THERE WILL BE NO QUIZ

 

If you have followed my blog postings over the years, you know that I have several obsessions about teaching.  

(1) – I believe in having a lot of communications with my students.  Whether it is love, marriage, or a college class, things go better with communication.   To the teacher, everything makes sense.   Too often, to the students, everything is a mystery.   I want to cut out as much of that mystery as possible.  I think students respond well when they understand what is expected of them.

(2) – I believe in honest and frank communication.   College students are adults.  I never see any reason to feed them a bunch of nonsense.   If you aren’t going to tell them the truth, you would be better off not to have the communication.   I think you should stress the good as well as the bad.   No one wants to get praise all the time and no one wants to hear how bad they are all the time.

(3) – I believe a lot in motivation but I think the core of motivation has to come from inside the student.   I am not going to go through life with each student and serve as their personal cheerleader.   At some point, they have to be willing to work hard because they want to achieve their own success.   For better or worse, I think our society uses too much external motivation on students as they are growing up.   Schools, teachers, and parents do so much pushing that students never have to consider (a) what they want to achieve and (b) how to do the work to get there.   Many students have the unspoken motto:   “Why push myself when someone else will do it for me?”

(4) – I want my students to become good at being students.   I am always amazed by how little so many students know about becoming good students.   When they leave my class, I obviously want them to know accounting but I also want them to walk away knowing how to be better students.

I gave a very hard test last week in my Intermediate Accounting II class.   I knew it was hard and I meant for it to be hard because the material was hard.   The class had been doing well but not as well as I might have liked.   I wanted more from them than I was getting.   You can always tell students that they need to work harder but every teacher says that (and often does not really mean it).   Those warnings just bounce off most students.

Between the time that I gave that test and the time I gave back the graded exams, I had several points that I wanted my students to consider.   In that limbo period, they are very open to suggestion.   They often realize that they did not know the material as well as they should have and want to know how to do better.   The test has caught their attention.   As a teacher, you need to make use of that opening.   So, I wrote them the following email.   I wanted to communicate with them before the grade came back and got them distracted.  

In many ways, the note is about having the discipline and the ambition needed to do the necessary work.

My students are 20-21 year olds.   I don’t want them to do any work just because I have threatened to give them a bad grade.  I want all of the students to do the work because they want to do well.   I want them to do the work because they have that fire in their belly to succeed.

I didn’t get through to all of them but I believe that I did get through to some of them.   As the teacher, open and frank communication of your goals and reasoning can be awfully helpful.

Email:

“I have not graded any of the tests yet and am not sure when I will grade them. They might be great or they might be horrible. I have seen plenty of both over the years. But, as I have said before, this test is only 20 percent of the grade. You’ve got time to move the grade up if need be.

“However, I want to assess how the class has done so far. And, to be honest, it is sometimes difficult for me to tell. I listen to answers and try to speculate as to what those answers tell me. Sometimes I am pretty sure I know what’s in your head but often I don’t.

“But, given that disclaimer, here’s my assessment. To date, I really haven’t seen anyone who seems truly obsessed with making an A. I usually have one or two students for whom the desire to make an A in this class is a burning passion. And, they usually make it. I haven’t seen anyone with that type of desire (or have not seen them yet). On the other hand, no one seems completely lost. Usually by now, I have a few people who seem to be desperately trying to fail. I clearly have not seen that.

“My guess is that most of you prepare each day for class like making a B or a C is fine. In truth, that is a decision you have to make. You are an adult.

“My one irritation is the number of times I find myself saying ‘we did this 48 hours ago – what did we do then?’ and then I get a look from you like we actually did it 48 years ago. There is always a connection between the classes. No matter what you made on the test today, the better you make that connection, the more likely it is that your grade will go up. In fact, the test was just one big interconnected problem.

“Want advice? Here it is. And, I have already given it to you before. Prepare for each class like I’m going to give you a very serious quiz in class that day. Of course, I am never going to give you that quiz but you have to prepare like I am. That is not easy.

“But, if you must have some outside person motivate you by giving you a quiz, then you probably won’t do much better than a C.

“People who prove to be successful (in school and after) find some way deep down in their dirty little hearts to motivate themselves to do the necessary work without having to have someone threaten them with a quiz.

“I do not want to motivate you. Heck, no. I want you to motivate yourself.

“I might change my mind once I’ve graded this test but I’m not at all unhappy with the effort to date in general. Yes, I would always be glad to see more students shoot for an A.  I’m an ambitious person and I like ambitious students.  But that is not the real point. What I want is not important. The point is whether you are satisfied with your effort and how you will adjust it going forward.

“We will not have a quiz on Monday. I guarantee it. The secret is:   Can you walk into class having prepared like there was going to be one?

“See you Monday. Have a wonderful weekend.

“No quiz.”

 

THREE WEEKS DOWN

If you have read this blog for long, you must know that I put considerable stress on communicating with my students, often by email. I believe open and honest communication is a key for all successful relationships. These communications give you a chance to guide your students toward the outcomes that you want. They allow you to motivate the students, to keep pushing them forward (“I know this seems hard but you are smart enough to do these problems with a bit of work”). They provide a chance for positive feedback – “the class was especially good today” is never a bad acknowledgement – one that students often never hear. They enable you to correct actions that you don’t like (“not very many of you had worked problem 5 for today; I’ll expect a better effort at the next class”). Communications help the teacher to prepare the students for upcoming material – “we are really going to stress the computation of interest expense at our next class so make absolutely sure you’ve studied pages 456-458 in the textbook.”

Here is an email that I sent out to my students in one of my classes after the third week of the semester. Notice how many things I was trying to accomplish with this one communication. That’s a good test question for you – how many things am I trying to do here?

“To My Students

“Okay, we have finished our first 3 weeks. Our first test is a bit over 2 weeks away (October 1). Not a bad time to stop and evaluate how things are progressing.

“How are you doing? I’m constantly trying to assess how each class is doing. I think about that in general terms – how is the class as a whole doing? I also think about that in individual terms – how are you (yes, you) doing? I only have 23 students in intermediate accounting this semester so I can do some serious thinking about you individually. (A close friend of mine teaches classes of 400-500 at another school – he has no way to keep personal track of each student. I do.)

“In many ways, I’m really interested in how quickly you catch on to what I’m doing so you can get on board with the process. In any intermediate accounting course, I always have a few students who assume it’s still a high school class and treat it that way. I’m glad to say, though, that most of you are beginning to pick up the system. There are many moments when I'm quite pleased with you especially when we get to a point where we start seeing how things in accounting fit together.

“How do I view this class?

--I expect you to prepare very well on a consistent basis. I do my half of the work every day; I expect you to do your half of the work. You have daily questions from me. You have a huge textbook. You have last spring’s test along with answers. You can easily make use of 60-90 minutes between each class. I often say TIME equals POINTS and I believe that is true. The best thing you can do to do better in this class is put in more time. "How can I make use of more time?" is never a bad question to ask yourself. Too many students ask “how quickly can I get finished?”

--Then, you come to class and I throw bizarre questions at you – often different than the ones I have given you to prepare. What I am trying to do is teach you how to take what you’ve prepared and use it (on the spot) to figure out something else. I am teaching you how to answer questions that you haven’t seen before by a quick analysis and a genuine understanding of what’s gone before.

--Then, you go back to the library or your dorm and spend 30-40 minutes assimilating what you’ve learned so that you can use it in answering future weird questions.

--I think all of that is a skill/talent worth developing. That’s something you can use in the real world regardless of your major.

--The four keys to this process as I see it: (1) preparation and (2) “figure it out” and (3) assimilate for future use and (4) consistency.

“When all of the above goes well, the class should be fun. You should look forward to coming to class and be surprised and disappointed that our 50 minutes together has flown by. I know things are going well when people tell me ‘I wish all my classes were this interesting.’

“How do some students seem to view this class?

--These students believe that preparation is a waste of time because the teacher (me) is going to tell them what they need to know in class. Their preparation is, at best, a half-hearted affair.

--In class, they pray they won’t get called on. They write down what anyone and everyone says with the assumption that they’ll memorize it all the night before the test. All real learning is deferred and replaced by a cram system.

--The problem is that when they get to the test and I throw a bizarre question at them, it doesn’t match up with the memorized material in their head and they haven’t determined how to analyze and figure out a reasonable answer.

--This system only works if the teacher is going to ask you to repeat back what you have been told. I won’t do that.

“In addition, that type of class is just flat boring.

“So far, at least in general, I’m not unhappy. Not at all. Oh, I throw out questions occasionally and feel we should get better answers but that always happens. It’s hard to understand gravel or gift cards until you’ve worked through it for a while. Or, I ask something directly from a previous class and get a “deer in the headlights look” that says “I haven’t thought about this one second since we last discussed it.” But, you are getting better each day and I’m not looking for perfection. We've made 3 weeks of progress in 3 weeks.

"That’s sufficient for me.

“I’m just looking for preparation and the willingness to try to figure things out. (A genuine curiosity is a big help in my class and in life.)

“Come see me if you need help.

“And, remember, a good grade on the first test is nice but it isn’t a guarantee of great things to come. And, a bad grade on the first test is not the end of the world. It’s just a first test, a way to gauge how you are doing in this somewhat unusual class.

“If nothing else, enjoy the process.”