That'll teach them
So part of my teaching theory is to treat my students as adults, sure I know that it's a gross assumption, most of them are probably only adults in years. But just the same, it makes my life easier to treat them as though they are responsible enough to know what to do in their own best interest, this includes allowing them to chose to come to class or not. I post all the slides I use in my lectures in advance of the class, but I leave out the calculations that are the key to the understanding of the material. Of course these calculations are in the text, so in theory the students never need to come to class, but obviously my explanation aids in the understanding.
So given this freedom it's understandable that with time an increasing number of students will stop coming to class. It's also become evident that the students who stop coming to class tend to do more poorly on the exams than those that continue to attend. But of course they don't seem to see it that way and even when they get the poor grades they don't bother to come to class.
So I decided to reward those students who do take the effort to come to class. Today by the time class started less than half of the class was there, making it the perfect group to be rewarded.
The first question on the final exam will now be:
In class on December 4th I said that the answer to the first question of final exam would be:
a) A
b) B
c) C
d) D
The beauty of it is that it's a perfectly fair question to ask the students, and it fucks those who seem to think that I'm wasting their time; because really, that is what they are saying by not bothering to show up.
posted by Christopher Robin at 8:55 p.m.
2 Comments:
My students like to act like coming to class is unnecessary, but while I can see that in the hard sciences and math, students understand the material and can do the problems without coming to class may not absolutely need to show up, in political science it's a little different. Most of what we talk about won't show up on the exams or be necessary to know for their papers (and some classes only have research papers, not exams). Actually being in class and taking part in discussions is part of the process, and without it, they simply won't have gotten out of the course what they were supposed to, so why should they get credit for it?
8:44 a.m.
Arundhati,
I agree, in the sciences, particularly in a course where most of the testing is calculation based, coming to class may not be necessary; which is why I don't make attendance mandatory. However, when the people getting the lower grades on exams are the ones not showing up to class one would hope that the students would recognize this and change their habits.
But certainly in courses that are more or a dialogue and discussion of the topics class attendance and participation is key. Which is why I think most profs for those courses have the vague "class participation" grade.
11:44 a.m.
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