved that captured the important aspects of education that you don't see in those tests). They also exist in a time where there is major financial insecurity: the economy is terrible, jobs are scarce, and student tuition (and therefore loan debt) is spirit crushingly expensive. Of course they just want to get the grade and move on. I get that. I just also see the value of being educated beyond your test scores, and I find the whole situation kind of frustrating, even though I am generally and genuinely proud of my students and see how intelligent and sophisticated they can be when given the right opportunities to demonstrate that.

A good follow up post. You do a lot of the same things I do in the classroom/in a course and I have no doubt that you are a thoughtful and dedicated instructor based on my reading of your thoughts on a variety of topics (including education).

And yes, you are right that students aren't able to deal with a lack of structure as much as was likely true in the past - and yes, much of that comes from the "teaching to the test" mentality that permeates their schooling prior to college. And yes, I hate that mentality and the way that No Child Left Behind Style assessment is creeping into higher ed.

What I've discovered in my (dear god) 12 years of teaching college students is that, increasingly, students really do need more hand holding and structure in most 100 and 200 level classes than I would have thought should be the case when I started teaching. I largely feel that this isn't their fault, given the state of K-12. So yes, I spend more time educating them about good educational practices than I might like, and I have to deal with some blowback from time to time for not handholding "enough" or for calling them out on bad practices (kicking out students who clearly didn't read, being ruthless with plagiarism, etc.), but they don't have to like me and I don't have to be their friend: they have to learn something from me.

That said, I still think junior/senior level classes with much less structure work really well for students as long as you can sell them on WHY they should care about the stuff they are working on at the level beyond a grade. Those upper level courses are where they tend to care more about how I pour my own passion and interest into the subject, where they are figuring out how to do work that will benefit them beyond making an assignment grade, and where they get to blend theory and practice in some interesting ways. In these courses I tend to provide only basic structures for assignments and to encourage regular meetings and additional outside readings, etc. to work with students or student groups in an area of interest (broadly defined by the course subject matter). It gets them to where I wanted them to ideally be a year or two earlier, but that's fine by me.

[gtmtnbiker]

So is anyone in NC, NJ, MD, PA, NY, CT getting ready for the 17 year Cicada?



I'm glad that they are not in the Mass area. I grew up in NJ but can't ever recall seeing a swarm other than the 1-2 shells you find on trees.

The only swarm of bugs I have ever seen were the love bugs (may flies?) in FL. I was driving along 95 in the Cape Canaveral area and ran into a cloud of love bugs that covered my car. I had to drive to a gas station to clean my windshield. The paint on my car hood had some damage from all of the bug juice.

[Forlorn Drifter]

I'm such a jealous person at times.

[Luke]

I wonder if the producer of the short lived tv show Hogan Knows Best sometimes sits back and thinks "Did I ever f--k that family up or what?". In a span of a few years Hogan's daughter's career is in the toilet, his son killed a guy (didn't he?), his wife left him for a teenager, and Hogan himself has a viral porn video (that he didn't release...yeah right).

What a downward spiral that family has been in.

[stickem]

next stop for hogan's daughter, porn.