Topic: Bang Your Head on Your Desk - the thread of teaching despair!

[Caracal]

I've run into a lot of students like that: they run into an issue, and if they can't Google the answer or don't have someone around to show them exactly how to do it, they just freeze and don't even try.  It definitely seems to have gotten worse with the rise of cell phones in general and smart phones in particular; being used to having answers to everything at their fingertips seems to have robbed many of a chance to figure things out themselves and learn that way. 

As always, I'm skeptical. Of course, some students are like this, but I suspect some students have always been like this. We can create these narratives about how it's gotten worse because of smart phones, but professors have been complaining that their students are worse at everything then they used to be because of the decadence of modern life since Socrates.

I really must disagree here.  No, it's not something we haven't always had to deal with, but I really do believe it has gradually gotten worse in recent decades.  I and fellow employers of youth find so much of this.  It's a big part of why we hear so many complaints by employers about the newly-graduated products of K-12 of colleges. I try to resist simplistic monocausal explanations--It's all the smartphones!  It's all the helicopter parents!  It's all the schools' fault!--but I believe we are dealing with a genuine and widespread phenomenon.  Something seems to be slowing down young people's cognitive development and maturing process.  They tend not to be where people a generation or two ago were at their ages.

But the problem is the evidence is all from various older people who think the kids aren't ok, which is what everyone always thinks and has always thought. It's not that everything is always the same-or that technology never makes a difference.

For example, it seems to me that students aren't nearly as good as I am at troubleshooting technology problems. Some of them have something go wrong and just give up or ask me before doing all the things I consider basic-refreshing the page, turning the browser off and turning it back on again, trying a different browser, going to incognito mode, restarting the computer, trying it on my phone to see if I have the same issue. This makes a certain amount of sense, people of my generation grew up with janky technology, so even though I'm not particularly tech savvy, I've acquired a pretty long checklist of stuff I'll try and then if none of that works, I'll probably go see if internet forums have some kind of solution before I go back to somebody and tell them it isn't working. It makes some sense that many of my students don't do this, because they are used to tech that works better and have a hard time with some weird academic database.

But this is just a minor thing, it's not a deficit of character or stunted development. Also maybe I'm wrong. I might just be overestimating the ability of most people my age to troubleshoot.

[Puget]

I've now had two students today ask for scheduled time to meet because they say they can't come to office hours, then give me a list of available times that  include my office hours.
This sort of lack of reading comprehension and attention to posted information may go a long way to explaining the poor class performance they are meeting to talk with me about.

[paddington_bear]

I don't think I've ever had as many students not follow instructions as I've had this semester. If the assignment sheet says to write about a text that they've been assigned for their particular due date, they write about a text we read two weeks before their assigned date. If I tell them in an email to share with me their revision as a Word or Google doc, they post it to the LMS. Ugh.

[the_geneticist]

Stu, if you are not registered for [Baskets 101] lab, then you cannot be in the lab classroom!  Especially if the section is entirely full.

TA, if stu tries this again, you have to make them leave!

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

I've now had two students today ask for scheduled time to meet because they say they can't come to office hours, then give me a list of available times that  include my office hours.
This sort of lack of reading comprehension and attention to posted information may go a long way to explaining the poor class performance they are meeting to talk with me about.

Yep. I've had students, this semester, ask me when, and IF, I have office hours. Um, there is this thing called a syllabus which states exactly when I have office hours that I reviewed on the 1st day of class and that I reference EVERY class (for the course schedule). Frustrating!

[marshwiggle]

I've now had two students today ask for scheduled time to meet because they say they can't come to office hours, then give me a list of available times that  include my office hours.
This sort of lack of reading comprehension and attention to posted information may go a long way to explaining the poor class performance they are meeting to talk with me about.

Yep. I've had students, this semester, ask me when, and IF, I have office hours. Um, there is this thing called a syllabus which states exactly when I have office hours that I reviewed on the 1st day of class and that I reference EVERY class (for the course schedule). Frustrating!

I think having grown up with customized apps, reccommendation engines, and The Algorithm(TM), they just expect to get personalized information and instructions on everything. They can't conceive of everyone getting exactly the same information and having to figure out for themselves what's relevant to them.

[Puget]

I've now had two students today ask for scheduled time to meet because they say they can't come to office hours, then give me a list of available times that  include my office hours.
This sort of lack of reading comprehension and attention to posted information may go a long way to explaining the poor class performance they are meeting to talk with me about.

Yep. I've had students, this semester, ask me when, and IF, I have office hours. Um, there is this thing called a syllabus which states exactly when I have office hours that I reviewed on the 1st day of class and that I reference EVERY class (for the course schedule). Frustrating!

I think having grown up with customized apps, reccommendation engines, and The Algorithm(TM), they just expect to get personalized information and instructions on everything. They can't conceive of everyone getting exactly the same information and having to figure out for themselves what's relevant to them.

To be fair to the students in question, when told that their available times included my office hours they both replied with some version of "my bad".

[arcturus]

Two separate headbangers:

1. Dear Stu: I can use the exact same search engine that you use to find the copies of my assignments that are on cheater's websites. I have diligently scrubbed the ones that have *the correct answers*. When you say that you made "random guesses" that are identical to *the incorrect answers* that are still out there on the interwebs, I know that you are lying. Trying to cheat your way through my class is not a good plan. Just read my ratemyprofessors page - I am not only the worst professor in the universe, I will also report you for even the slightest hint of academic misconduct. Trust your fellow students on this.

2. Dear Stu: threatening to drop my class if I do not comply with your request to be given special treatment due to your un-special circumstances is not an effective threat. Please go ahead and drop, if you really think that doing so is in your best interest.

[Caracal]

I've now had two students today ask for scheduled time to meet because they say they can't come to office hours, then give me a list of available times that  include my office hours.
This sort of lack of reading comprehension and attention to posted information may go a long way to explaining the poor class performance they are meeting to talk with me about.

Yep. I've had students, this semester, ask me when, and IF, I have office hours. Um, there is this thing called a syllabus which states exactly when I have office hours that I reviewed on the 1st day of class and that I reference EVERY class (for the course schedule). Frustrating!

I think having grown up with customized apps, reccommendation engines, and The Algorithm(TM), they just expect to get personalized information and instructions on everything. They can't conceive of everyone getting exactly the same information and having to figure out for themselves what's relevant to them.

Syllabi have become increasingly less important for students to look at in many classes, including my own. Readings are usually posted in the CMS, so they aren't pulling the thing out, so it isn't that shocking they don't think to go look at it.

[Puget]

I've now had two students today ask for scheduled time to meet because they say they can't come to office hours, then give me a list of available times that  include my office hours.
This sort of lack of reading comprehension and attention to posted information may go a long way to explaining the poor class performance they are meeting to talk with me about.

Yep. I've had students, this semester, ask me when, and IF, I have office hours. Um, there is this thing called a syllabus which states exactly when I have office hours that I reviewed on the 1st day of class and that I reference EVERY class (for the course schedule). Frustrating!

I think having grown up with customized apps, reccommendation engines, and The Algorithm(TM), they just expect to get personalized information and instructions on everything. They can't conceive of everyone getting exactly the same information and having to figure out for themselves what's relevant to them.

Syllabi have become increasingly less important for students to look at in many classes, including my own. Readings are usually posted in the CMS, so they aren't pulling the thing out, so it isn't that shocking they don't think to go look at it.

Office hours are also prominently displayed at the top of the CMS page. 

[kaysixteen]

apl is right, of course, but *why* remains the key question.   Obviously the cause is not monocausal, but some of the things mentioned, such as technology changes and *significant*, and largely for the worse, changes in American parenting skills and practices (BTW, I am really interested to know about whether parenting skills and practices have also changed in various other advanced westernized countries?).   What does not really seem feasible, however, is to posit there having been some sort of appreciable ontological change in species Homo teenager within the last generation or so.

[Stockmann]

I've run into a lot of students like that: they run into an issue, and if they can't Google the answer or don't have someone around to show them exactly how to do it, they just freeze and don't even try.  It definitely seems to have gotten worse with the rise of cell phones in general and smart phones in particular; being used to having answers to everything at their fingertips seems to have robbed many of a chance to figure things out themselves and learn that way. 

As always, I'm skeptical. Of course, some students are like this, but I suspect some students have always been like this. We can create these narratives about how it's gotten worse because of smart phones, but professors have been complaining that their students are worse at everything then they used to be because of the decadence of modern life since Socrates.

I really must disagree here.  No, it's not something we haven't always had to deal with, but I really do believe it has gradually gotten worse in recent decades.  I and fellow employers of youth find so much of this.  It's a big part of why we hear so many complaints by employers about the newly-graduated products of K-12 of colleges. I try to resist simplistic monocausal explanations--It's all the smartphones!  It's all the helicopter parents!  It's all the schools' fault!--but I believe we are dealing with a genuine and widespread phenomenon.  Something seems to be slowing down young people's cognitive development and maturing process.  They tend not to be where people a generation or two ago were at their ages.

I agree, and I don't think it's a huge mystery why. I think we're seeing the downsides of neuroplasticity - past generations shouldered all sorts of adult responsibilities at young ages, and that in itself made them mature faster. Nowadays, in the developed world and among the middle and upper classes in the developing world, this is no longer the case for a wide variety of reasons, from child labor laws to smaller families (meaning older siblings have fewer younger siblings and are therefore less likely to be parentified), to helicopter parenting, to smartphones, to social promotion at schools, responsibility and accountability are much less for young people - and their brains therefore mature more slowly.

[Caracal]

apl is right, of course, but *why* remains the key question.   Obviously the cause is not monocausal, but some of the things mentioned, such as technology changes and *significant*, and largely for the worse, changes in American parenting skills and practices (BTW, I am really interested to know about whether parenting skills and practices have also changed in various other advanced westernized countries?).   What does not really seem feasible, however, is to posit there having been some sort of appreciable ontological change in species Homo teenager within the last generation or so.

Yes, by all means, let's just rush past the questions of whether this is actually true. Also never mind that it is, quite literally, one of the oldest tropes in recorded history. We know, of course, that it's true. The only thing left to due is to assign our own pet theories to explain why. 

[marshwiggle]

apl is right, of course, but *why* remains the key question.   Obviously the cause is not monocausal, but some of the things mentioned, such as technology changes and *significant*, and largely for the worse, changes in American parenting skills and practices (BTW, I am really interested to know about whether parenting skills and practices have also changed in various other advanced westernized countries?).   What does not really seem feasible, however, is to posit there having been some sort of appreciable ontological change in species Homo teenager within the last generation or so.

Yes, by all means, let's just rush past the questions of whether this is actually true. Also never mind that it is, quite literally, one of the oldest tropes in recorded history. We know, of course, that it's true. The only thing left to due is to assign our own pet theories to explain why. 

If you look at Jean Twenge's work, you'll see that rates of teenage depression, anxiety, etc. have risen quickly starting about 2012 or so. (She points out that's the generation growing up with the iPhone.) There are measurable changes within the last generation.

[fishbrains]

apl is right, of course, but *why* remains the key question.   Obviously the cause is not monocausal, but some of the things mentioned, such as technology changes and *significant*, and largely for the worse, changes in American parenting skills and practices (BTW, I am really interested to know about whether parenting skills and practices have also changed in various other advanced westernized countries?).   What does not really seem feasible, however, is to posit there having been some sort of appreciable ontological change in species Homo teenager within the last generation or so.

Yes, by all means, let's just rush past the questions of whether this is actually true. Also never mind that it is, quite literally, one of the oldest tropes in recorded history. We know, of course, that it's true. The only thing left to due is to assign our own pet theories to explain why. 

If you look at Jean Twenge's work, you'll see that rates of teenage depression, anxiety, etc. have risen quickly starting about 2012 or so. (She points out that's the generation growing up with the iPhone.) There are measurable changes within the last generation.

Hmmmmmm . . . so my theory about Taylor Swift's music is holding strong.