Complaining Early & Often

While serving on a particular review committee at my university, I have seen many examples of negative comments in teaching evaluations for problems that seem like they could easily have been fixed during the course if only the professor knew there was a problem (and was willing to recognize it as such and change something about their teaching style).

Sometimes we professors can sense that something is wrong or that students are unhappy or confused. Some students will tell you directly, but most try to express their unhappiness and/or frustration in unspoken ways. Unless you ask them what the problem is, perhaps even by doing a mid-term evaluation to get anonymous comments, it can be hard to know what the problem is in some cases. Of course, if you just handed back a test and the average score was 17%, you might have some clues as to why students are unhappy.

The situations I am thinking about don't have to do with difficult tests, but more with teaching style. I have talked about some of these issues before, such as pacing vs. being stationary, having an accent and/or speaking too fast, using various formats and devices for writing, projecting etc.

Whenever I see a file with very negative teaching evaluations, I always wonder if any students complained somehow, to someone, during the course. Some of the problems seem entirely fixable during the term, when there is time for the students to benefit.

I tend to assume that no one complained because I seldom see a comment like "Although we told Professor X that we could never see his writing when he used the red marker, he kept using it." Instead, it's more common to see the complaint "I could never see the writing on the board when he used the red pen."

I can certainly understand why some students would not want to complain directly to or about a professor during a class. What if the professor gets angry and punishes them by giving impossible exams and low grades? There is surely some anxiety about the consequences of complaining.

Of course, there is a difference (or can be, anyway) between complaining and making a request. That is, instead of "I hate it when you use the red pen", something along the lines of "It would help us all see your writing on the board better if you only used the black and blue pens."

Other problems, of course, are more serious and more difficult to fix during a course; for example: comments about a professor's disorganization, inconsistency, perceptions of unfair tests or rude comments, refusal or inability to provide clear explanations or answers to questions. In those cases, what can a student do?

Don't wait for the teaching evaluation and don't be satisfied with writing negative comments on some professor-rating website. Get organized: talk to other students, find out what the issues are, get examples, and write it all down. Then ask an undergrad advisor, respected senior professor, or relevant administrator what to do. If the complaints/requests are reasonable, perhaps there are faculty or administrators who can pass along suggestions aimed at fixing problems in time to help the students. In some cases and at some places, these concerns will be dismissed or ignored, but I think it's worth a try.

In some cases (but probably not the extreme ones), there might even be a reasonable explanation for what seems like bad teaching. I one case I can think of, a professor used a lot of text-heavy slides in a class. The students complained about it in the teaching evaluations, but not one of them had mentioned during the course that they hated this. It turns out that there was a hearing-impaired student in the class, and the professor had been asked to put a lot of text on slides, and had spent considerable time doing so, out of concern for the hearing-impaired student.

There are ways that this particular situation could have been dealt with better by the professor and the students. For example, the professor could have explained what was going on, and could have found a way to present the course material without making the students feel bludgeoned by text-laden slides.

Of course I wish the major teaching problems could be fixed, but it is these easily fixable problems that I am focusing on today because they are fixable with a bit of two-way communication between professors and students.

So, student-readers: Are there any possibly-fixable issues in the classes you are taking now that you wish could be fixed during this term? If you give us some examples, the professor-readers can comment and say "Yes, you should definitely tell your professor about that" or "No, don't do it" (but here's a suggestion for dealing with it). More likely, you will get both answers for any particular example, but the results could be interesting anyway.

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Everything I Say Might Be Important

The other day, while working intensely on editing a document in a cafe, my attention wandered for just a moment (or two) and I tuned into a nearby conversation between two undergrads. One of them said something like this:

I hate Professor X. He never tells us whether anything he says is important, so we have to assume it is all important and so I need to take notes on everything he says and it is impossible to do that.

There was a bit more to the conversation, and it seems that this student is really struggling to sort out what is important and what is not important in a lecture, and therefore isn't getting much out of the class. If a lot of information is presented in each class, and all of it is theoretically equally "important", she can't possibly take it all in, she spends a lot of time feeling frustrated, and she therefore hates the class (and its professor).

One thing that interested me was the idea that it's better to assume that everything might be important than that none of it is (or might be). A famous gripe of professors is when students who miss a class or arrive late ask the professor if they (the students) "missed anything important". Would you rather have students wonder if you happened to touch on anything important in a particular class, or would you rather have students assume that you are probably saying lots of important things (if only they knew what they were) and hate your class as a result?

Not knowing anything about the professor or class or student in question, I am not going to speculate more about that particular situation, except to say that I hope that the student goes to talk to the professor -- not to complain, of course, but to discuss strategies for understanding the lecture material and thereby to alert the professor that at least one student is confused and struggling.

Overhearing this conversation made me think about how/whether I convey **What Is Important** and What Is Not, while teaching in a classroom.

Most of us are well aware that some students classify information as important (likely to be on the test) vs. not important (safely ignored). And many of us professors think that everything we say is in fact important (and could be on the test), but realistically, some of our pearls of wisdom are more pearly than others. We may emphasize a certain topic (perhaps even specifically described as important, key, critical, significant, fundamental etc.), and then some/most of what immediately follows is elaboration: we give examples, we try to explain and not just state. All of that is important, but there is also sort of a hierarchy.

I am going to try to be more aware of this in my classes, but I am curious as to how often I say "This is a really important point/concept/question" (and then, ideally, explain why it is important and not just assert it). I think I try to be clear about this and not just assume that students will automatically know, but to be sure, I do provide review questions that represent important information from each class. Or, I should say, the most important information because, of course, it is all important.

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Loaded

Some colleagues and I were talking about teaching loads over dinner recently. First, let me say that I do not think that the word load implies that we find teaching a burden. It's just a term that means "how much one teaches per unit time" (term or academic year).

I hope that longtime readers have the impression that I like and value teaching (and students), as that is, in fact, how I feel about teaching (and students). That does not, however, mean that I want to teach a lot. By a lot, I mean more than 2.5 classes/year. OK, maybe 3.

If I teach a lot -- and there have been years when I taught > 3 classes -- I like teaching less because I don't have time to focus on doing it well. I don't have time to give my students the attention they need and deserve. Excessive grading erodes my mental and physical health.

If I teach more than 3 classes in an academic year, I don't have as much time for my graduate students and postdocs and undergrad research students, and it's more difficult to find time for research, papers, proposals, conferences, and all those things that are the other major component of my job. I have a very active research program, and it requires a lot of time to keep that going.

Although I am an epic multi-tasker and am happy work late into the night and on weekends, there are limits to what I can do in terms of doing both research and teaching well, and my personal limit -- given the size of my research program and group -- is about 2.5 classes/year.

Fortunately, that happens to be my average teaching load. It doesn't have to be 2.5 classes every year. It can be 3 some years and < 2.5 other years; that's fine. It's good to have flexibility.

Yes, I know that other faculty teach 4 (or more) classes in a year and also manage to get other things done (research, life), but I am not one of those people who can do all of that well.

Are my university and the people it serves getting their money's worth out of me? How would I fare in an evaluation of my usefulness to the university? That depends on the factors in the equation. I have brought in a lot of grant money, advised and graduated a lot of students, published a respectable number of papers, and received high teaching evaluations. I would fare well if those efforts are considered.

I would not fare well if the number of courses taught/year is a major factor (although my teaching load is not out of line with my department or similar departments). The low number of courses (relative to, say, humanities faculty teaching loads) might be somewhat offset by the fact that I teach some large to moderate sized courses, but there's no getting around the fact that many of us science professors teach less than our colleagues in other units of the university.

Should I teach more? Would it be better for the university overall if I taught more and did less research and advised fewer graduate students? I don't know.. that's a loaded question.

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Overexposed?

Today in Scientopia, I discuss a reader's question as to whether it is better to take a 1-year, non-tenure track, teaching position that will/might become tenure-track (and thereby possibly getting the 'inside' track on the TT job), or whether it's better to wait and apply for the tenure-track job.

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Magical Teaching

As an advisor, I spend a lot of time explaining to students how to do research. I am continually reminded about what is reasonable vs. unreasonable to expect someone to know. Every year, there are new students, so the slate is wiped clean, and certain things need explaining from scratch.

I have shared teaching materials with colleagues before, but I realized recently that I had seldom explained to someone else how I teach, and yet I had to do just that because someone new to teaching will be teaching a course that I have taught for a long time. I gave this person all my teaching materials -- syllabus, image files, review information, quizzes/tests, labs etc. -- but when we looked at some of it together, I realized how lifeless these teaching materials are when they are completely disconnected from the classroom experience.

For example, I can look at a list of topics and remember my explanations and examples and the questions I asked the students and what their responses were and how we discussed these, and what happened next, and so on. That's the invisible, magic part that you can't see just from looking at lists of topics or even some figures.

I don't mean magic as in pulling bunnies out of hats, although perhaps there is a bit of that sometimes (particularly in large intro science classes), but more in the sense of something that isn't very scientific, even if you are teaching Science. It's the feeling you get when you are teaching -- the energy, the interaction, the information you get from how the students respond (mostly non-verbally) to what you are saying.

The way I learned to teach was by going to the class of an extremely effective professor for whom I was a TA. I had had excellent professors as an undergraduate, but I was learning other things from them. In grad school, I was a TA and I needed to learn to teach, so I went to watch this person -- a legendary teacher -- teach a big intro science class. I went to every class, and I even sat in on the same class with the same professor for more than one term.

Some things did not translate from his teaching style to mine. He was (and is) a charismatic man. I am a profoundly uncharismatic woman. Somewhere in the FSP archives is an anecdote about how he successfully used a particular method to quiet the multitudes in the giant lecture hall. Years later, when I was teaching the same class as an instructor (just after getting my PhD) in the same lecture hall, students complained that I was treating them like children when I tried to get the class to quiet down; I reminded them of a kindergarten teacher.

The other professor had never gotten this comment, ever. Same method, different people: effective for him, not effective for me.

But a lot of his methods did translate well, and for many years I emulated his teaching style until I felt more confident and started developing my own style.

More than 20 years later, my teaching mentor is still my teaching mentor, and has been visiting me recently to talk about.. teaching, pedagogy, and sports. Or, at least, two out of those three.

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Will There Be Anything Else?

One of my colleagues has a teaching philosophy that contains the following principle:

If you do a lot for your students in terms of providing 'extra' materials (study guides, lecture notes etc.), they will ask for more and more and more and be unhappy. If you don't provide them with much -- maybe just some review materials before an exam -- they will be content with what little you give them.

This is a bit cynical, so I hasten to note that my colleague is a great teacher. When he teaches a large intro science class, students applaud at the end of the last lecture. Sometimes when he is in a near-campus coffee shop, former students have the barista send drinks and treats to his table with their thanks. Students know he cares about the course, even if he pours most of his energy into the in-class part and not so much to other parts.

I have always disagreed with him about the "give them an inch.." hypothesis, but I must admit that every once in a while there are some data (or a datum) to support it.

At the moment, I am thinking about a comment on my recent teaching evaluations.

First consider this: After each class, I post questions that cover all the main topics of that day's lecture and I provide a pdf of the presentation file if I showed images during class. During the term, I give the students all the exams from the previous year's class. And, in a new development for me this past term, just before class time I post a file with the images I will show in class that day. I annotate the images in class, and the students who bring electronic devices to class can do so as well if they want. For those who don't access the image file in class, I suggest that they note down the slide numbers in their notes so that they can later match images to notes.

What I don't do is provide the image file well in advance. I am typically tinkering with the images until the last minute, and I explain this to the students when I describe what course materials I provide/don't provide and why.

And yet, despite providing quite a lot, one student wanted more. Not only did this student want me to provide the presentation file (with images) well in advance, but s/he also wanted me to print out the file each day and distribute a copy in class so that students could take notes directly on the images on paper.

OK, no problem. Just let me know how many images per page you would like. Should I print the pages in color? Don't worry about the cost. One-sided or double-sided? Of course I will collate the pages, but would you like them stapled or unstapled? If stapled, do you prefer the upper left corner or the upper right? Just let me know if you want me to punch holes in the margin so it will fit in a 3-ring binder. And just so no one feels bad about all the paper this will require, please rest assured that I will try to find paper made with a significant component of post-consumer waste.

And will there be anything else? Oh yes, OK, sure: I will highlight the points that will definitely be on the test. No problem.

This post is an example of how we focus on absurd little comments that are kind of (or very) negative in our teaching evaluations, even if the overall evaluations are positive. In the class I taught last term, 100%* would recommend me as an instructor! 100%* find me approachable and respectful! 100%* think I know my subject well and present it clearly! All of this makes me happy and I am grateful to my nice students who took the time to do the evaluations and express their satisfaction with the course.

Clearly, even the student who wished that I provided handouts in every class was overall happy with the class, so in this sense my colleague is wrong: students may ask for more, but it doesn't mean they are dissatisfied.

So, my typical approach to these situations is to consider all suggestions as constructive criticism, seriously ponder whether the suggestions are feasible, and use those that are and ignore those that are not. I may get ideas for how to explain my teaching philosophy in a different or more complete way (in this respect), even if I don't change what I do. To the extent that these evaluations by students are any use, for me, this is a good use for them.

* of the 89% of students in my class who did the evaluations

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Perpendicular Thinking

As I contemplate this past academic year of teaching, I feel pretty good about my classes (and students!), although, as usual, I have some ideas for things I want to change next time. In the end, through all the ups and downs, it was a good year.

And yet.. the perfectionist in me wonders why I can never get the absolutely key, essential, critical, first-order, important concepts through to every single student such that they can demonstrate mastery of these concepts on the final exam. This year, there was one student who somehow made it through 3 courses (1.5 taught by me) that used a particular fundamental concept in many different ways and was unable to show any knowledge of this concept. Do I need to draw it for you? OK:


I have been teaching for >20 years, and the fact that a Science major came up with D as an answer instead of C or A/B shocked me.

Possible explanations for the student's bizarre wrong answer:

- I wrote an ambiguous, poorly worded exam question. Evidence against this: every other student in the class got this part of the question right, and there is no possibility that configuration D is ever correct, no matter how poorly worded the question.

- The student is "intellectually challenged" and doesn't understand even basic concepts that have been presented repeatedly during a year of classes by different instructors. This is not a very convincing explanation and, moreover, is not supported by other evidence for the student's abilities in these courses.

- The student was rushing, was extremely careless, didn't read the question, just jotted something down to make marks on the paper. Maybe, but it's hard to imagine any level of carelessness that could lead to answer D.

- The student was cheating, but did not cheat well. That is, the student glanced at another student's exam, but got the questions and answers mixed up.

No, I don't believe that. I don't believe the student cheated, but even if I am wrong about that, answer D is not even close to any answer to any question on the exam.

- The student knew the answer but experienced exam-stress brain-freeze. Perhaps in a calm moment, the student could easily have produced the correct answer, or at least not a totally wrong, physically impossible, not-even-worth-partial-credit-it's-so-wrong answer. During the exam, however, the student wasn't thinking straight and, for this question, gave what was perhaps the most incorrect answer possible other than leaving the answer entirely blank.

I do not totally reject that possibility, but the concept in question is not complex. The brain-freeze would have had to have been catastrophic. And yet, the only explanation I find even somewhat plausible is that, under stress, the student confused the elementary concept with another concept that was also discussed in these classes. Out of stress or carelessness, the student described this other concept (but even that not correctly).

I suppose a take-home exam with liberal time allowance is a way to alleviate exam-stress of this sort, but I have tried that format in the (distant) past, and know that in this particular course, students prefer to study, take a final exam, and be done. Fortunately, in this class there are many non-exam graded activities so that all but the most severe case of exam-stress doesn't result in a dire grade situation. [And of course, students with documented learning disabilities can take the exam in a testing center, in a quiet room, and in some cases are given extra time to complete the exam.]

When I think back on the most recent class that I taught, the incident described here is one of the things that sticks out most for me. I'm not sure why, except that even professors who have been teaching for a long time may wonder (especially after grading final exams): Didn't I teach them anything? (Or the variant: Didn't they learn anything?).

The answer may well be yes, but some of us are affected by the spectacular outliers: the exam answers that are so bad, they shock us. What does it mean that I am still shockable after all these years of teaching? That I haven't seen it all yet? That there are still teaching adventures -- good and bad -- to be experienced? I hope so.

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Too Cool For Me

Although the word textbook tends to conjure images of heavy, overpriced, boring paper bricks filled with too many facts for any one person to learn in a reasonable amount of time, textbooks are actually quite varied in their style, tone, content, and even price.

Writers, assigners, and readers of textbooks will always disagree about what should go in a textbook, and some people will argue that textbooks are irrelevant and should not be used, much less required. I am not going to get into the textbook cost-benefit argument here, or the issue of whether/how professors assign textbooks and then (apparently) don't even use them. Those are topics of other posts, past and possibly future.

Today my specific subject is related to the content of textbooks for introductory classes. In the drive to make difficult and (apparently) boring subjects more user-friendly and accessible, some textbooks adopt a rather casual tone and format. Some textbooks I have seen recently reminded me of picture books my daughter liked when she was a lot younger -- those books with pictures of animals or construction equipment or whatever and bits of text scattered about to explain each picture.

So I wonder: Is there such thing as too casual in the context of textbooks, or is a 'fun' textbook a good thing if it helps engage the student in the subject?

There are various stages of casual style in textbooks:

- textbooks written in an entirely formal, classic style, with a casual quotient of zero;

- textbooks that are overall serious and classic in style, but with a few attempts at a lighter tone in text or illustrations. For some books, this lighter tone might be signaled only by a parenthetical expression with a "!" as a further clue that whimsy is being attempted;

- mostly serious, classic textbooks that have some references to popular culture and/or that use casual phrasing or images (such as in an analogy) to explain a concept;

- textbooks in which the casual style is a persistent features; e.g., books with cute chapter titles or section subheadings or some attempts at humor in illustrations;

- and so on, along the spectrum to intensely casual textbooks. It would be interesting to hear of examples of the most casual (interpret the term however you want) college-level textbooks in various fields, and what you think of them.

I am not a big fan of textbooks in which the casual aspects are distracting rather than helpful pedagogical tools. I also think that, in some cases, textbook authors might believe they are being cool by coming up with (apparently) clever chapter titles that read like blog post titles, but I wonder if the intended audience of the textbooks (undergrads in an intro-level course) thinks these are cool.. or pathetic?

And I also wonder: Is it condescending to 'dumb down' a textbook because the assumption is that most students can't (or won't) engage with serious topics, or is it a pedagogical best-practice to reduce jargon and try to capture the attention of as many students as possible?

Surely there is a good balance in there somewhere, such that a textbook is not primarily an impenetrable list of arcane terminology, and yet is not so informal that the pictures and words are an incoherent muddle.

I like textbooks that explain things and that don't focus on vocabulary (jargon) so much that the book seems to exist only to leap from term to term (that students memorize). I am fine with lots of pretty pictures and clever analogies. I am trying to overcome an aversion to 'cute' chapter titles in textbooks.

Part of what is difficult for me is that I know what I would have liked as a student, and I am pretty sure that that is not what most of my students today would like. Those of us become professors and essentially never leave school are not necessarily the best judges of what most of our students will find useful and interesting in a book. And yet.. we teach, and many of us do make decisions about textbooks.

I don't want to use a textbook that I dislike and that I think does a bad job of explaining important topics (who does?), but I also don't want to require a textbook that many of my students will hate and perhaps not read or understand no matter how much I try to integrate textbook-reading into the class. That's what can make the Textbook Decision a challenging one for me.

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AWOL TAs

Several times in recent months, academic persons at different institutions have described completely unrelated problems with different graduate students who failed to secure a substitute to teach their labs/recitations/discussion sections/etc. when they had be away for anticipated travel.

I have written before about when professors need to miss class (e.g., owing to conference travel) and what we typically do to deal with anticipated absences. My focus today is on graduate students. Some of the issues are similar (the general need to balance teaching and research responsibilities), but some are unique to teaching assistants.

Example: If a grad student needs a substitute for a lab, which may be 2-3 hours in duration, the stakes are a bit higher and the options more limited than when a professor needs a substitute for a 50-minute lecture. The professor could show a highly relevant and entertaining movie, give an exam, or even cancel one class, but these options would not be feasible or advisable for a lab.

Grad students for centuries have routinely traded lab-substituting duties to help each other. It's the obvious thing to do, and if you plan enough in advance, you can work something out.

However, problems arise when a to-be-absent TA doesn't plan in advance and then expects someone to help them out with their self-inflicted emergency. Most grad students are responsible about these situations, and problems are rare. Nevertheless, I have seen the best-if-avoided following scenarios:

- The absent TA makes a last-minute plea to other TAs for help. Some TAs seem to think that it is better if this desperate plea is made afar (e.g., from the conference site) so that their friends can't kill them immediately, but this method will likely result in much anger from peers and professors.

- The absent TA expects the instructor of the class to find a substitute for them. The instructor may be interested in being part of the substitute-finding process (to ensure that the lab will be well taught) and ultimately is the person responsible for the class as a whole, but it's a bad idea for a TA to assume that the instructor will find a substitute for them.

- The absent TA does not find a substitute and the course instructor is reluctant to take this responsibility, so the job of finding a substitute falls to the TA's grad advisor, who does not think it is their responsibility, and passes it back to the TA. That results in a protracted process involving lots of cranky people.

Not long ago, I was thinking about an ancient incident involving TA-substitution issues when I was a grad student. I was reminded of this because I was invited to give a talk at another university -- a university where a fellow TA from my grad school days is now an esteemed senior professor. One term when we were TAs for the same class, we each planned to go to a (different) conference, so we arranged to substitute for each other.

Or so I thought. I taught his lab for him, and he then refused to teach my lab, although he had no schedule or other conflict with the lab time. His reason for not teaching my lab: "I may have implied that I would teach your lab for you but I never promised I would teach your lab for you." Me: "Then why did you think I taught your lab for you?" Shrug. It was my problem, not his.

More than twenty years later, I examined my soul. Had I forgiven him? No, not really.

I don't mean that, decades later, I obsess over his refusing to teach a lab for me after I had taught his lab for him, and it is important to note that this event was not an isolated example of his jerkiness. That is, I am not overlooking abundant examples in which he was actually a thoughtful and pleasant person. He was consistently a jerk. To everyone.

So now, eons later, I was curious to see what his grad students think of him. Are they psychologically damaged by their interactions with him, or did he somehow mature when in a position of responsibility and learn to treat people with respect? What happens to someone who routinely shirked their responsibility as a grad student? Do they become a shirker professor?

Well, in this case, I'd reluctantly say that the results are rather more positive than negative. People (including his students) don't hate him; most even seem to like him. Some of the characteristics that annoyed his peer grad students are seen by his students and others as harmless eccentricities of a professor. He is clearly a jerk in some ways - he still has a tendency to patronize and condescend to colleagues and students alike, for example -- but overall he functions well as a teacher and advisor, and has even won awards.

That's nice. Although I will never like this individual, I like knowing that there is a possibility for personal growth after grad school.

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An Open Letter to the Math Guy

Following on a recent post about annoying ancillary things we wouldn't miss while on sabbatical, I propose that today we each think about the most trivial annoying thing that routinely afflicts our working lives. Something so small that we might not think it is worth trying to fix. We might even be embarrassed to mention it to anyone but a very close friend or the blogosphere. It might not even make our list of Small Things We Would Not Miss while on sabbatical. And yet, if this annoying small thing went away, life would be better.

Then it would be good to think of a way to eliminate this little annoyance. Maybe we can't solve the tera-problems, but maybe we can eliminate a nano-problem or two. This is what I recently tried to do with a nano-problem.

There was one small thing that was annoying me every single week before a certain class. Instead of dealing with the problem right away, I wrote the following letter in my head each week for many weeks, but never sent it. Eventually, when an opportunity finally arose, I talked to the intended recipient of the letter in person and temporarily fixed the problem that way. Life was definitely nano-better when the nano-problem was temporarily solved, but now I'm back to square one, so I was thinking about these types of little annoyances again today.

Here is the letter I wrote in my head:

Dear Math Guy,

We teach in the same classroom on the same days. There are no other classes in that room between your class and my class, and that is how I know that YOU are responsible for leaving the boards covered (covered!) from top to bottom, left to right, with Math Writing.

The problem (for me) is that you don't erase what you write. Ever. Who do you think erases the board of your equations and annotations? You may not know or care, but I will tell you anyway: I erase the board of your writing. I erase the board at the beginning of my class because I have no choice if I want to write on the board during my class as well.

Oh sure, the students would probably love it if I did not erase the board and instead just projected a series of text slides that they could copy into their notes -- who doesn't love a class consisting entirely of text slides? And if they were bored, they could look at your Math Writing. I could show text slides, but every once in a while, I like to mix it up a bit and write and sketch things out.

Clearly you like to do the same thing when you teach. Maybe we have a lot in common in our approach to teaching. Maybe we would even like each other if we met in person. But we have not met yet, and therefore, at the beginning of every class, I loathe you for a few minutes in absentia.

Perhaps you think I am unreasonable for being annoyed, and that instructors should just be prepared to erase the board at the beginning of class. What's the big deal anyway? Well, for one thing, we have the awesome luck to teach in one of the few classrooms that still has a chalkboard and chalk. Perhaps I wouldn't be so annoyed if it were just a matter of erasing dry-erase marker on a white board. Instead, I end up sneezing and covered in chalk dust at the beginning of my class rather than at the end, and I find that unpleasant.

You may be surprised to know how much you are annoying the person who teaches in that classroom after you. I am sure you don't even think about the effect your non-erasing habit has on the next instructor. You finish your class and you leave, exhilarated or depressed, and probably quite tired after all of that writing and talking.

Even so, I am writing to ask you to take a few minutes to erase the board of your own writing before you exit the classroom. And then I will no longer loathe you for those few minutes each week, and that will surely be a relief to us both.

Thanks in advance for erasing,

FSP


During the brief time when this nano-problem seemed to be solved, I was in a much better mood when I started my class. I could start the class with the key points I wanted to make at the beginning, rather than spending the first few minutes with my back to the class while I erased the board and got covered in chalk dust. Life was definitely better.

Now Math Guy has returned to his evil ways, and I am back to writing this letter in my head (and in this post) until I get a chance to talk to him again. Either that, or the academic year will just end, as it surely must eventually, I will quickly forget about being annoyed about such a small but pernicious thing.

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Can't, Don't, or Won't?

Not long ago, I heard a presentation by a Writing Expert -- someone (not a professor) who had expertise with teaching writing in academic contexts.

She said that she understands that many professors get frustrated when their students keep making the same mistakes in their writing, but that most people can't learn from their own writing mistakes, even after having the mistakes corrected and explained. It is essentially a learning disability.

The reappearance of the same-old-same-old writing errors, even in consecutive edited drafts, is certainly a phenomenon that frustrates many of us professors. We correct and explain a particular technical error and then expect that we won't see that particular problem again in the next draft, but we do see it.. again and again. Why didn't the student, even one whose native language is English, fix the problem?

Are they lazy or careless? Do they just expect others to fix their writing problems? It is not difficult to find laments such as this in professor-blogs.

But the Writing Expert said that most people can't fix these problems. She said that some can, but most can't. She said "can't", not "won't" or "don't", indicating a lack of ability, not a lack of willingness or attention.

I didn't get a chance to question her on this, so I don't know whether to believe it. Let's assume, at least for a moment, that she's right. Let's assume that there are high-quality, statistically valid, repeatable, controlled experiments that prove that most people are psychobiochemically unable to correct writing errors, even once these errors are corrected and explained, owing to intrinsic nanoneurosynaptic gaps. Or something.

Would knowing that 'they can't help it' help us -- the advisor-editors -- be more understanding when we encounter this frustrating problem? Would it make us -- especially those of us who (like to think that we) don't have this problem -- more likely to be patient when we have to point out (and fix) the same problem again and again?

In my case, probably not. It was interesting to hear this idea, but I am reluctant to embrace the 'they can't help it' explanation. Why can't a person -- one who is capable of understanding complex Science Concepts -- understand the concept of misplaced and dangling modifiers? Is there something special about grammar and spelling as compared to, say, partial differential equations?

Perhaps there is. I certainly realize that writing is a very personal activity, and this accounts for many of the problems we encounter with students and colleagues who are reluctant to write and who lack confidence in their writing. And I realize that learning disabilities are real and exist. But does most of the population have them? And does this also explain why most people are apparently unable to learn how to avoid using a misplaced modifier in their writing?

I don't know, but since I haven't found a brilliant way to help students (and others) help themselves self-correct technical writing mistakes, I would be interested in hearing from students who don't have documented learning disabilities and who know that, at some point, have frustrated their advisors by repeating previously-corrected technical errors in writing.

How did you approach your revisions? Did you focus on content and decide not to worry about the details (perhaps underestimating how much your advisor cared about these things)? Did you not find the previous correction(s) useful in a general way (i.e., you understood the specific correction, but not how that would apply to other, similar examples)? Have any of you received a technical correction and a light bulb went off and you (almost) never made that mistake again? Is there a certain style or type of correction that gets through, whereas others that do not?

Complaining about uneducable students and grammar-fascist advisors can be fun, but I hope that by discussing some examples, perhaps from both students and advisors, we can make some progress in figuring out how to diminish this source of annoyance for both the student-writer and the advisor-editor.

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Why You Shouldn't Cheat: Reason #57

If you cheat in a professor's class and get caught, and then later, perhaps even much later, after the term in which you cheated is over, you might be out with friends on a Saturday night, having dinner at a restaurant near campus, and then in walks your former professor. You see your former professor, and she sees you. You were laughing at something, but you stop, even though your friends are still laughing at whatever you were all laughing about when your professor walked in. You stay on for another minute or two, but you are so uncomfortable, you get up and leave.

Perhaps you go somewhere else and continue to enjoy your Saturday night, or perhaps your evening is ruined because you are reminded of your cheating, and the F you got on the exam (as a consequence of your cheating), and your interview with some administrators in the office that deals with academic conduct. Perhaps you go back to your room and study or do homework so that you can continue to undo the damage you inflicted on your GPA as a consequence of your cheating.

The professor's evening will not be ruined by your presence in the same restaurant, even though it's not pleasant to be reminded about your cheating. In the rare instances when we professors venture off campus, we sometimes run into students who are happy to see us, we sometimes run into students who are surprised to see us outside of class (but who don't really mind seeing us), and we sometimes run into students who run the other way.

As long as the number of encounters with happy students is > or = to the number of surprised students and >> the number of students who run away at the very sight of us, I am content. It's would also be OK with me if the fear of off-campus encounters with professors served as a deterrent for potential cheaters.

I don't think it likely, however, that anyone who is tempted to cheat will first think "Wait a minute, maybe I shouldn't copy the answers from my friend's test because then the professor might catch me and then I might run into her at that Thai restaurant on X Street some night and have my evening ruined." But perhaps they should.

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Talking About Your Research.. in class

Today in Scientopia, I discuss the phenomenon in which some professors are praised by their undergraduate students for talking about their (the professor's) research in class, whereas others are criticized for the same thing. In the latter case, mention of research in a class may be seen as proof that the professor only cares about research.

Should we talk about our research in class, and if so, how can we do it well?

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Confident Distress

Media interpretations of the recent report on The American Freshman: National Norms 2010 are, perhaps not surprisingly, incoherent. Depending on which headline you read, 1st year students are either experiencing A RECORD LEVEL OF STRESS (The New York Times, among others) or are confident and ambitious (The Chronicle of Higher Education: "Economy Changed Freshmen's Plans but Didn't Shake Their Confidence").

Of course, you don't have to choose which one to believe; I believe them both. Anyone can have confidence in their knowledge and abilities and yet be anxious about various things (the future being only one of many possibilities). You could find similar results whether polling 1st year students or nth year doctoral students.

But that's not what interested me about this report and its media interpretations. I was intrigued by this, as reported in the NYT article:

In addition, Professor Sax has explored the role of the faculty in college students’ emotional health, and found that interactions with faculty members were particularly salient for women. Negative interactions had a greater impact on their mental health.

“Women’s sense of emotional well-being was more closely tied to how they felt the faculty treated them,” she said. “It wasn’t so much the level of contact as whether they felt they were being taken seriously by the professor. If not, it was more detrimental to women than to men.”

She added: “And while men who challenged their professor’s ideas in class had a decline in stress, for women it was associated with a decline in well-being.”

The article ends there, leaving me with quite a few questions. Alas, I have only read the official press release and the report summary, and gazed at the 43-slide presentation, but I did not purchase the report to read in full. The summary materials don't enlighten me more about the topic raised by the excerpt above, so I can only blog-muse about it.

My main question is: What is meant by "challenged their professor's ideas in class"? This sounds like it involves more than just asking a critical question or even pointing out an error. Does it involve more than just disagreeing?

Is being "challenged" by a student in class about ideas more likely to be a humanities or social sciences kind of thing than a science thing? I can think of ways in which students could "challenge" a professor's ideas in a science class -- e.g., if a student's religious beliefs about (against) evolution contradicted what was taught in a biology class -- but it's harder to think of examples for many science classes (the ones I teach, anyway). Even in upper level classes where I can expect students to have a pretty good base of knowledge, students are more likely to ask questions out of confusion or curiosity than to disagree with me (and my ideas) about a Science topic.

According to the vague excerpt above, our response to students is the key to having a positive interaction with a student, male or female. It seems obvious to say that we should all try to be respectful, even when our ideas are being challenged in class, but I suspect there are some gray areas in terms of whether a student would perceive that they are being taken seriously or shot down.

As a professor, I have, of course, been challenged by students about their grades, but rarely about "ideas in class", so I'd be interested to hear about the experiences of readers (professors or students).

Writing about this has dislodged an incident from my memory about when a (non-science) professor forced me to challenge him, causing a temporary decline in my well-being. More on that another time..

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Teach It Again

Someone I know recently had the experience of a not-so-great second time teaching a class, even though the first time had gone really well. However difficult it is to teach (including TA) a course the first time, I think the second (or nineteenth) time can also be difficult.

Why?

There are many possible reasons, including:

Class dynamics can change a lot from year to year. This is particularly true of small classes, but also applies to even very large classes. A few students can influence the atmosphere of a class, for good or not. So, maybe the first time you teach a class you are lucky to have a really nice group of motivated, polite, and happy students. But another time.. you get some less happy students (maybe for reasons unrelated to the class and your teaching), and some of them are vocal about their unhappiness, or maybe they are quiet and sullen and stifle class discussions by their glowering hostility. Just when you were starting to feel more confident about teaching this class, you start to doubt how you are handling the class. This can be an issue no matter how many times you teach a class, but after many years, you may develop strategies for dealing with it.

Perhaps you spent so much time preparing for the class the first time that you thought you could spend much less time the second time around. In fact, you may well be able to spend a lot less prep time the second time around, but beware: you may think that a lecture or lab that you spent hours creating and organizing the first time is fresh in your mind, but then when you're standing in front of the class, you realize you should have spent more time thinking about how to explain the concepts, the logic of the order in which you present the concepts, and in-class questions/activities to engage the class in the lecture material. You likely don't have to spend as much time as you did when you first taught the class, but, for some people (i.e., me), it can still take a lot of preparation to teach something again. It's easy to underestimate the time required.

The first time you taught the class, your life was simpler. You did not have as many other courses to teach, you weren't on so many committees, you didn't have as many (or any) children or pets or research grants or graduate students or postdocs. Things have gotten more complicated and hectic, and you don't have as much time to devote to preparing for the class or to helping students. You don't feel as organized and coherent as you did when you had time to prepare and teach the course the first time. The students sense that you are extremely busy, and some interpret this to mean that you care more about other things than about them.

There are some courses that I have taught so many times and with a reasonable amount of success (based on teaching evaluations) that I wonder how I would recognize if I needed to make a major change in the course and how I teach it. For example, if there were more than a few unhappy students in one of these oft-taught courses, would I just think to myself "I've taught this course n > 10 times without these problems, it must be their fault, not mine"? Maybe I would. Maybe I would be right, but maybe I would be wrong.

Early in my career, I thought that when I had taught a course n > 5 (or 10) times, I would eventually find the "best" way to teach the course, and then I would teach it that way forever. Now I think that the best way for me to teach is to find a happy balance between being sufficiently prepared (but not obsessively so), confident (but not too confident), and alert to the need for adjustments in the course depending on changes in the student population, course material (new advances in Science), life, the universe, and everything and anything.

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Favorite Jerk

Last fall, I wrote about a student who was disrespectful to the TA of my course. I decided not to intervene unless the problem persisted. It did not. In the post, I specifically wondered whether I wanted to know the name of the disrespectful student (the TA did not provide the name in our initial conversation). I was concerned in part because I found that I was assuming it was a particular student, and maybe that wasn't fair -- maybe I was assuming the wrong person.

In any case, I did learn the identity of the obnoxious student, it was the one I assumed it was, and I ended up very much enjoying having this student in my class.

He had a gruff way of speaking and could be very abrupt, and even seemingly rude. He was often anxious. He worked very hard, was not exactly a 'traditional' student in some ways, and he did not always deal well with his stress.

He was unambiguously rude to the TA early in the term, but once the course was underway, he found that he was very interested in the subject. He asked lots of good questions (including some curiosity-driven questions that were only tangentially related to the course topic), and I even got him to laugh a few times. When he figured something out, he helped some of the other students. I found that I liked him. I would be happy to have him take one of my courses again.

I think it is important to have these reminders from time to time that negative first impressions of students can change into positive impressions with more interaction. Just as we hope our students will keep an open mind about us as professors (and people) and appreciate our hard work, so, too, can we enjoy teaching students who seem like jerks (at first).

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Cheated

As I mentioned before the blog-break, I had to deal with some cheaters in my class at the end of last term. I am clearly not the only one.

I have dealt with cheaters before, but typically they are in large intro classes in which space limitations require students to take exams while sitting in proximity to each other in a large lecture hall where it is apparently tempting to glance (or stare) at the exams of neighbors or (try to) surreptitiously use an electronic device containing information that might lead to Correct Answers. It is much more rare for me to see cheating in smaller courses involving Science majors and/or graduate students. But it happens.

In my large intro classes, if the cheating is unambiguous, I give the cheaters a zero on the relevant exam or assignment and I make them sit in the front row for all subsequent exams. I don't single these students out -- I don't think anyone else in the rest of the class knows or cares where anyone sits and so the rest of the class is unaware that certain students are required to sit in a designated place. I do not give the cheaters a failing grade for the entire class; just for the cheated-on exam. Some of these students pass the class and some don't, depending on how they do in the rest of the exams. I outline my policies on the syllabus, with a link to the university's webpages on relevant matters.

When I detected cheating on the final exam of my recent class, I had to check my syllabus to see if I even dealt with this issue in this particular class. I knew I had a section outlining what I considered to be appropriate levels of group work on homework and lab assignments, but I have never (?) had to deal with cheating on exams in certain Science classes, and wasn't even sure if I covered this on the syllabus. It turns out I did. In fact, I had clearly copied the 'scholarly conduct' from my Intro class syllabus into my Science class syllabus (is that plagiarism?).

So I gave the cheaters a zero on the final exam because that's what I said I would do in these circumstances, and I filled out the university's form to report scholarly misconduct.

The cheaters in my recent class had otherwise done OK in the course, so they passed, but their course grades were much lower than they might otherwise have been without a zero on the final exam.

One of these students, who, after briefly trying the "We studied together" excuse, admitted to cheating on the exam, has been sending me repeated e-mails begging me to give him a higher grade because he may lose a scholarship. I feel very sorry for him and I enjoyed having these students in my class, but my policy is not "You will get a zero unless you have a really really good reason for cheating and you send me at least 6 e-mails begging me to raise your grade."

I have not always filled out official reports of misconduct, preferring instead to deal with cheating situations on my own. I believed the rumors that it wasn't worth it to file a report, that doing this would lead to all sorts of confrontational unpleasantness and probably result in the punishment being overturned. Certainly if a student believed he or she was unfairly accused of cheating, I heard them out and explained to them their rights to appeal their punishment, but in most cases the cheating was so unambiguous that students confessed and focused their efforts on begging for leniency.

Now I fill out the forms. I think this is the fairest way to proceed because it is systematic, is more clear-cut in terms of informing the student of their rights, and allows the university to detect repeat offenders.

In most cases, nothing further happens unless the student wants to appeal the consequences meted out by the professor, although additional steps are taken to deal with repeat offenders. These additional steps are out of the hands of individual faculty and are taken care of by administrators who are better equipped to handle such things.

The practical result of this recent incident for me is that I am now going to take the 'scholarly conduct' section of my syllabus more seriously for all my classes, no matter what the size or level of the course.

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Hey professor, I am honestly, truly sorry

Here are the (mostly disturbing) entries for the Final Exam Excuse Contest 2010. I have numbered them so that you can vote on your favorite in the poll at the end of the post. Some of these are real e-mails from students; some are not. Some are easy to detect as fakes; some are not.

This isn't the *nicest* way to end the academic term, but many of us have been getting these e-mails (or ones eerily similar..) in the past few weeks, so I hope the group-wallow in parody and sympathy will be emotionally satisfying in some way, or at least mildly entertaining.

My end-of-term experience has been supplemented by a cheating incident that makes me very sad because the students involved did not need to cheat (they were getting decent grades; now they are not), but I don't feel like writing about student "misconduct" right now.. maybe in 2011, when I am older and wiser and energized for the new year and term.

In the meantime, I am going on a blog-break while my family and I travel to an interesting part of the world. I shall likely return in early January.

Thanks for reading, and please vote in the poll at the end of this post.

**********

1.
Hey professor,

I am honestly, truly sorry for missing the final exam in your case. I am not usually so irresponsible and this is completely out of character for me. However, I feel that I should ask that you excuse my exam, in that one of my housemates was in the emergency room and I had to be there with him. You can check with the ER to prove that I did not just forget the exam. I have had some bad luck lately and I would never of missed the exam because your class is one of my favorites, but you know what they say: friends first. I am wondering if I would be able to make up the exam this Saturday, which is the only chance I have before my flight home for Christmas. I know you might want to take off points for the late exam, but I really am afraid about how it would affect my GPA, and I am a Senior. Thus, I could also do an extra credit project, if that would help you to give me the grade I really deserve were it not for missing the final. I will do any project you want, because I am very greatful to you for helping me even though I had my friend in the hospital. However, I might need to turn in my extra credit project after Christmas because I am going home and also my computer is at IT with a virus and I can't get my files off it. They said it would be done by now, so I have no idea when I'll get it. Is it ok if I can get an incomplete so that I can do my best work on the extra credit project? Also, I could take the final exam after Christmas so that I can really demonstrate my best work for this class, but I understand completely if you want me to take it on Saturday.

Thank you so much, I truly do love the class and I am sorry I let you down,

**********

2.

Dear Mr [prof]

i miss exam because due to car crash. i study all night and fall sleep drivering to school

i can bring police story to show why i missed. how can i get new exam and when

i must must must pass class or lose student visa!!!!!!!!!

thx Mr for helping me

**********
3.

hi fsp, im sorry i missed the final exam but yesterday morning my cat
was puking and i had to take her to the vet, and then after i got home
i was going to study but the cat puked again on my only clean sweater,
so i put the sweater and all my other dirty clothes in the laundry but
the dryer must have been 2 hot because my clothes came out all
munchkin-sized, so i went to the tj maxx to buy some new clothes but
then i left my lights on and the car wouldnt start. i tried to get my
friend to drive me to campus for the exam but he was all hungover from
celebrating the end of the semester and couldnt come pick me up at the
tj maxx, actually he couldnt get out of bed, and by this time i was
late for the exam and i would have called ur office but i lost my
phone. so its not my fault i wasnt there for the final yesterday but i
do really need to take the test because my dad said if i failed one
more class he would take away my cadillac escalade. i studied for a
whole hour and im sure i can get the a+ u told me i need to pass. i can
i can come in for the makeup exam tomorrow after 7pm or the next day
after 6 pls let me know which is best for u.

**********

4.

Dear Female Science Professor,

I regret to inform you that I could not make it to the final because
my grandmother died, and I need you to give me a make-up final so I
can get an A in this course. I don't expect you will, of course,
because you refused to give make-ups to all of my friends, whose
grandmothers also died to make them miss the exam. I don't know what
your big problem is. One day in class you made a big deal about
reading "real scholarly literature" instead of Wikipedia or stuff. So
here is this real paper for you
http://www.math.toronto.edu/mpugh/DeadGrandmother.pdf and it says, AND
I QUOTE: A student's grandmother is far more likely to die suddenly
just before the student takes an exam, than at any other time of year.
a student who is failing a class and has a final coming up is more
than 50 times more likely to lose a family member than an A student
not facing any exams. So I'm failing the class, and all my friends
are failing the class, and you don't think ahead to the fact that our
grandmothers were going to die? That dude says they worry themselves
to death. He says it is a mounting health epidemic growing with
exponential proportions that must be stopped or our society will
crumble down to its very foundations of society. So now I really
really have to get an A on the exam so I can go to med school to find
a cure to stop this SENSELESS LOSS OF LIFE. Please let me know what a
good time for the makeup would be. I work best from 1 am to 5 am so I
hope that works for you.

Sincerely,


Struggling Student

**********

5.

Professor XX,

My grandmother died today, or was it yesterday? I don't remember, it's
all a big emotional blur (/_\) . The funeral is on the day of the final
in a town far, far away and I have to go; she practically raised me
(well, on some weekends and holidays). Plus, her will stated that she
wanted me there specifically. Suffice it to say, I won't be able to make
it to the final exam. In fact, I'm so distraught that studying for any
exams is going to be almost impossible (we were really close).

I really need to pass this class (preferably with an A; my GPA is
hemorrhaging badly). I'm a super senior, and it's the last requirement
for my major. Also, it won't be offered again until Spring 2015! (Whose
great idea was that?!?!) In light of this, I propose that you average
the grades for my last 3 exams (with most of the weight on the highest
grade, of course), and use that as my final exam grade.

I know that you're probably thinking, "Yea, right. I want to see a death
certificate and an invitation to the funeral." Well, you're in luck! A
notarized death certificate and a notarized invitation to the funeral
will be available in a couple days.

Thanks for your cooperation (and the letter of recommendation ^_^ ) .

Very sincerely,

SuperSeniorIVX

**********
6.

Greetings Dr X,

I missed the midterm. I was miserably sick last week.

Sincerely,

**********

7.

Dear Prof X,

I am writing to explain that I accidentally gave my roommate, Student
Y, a pot brownie, so she was unable to take the final exam in your
class. Had I known about the exam, I would not have given this to her!

Please allow Student Y to make up the exam.

Sincerely,
Roommate Z

**********

8.

dear professor,

Last week I went to the clinic at the school to get my chest looked at
and I had whooping cough and broncitis, and I was given strong medication
for it. However, lastnight I took my medication on an empty stomach and this
morning I cant stop dry heaving and puking bile ( i am bulimic which also
makes my stomach sensitive). I need to go to the doctors or the hospital,
but I cannot drive right now. This is the second day that I have had this
reaction to my medication and it has cut into my study time and also put me
in pain. I dono what to do because I cannot miss this exam but I also cannot
lift my head out of the towilet for more than a few minutes. I donno how I
can write my exam like this. HELP, what should I do?

Student Y.

**********

9.

hi prof!
i just realized that I frgot 2 come to the final exam yesterday! I know the
exam was yesterday at 8 cuz I just checked on the finals calendr but between
my Chem midterm and my Psych paper it TOTALLY slipped my mind! could i
mebbe take the exam when I get back from break? Because I am actually
writing this on my iphone in the airport right now (also why the speling is
so bad - haha!). I'm super super sorry for the trouble!

Thanks soooooooooooooooo much in advance!!!
<3>

**********

10.

Hey professor,

I know it is late (2 AM the day of the final exam!!!!!!!) but I am supposed to
contact my professor in advance about taking a make-up exam for a good reason.
I recently found out that I have several final exams on the same day (today!!!) and so
according to university rules I get to take one as a make-up and I decided to take
yours later because it is my favorite class. The best time for me is Thursday at noon
so I will come to your office then and take the exam.
:)

**********

11.

Professor FSP,

I was starting to study but then I fell down on the floor and was sweating so I went to the clinic and they said I should rest and not study anymore, so that is why I can't take the final exam tomorow. My mom says I have to come home right away so she is picking me up at 2 pm which is when the exam starts. So the best thing to do is not to count this final exam in my grade. An Incomplete is NOT an option because I don't have time to make this up after the break. I calculated my grade as a B+ although I am really an A student and if you want to take into account my difficult circumstances and how hard I worked in your class an A would be good. Thanks for your help.

**********

12.

Dear Mr. [misspelled name]

I am in you're 1:00 class what meets in room 201 of the Maine building I rite you on a matter of grave concern
I had to miss the final exam what took place at 5PM in Maine 201 last tuesday because of a matter of vital importence; My mom cooked a really important dinner for me monday night and so do to the extreme difficulty of travel during the current season I had to go home during finals week because my mom insisted if you new my mom youd understand
I tryed to find you're office which you're web page says is MAine 202; but dint have any luck cuz the Maine building is to obscure and i couldnt find it so i couldnt find you're office and talk to you about it before
i wouldnt bother you about it except as its to important whereas my scholarship require that i keep a perfek 4.0 GPA thruout my intire collige years and so i need to make up the final I dont need you to work extra hard so its ok if you just give me the final that you gived everyone else as my friends said it wasnt to bad when they showed me the answers you passed out at the and
If you need confermation of the importence of the dinner you should contact my mom were in the phone book so were easy to find as our house is across the street from the collidge

you're devoted student John Smythe VII

**********

13.

Professor FSP, you're not going to believe this but just before
the final exam my pet python, Mimi, got loose somewhere in my
apartment building and the last time this happened my landlord
totally freaked and said if it happened again he would evict me
or kill my snake or both. So I had to look for her and I missed
the exam but the good news is that I found her and she was safe
but a little shook up and so then I had to get her calm and there
was no way I could email you until now. I am afraid to leave
her alone now but I could write a paper instead of doing the
final exam or I could take the exam after the break. Just let
me know which of these options you want to do.

**********


NOTE ADDED 12/21: Some late additions include:

14. I studied really hard last night and then slept through
the alarm clock

15. hey, i went 2 the room today and the normal time and no 1
was their. some kid was their and said you gave it during the
exam pd. anyways i work then so i couldn’t come.
i have time to make up the final after work tomorrow so i
can b their bout 4. thx

(no time to update the poll, but you could do a write in vote
in the comments)


Which one do you like the best?
1: ER excuse
2: car, police excuse
3: cat, laundry, friend etc. excuse
4: grandmother excuse, passive-aggressive
5: grandmother excuse. aggressive
6: pathetic but brief excuse
7: pot brownie excuse
8: detailed medical excuse
9: forgot exam excuse
10: last-minute excuse
11: illness, mom excuse
12: mom excuse
13: missing python excuse
  
pollcode.com free polls

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What Are You Saying?

Today's post, in response to a reader/professor who wrote to me when one of his international students complained that he (the professor) was hard to understand, is at Scientopia.

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Purposeless Pacing

From a teaching evaluation (not mine, but it could have been):

"The professor paced without purpose while teaching."

Discuss.

Questions for the purposes of data acquisition and discussion:

- Do you pace while teaching?
- Does your pacing have a purpose?
- If it has a purpose, is it a good purpose, a psychotic purpose, a pedagogical purpose, or what?
- Does anyone care? (i.e., Has a student ever mentioned it in your teaching evaluations?)
- Or, if you are a student: Do you care/not care if your professors pace, with or without purpose?

I confess: I pace while teaching. To the extent that my pacing has a purpose, it is so I can be a physical presence in various parts of the room at different times during the class, make eye contact with more students, listen to their questions better, try to see what they are seeing when I project something/write something at the front of a large classroom, or just because I get kind of hyped up when I teach and I feel like moving. I don't know if those are good purposes or bad purposes, but I think they add up to purposes, even if students don't know what they are.

As a pacer, I am therefore a fan of (my own) pacing. It didn't occur to me that it might also be distracting to students. I talk while I move around the room, so it's not as if I am walking back and forth silently, staring at the floor and thinking mysterious professorial thoughts during class. I can understand how that might be a bit disconcerting.

The questions above are intended to stimulate discussion of the important topic of professorial pacing. My discovery of this unexplored (by me) topic has demonstrated to me yet again that there is always something strange and new to think about, just when my energy and spirit have been nearly shattered, or at least flattened into a nanofilm, by committee work.

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