Thoughts on teaching intro classes at a flagship state school.

I need to be careful about judging en masse "those kids today," because I see only the small sub-sample of them that come before me in my courses. But, I will write this AS IF they constituted a representative sample of undergraduates today, even though, of course, they do not, either cross-sectionally or over time. I have no real idea if students have changed over time or not, as I've only been teaching a short time, and I have no idea if my students are typical of anything. Many of my students are non-majors, which may mean they are less engaged than a 200/300/400 level cadre would be, and they are students in my particular field, which may be different than students in other fields, and come from a particular geographic area from a particular socio-economic background and a particular age. But, for the sake of argument....


If my students were representative of college students in general, here would be some of my conclusions:

1. Students expect to be entertained first and to learn second. If learning occurs in the process of being entertained, great. If not, great. But if you try to make learning occur without being entertaining, they will be very unhappy. Another way to say it is that students do not find learning for learning's sake enjoyable. It's rare to find students who do. But, then, it's rare to find that in the population at large as well. Probably just the way humans work.

2. The priority list of the typical undergrad proceeds as follows: Sex > sports > drugs and alcohol > getting a job > graduating > getting good grades > learning for learning's sake.

3. Aside from being entertaining, what students want from their instructor are very precise instructions about what they need to know and what they need to do to get a good grade. They do not appreciate ambiguity, abstraction, or open-ended discussions or lectures. They are easily confused.

4. Students who do not want to pay attention or engage will always find ways to not do that. Any attempts to force students to engage will meet with mediocre success at best.

5. Students absolutely will not read assignments unless they are very certain that they need to do so to get a good grade. See priority list above. This means that even pop quizzes will be an ineffective incentive to read, because students will make the strategic decision on any given day that they probably won't have a quiz and therefore probably won't be hurt if they read.

6. The impact of mandatory attendance will be marginal at most and is probably not worth the hassle. See 4 above.

7. Students will cheat if they can. However, there is only so much one can do to fight cheating. It must always be a balance between designing an assignment that's 1. effective at imparting learning objectives. 2. cheat proof and 3. assessed quickly and easily. There is no perfect assignment.

8. Any deviation in the course after the initial syllabus is passed out will result in confusion and disaster, as nobody will pay attention to your announcements that the schedule/assignments have changed.

9. Students will always find ways to be confused, make a mistake, screw up, or cheat that you never anticipated. You will never think of everything.

10. If your grading system relies on weighted averages, students will have no idea how to figure out their grades.

11. Students do not respond to threats of poor grades. I don't think they believe that you will follow through, or, perhaps, they don't actually care that much (see priority list above). See number 4.

8. In a large R1 environment, almost nobody in the system has an incentive to promote good teaching and effective learning. The university is happy as long as the checks clear; the students are happy if they get a good grade and the class is easy; the instructors are happy if they don't have to grade much or field complaining students. There is no accountability in the system for actual educational outcomes. The closest anybody comes is to peg instructor rewards to student evaluations, which are notoriously unreliable indicators of learning. Nobody in the system is rewarded for rigor or learning outcomes.