Where science and tech meet creativity.

While I was at Michigan State University, we had a change of president. The new guy in charge (at that time – it’s changed again since then) was M. Peter McPherson (and, as he would tell you, McPherson rhymes with person). He came from a business background, and under his guidance, students became consumers and professors became the provider of a specific good – an education. This idea of education being something that can be purchased pre-supposed that a student’s learning is directly correlated to the professor’s teaching. This is a model that doesn’t work real well. Learning is actually a collaborative journey, and like with any collaboration, success depends on what all members bring to the table. As a student, I saw the “student as a consumer” model as broken, but also as justification for expressing teenage indignation at any faculty member who wasted my time on stupid assignments or in teaching me things the US education system expects people to know by 8th grade. I also understood, however, that when I decided not to go to class, I was totally on my own in earning my desired A. I was a consumer, and it was their job not to waste my time. However, if I decided not to RTFM (or at least my textbook), when things blew up, it wasn’t their fault.

Today, that sense of student responsiblity in learning has diminished as consumerism has grown. Now, sitting on the other side of the student-faculty collaboration, I try to abide by a few simply rules learned from my student experiences. I don’t waste my students time teaching them things I expect anyone accepted into college to know (unless forced by a classes’ required curriculum). I articulate what I am going to do, and I teach to multiple learning styles. I don’t stand in front of the room regurgitating the text book. I use research on good presentation technique and learning to define my teaching style. What I do in the classroom is thought out, and there are reasons for everything I do.

Unfortunately, what makes for good research-based teaching and what is responsible, doesn’t also make students happy. The consumer mentality that I witnessed as a student has grown into a belief that a college education is something that is purchased. Period. Good grades are expected, and the need for hard work doesn’t seem to be anticipated. What I have been told by students (plural, very plural) is that in a good class I should stand in front of the room, copy key points and specific examples involving numbers onto the chalk board or display them in a PowerPoint. Everything that I want them to learn should be written down. I should not expect students to know how to take notes on what I say. Homework problems should be gone over in class before they are due, and even when I provide homework answer keys, I should spend time in class going over solutions to past homeworks in detail.

If I spent the time my students wanted going over just the homework, I would never do anything other than going over homework.

One of the older faculty here explained to me that students seem to believe that if I work enough examples for them, I will eventually work all the problems that may be on homework or exams. This means, when they see a problem, they will not need to think but can rather simply repeat what I said in class. One of my students explained that students don’t know how to take notes, they simply know how to copy what is written on the board. Put together, what this tells me is my students want me to copy by hand or by PowerPoint the entire Schaum’s Problem Solver for them so they can copy it into their notes.

That’s not teaching. (But it would be plagiarism.)

So, students aren’t going to get in my class what they want. As consumers, what they are paying for is the obtainment of a set of skills that allow them to perform future jobs while at the same time receiving a socia-scientific framework that allows them to make informed decisions in fields outside their specific realm of expertise. This means that an engineering major should be able to understand the significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and an English Major should be able to grasp the dangers of Bird Flu without over-reacting. A college education should create literate people capable of combining ideas to solve problems.

Feel free to call me Pollyanna.

In my college classroom, I work hard to give students information that is framed historically, applied to the world around them, and demonstrated in representative examples. Recognizing that people learn best in different ways (some need to read things, others to hear things, others to watch things and others to do things), and that everyone learns best if they read, hear, watch and do things, I use multiple techniques in class. Because I am human, I can not convey any one point in more than two ways at once, and in general I can’t write and do anything else involving my hands. (e.g. I can speak and perform a demo, I can speak and write, etc, etc. )

The problem I am facing – the problem that is driving me crazy right now – is that many of my students have learned to discard any information that isn’t written down by me for them. This means that when I do a demo and explain verbally what is going on (often I do a verbal set of questions and answers with them) that content is generally discarded after class. This semester, I have verbally done many of my homework problems in class as demos, asking my students questions as I went (If the moon is here, and the Sun is here, what season is it). The students could consistently answer the questions in class. This semester, after those demos and verbal questions, my students said I hadn’t covered the material on the homework. What they meant was I hadn’t written down the verbal questions, written down the answers, and drawn all the demos on the chalk board so they could copy the sketch into their notebook.
So the question I have to ask myself is this: As a prof, is it my job to write down everything I expect my students to write in their notes. The answer is no. There are three basic reasons: In life, the key points aren’t going to get written down for them; They have a text book for a reason; It is a waste of class time.

In life, bosses throw content at us verbally and we have to extract the key points for ourselves. When we listen to lectures, read books, attend seminars, the subject isn’t presented in a series of sound bites that are written down so people can copy them down. As humans, it is our job to sift through material to grasp the key ideas. My lecture notes (on someone else’s lecture) should be my summary of what was said that is punctuated by key equations, key diagrams, and bolded points. What is said is what the prof has decided needs to be said because it is important. He or she, just like future colleagues, isn’t speaking just to waste your time while you wait for the next item to get written on the chalk board.

My students all have text books. Text book authors are really good at writing end of summary blurbs that summarize all the content into 2 pages or less. If you want key points and sound bite definitions, just read the book. I do not exist to replicate the efforts of the text book author, so a student can replicate the text book author’s efforts in their notebook.

When I was an undergrad I got really frustrated when class time was wasted. If I have to pause every time I do a demo, setting down what I’m working with to write down exactly what I have said (usually multiple times), I am wasting time. If I say the Sun is farthest North in the Summer, and show this in a diagram, with a demo, and say it, I trust students to write down something from either the diagram, the demo, or what I said so that they retain for later that the Sun is farthest North in summer. Really, it’s not that hard to take notes. Try it, you might like it.

And here is where I look back and my undergraduate days and wonder if I’m being realistic in my expectations. I started life as a social relations major in James Madison College at Michigan State University (yes, a liberal arts major switched to hard science – it does happen). My freshmen year we all took these 250 person lectures on Democracy in America. There wasn’t a large chalk board, and while we were sometimes shown slides, in general, in those pre-PowerPoint days, the profs just stood up there and talked. They interpreted deToqville (sp?) and highlighted the context of the dialogues between Jefferson, Madison and Adams. We were expected to read, and they helped us see the connections between divers content, and then we were expected to take the big picture content and reflect it through detail rich essays. It was an academic conversation that at each turn took the content to a higher level. We were expected to listen, take notes, and learn, drawing our own connections based on the ones they showed us.

So, I don’t think I’m insane in expecting my students to take notes. I don’t think I am insane to expect students to build ideas together to solve problems. I think education is something that comes in pieces where it is the student’s job to assemble the content within their own educational background and context. I’m simply here to make sure none of the pieces are left out of the box and to help sort them into little pieces that help the big picture come together easier. And like that puzzle, education should come with a little black label, “Some assembly required, small pieces may constitute a chocking hazard, recommended for ages 17 and up.”

 

edit: added cover image: “Ye Old Classrooms” by Alan Levine