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

[OneMoreYear]

Dear Grad Student,
You earned a C on this assignment because because you were not paying attention. No, I am not going to spend 10 hours creating another version of this assignment so you can do the assignment again. I gave you the opportunity to do the assignment correctly the first time. Please do let me know what my chair says when you tell them how mean I am.
Dr. OMY

Yeah, buddy. I'm teaching at the freshizzle level, and apparently I'm inflicting the same kind of meanness on my hapless students--or at least those students who took a four-week absence in the middle of the semester and now have "no idea at all what's going on." I'm pretty cool, but even I can't recreate lost time.

Maybe we should add this as a required skill for tenure-track job applicants. It would certainly make the applicant pool more manageable. I think upper-administration would approve of this requirement as being "student-centered."

[EdnaMode]

I am so grateful to my first college physics professor who made us estimate "how big" our answer should be.  Like, how big is the fountain in the main square?  Should your answer be closer to 10 meters squared or 1 kilometer squared?
Same for a graduate microbiology class where the professor said "There is no such thing as 'luck' in genetics.  If you have 10X more positive examples than you estimated, you didn't get 'lucky', you made a bad assumption.  Find it!"

I know that logic is a learned skill and that estimations are part logic & part experience, but I've heard some doozies too.
And yet there are folks who work in construction and have had no formal math past grade school who can frame a house, tell you exactly how much cement you'll need to pour a pathway, or determine how many gallons of paint you'll need to repaint your living room.  I bet a lot of our students would benefit from some "real life" apprenticeships with construction companies.

When I teach engineering cost estimating, I use a made-up term I call "the reasonableness factor." If they're trying to calculate the cost of machine time per part, is $1.2 million even reasonable? How about $1.20? Or 12 cents? Just because the calculator, or the spreadsheet, gave you an answer, doesn't mean it's anywhere close to correct. Check and see if it's reasonable.

[kiana]

When I teach engineering cost estimating, I use a made-up term I call "the reasonableness factor." If they're trying to calculate the cost of machine time per part, is $1.2 million even reasonable? How about $1.20? Or 12 cents? Just because the calculator, or the spreadsheet, gave you an answer, doesn't mean it's anywhere close to correct. Check and see if it's reasonable.

I call this the JAR check; Just Ain't Right.

And if you fail the JAR check you aren't eligible for partial credit.

[polly_mer]

When I teach engineering cost estimating, I use a made-up term I call "the reasonableness factor." If they're trying to calculate the cost of machine time per part, is $1.2 million even reasonable? How about $1.20? Or 12 cents? Just because the calculator, or the spreadsheet, gave you an answer, doesn't mean it's anywhere close to correct. Check and see if it's reasonable.

I call this the JAR check; Just Ain't Right.

And if you fail the JAR check you aren't eligible for partial credit.

Absolutely.  A little note along the lines of "I don't know what went wrong and I'm out of time, but this can't be the answer because <it just ain't right>" tended to go a long way towards partial credit for a failed calculation that was an entry error, flipped digits, or missed sign.

[apl68]

How. The. Fuck. Do you get into a college algebra class and not understand how to round.

I understand occasional "Oh damnit I feel dumb now" errors. I understand not reading the directions and rounding to the wrong place.

But literally not understanding how to round 4.71 to the nearest tenth?

Them: Is it 4.8?

Me: So the number after 7 is 1. Is 1 smaller or bigger than 5?

Them: Smaller (thank goodness).

Me: So does it round up or down?

Them: So it's ... 3?

I wonder if this person went to the same school as one of my students years ago who submitted a problem set that was just bizarrely wrong.

I asked the student to show me how she entered the numbers on her calculator.  She replied, "Oh, I didn't do that; I just guessed".  She...just...guessed on math computations.  Didn't estimate.  Didn't round.  Didn't have an entry error.  Didn't fail on order of operations.  Didn't misread the questions.

She...just...guessed random numbers for basic arithmetic.  The point of the assignment was to establish where the math skills were before we jumped into unit conversions because I'm accustomed to having to teach order of operations and even how to use a scientific calculator.

She...just...guessed numbers with no estimate on order of magnitude.

I got nothing for someone who refuses to believe that math is a thing.

I am so grateful to my first college physics professor who made us estimate "how big" our answer should be.  Like, how big is the fountain in the main square?  Should your answer be closer to 10 meters squared or 1 kilometer squared?
Same for a graduate microbiology class where the professor said "There is no such thing as 'luck' in genetics.  If you have 10X more positive examples than you estimated, you didn't get 'lucky', you made a bad assumption.  Find it!"

I know that logic is a learned skill and that estimations are part logic & part experience, but I've heard some doozies too.
And yet there are folks who work in construction and have had no formal math past grade school who can frame a house, tell you exactly how much cement you'll need to pour a pathway, or determine how many gallons of paint you'll need to repaint your living room.  I bet a lot of our students would benefit from some "real life" apprenticeships with construction companies.

Reminds me of a spring break mission trip I participated in one year while I was in grad school.  Some of the undergrads I was with were engineering majors.  They brought their HP engineering calculators and pulled them out when we were planning out our week's construction projects.  I and another student who actually had construction experience just figured in our heads.  Guess who got the figures right?

On one occasion I and another student with relevant experience did a quick calculation that we needed 20 bags of sack-crete to pour a short stretch of walk for a wheelchair.  We sent the others off to fetch the necessary materials.  They came back with eight bags.  They had figured that we didn't need 20 bags.  We had to send them back for the other 12, all of which we did in fact end up needing.

And I had to mix 20 bags of sack-crete by hand because nobody else had the experience to do it.

[Anon1787]

A grade grubbing student answers a multiple choice question one way but then in part of the answer to an essay question (just 2 questions later) says the exact opposite. Do students not remember what they said 2 minutes ago?

Some students remember exactly what they wrote and are hedging their bets because they noticed the questions are similar, but they don't actually know the correct answer.  At least, that was the answer students gave when I asked the direct question of "how did you know the answer here, but not there?" 

Those students were proud of their strategy in getting at least one answer right, even though they didn't know the material.  I started requiring explanations for multiple guess and T/F answers to limit the ability to hedge that way.  Most students were appreciative of the opportunity to get partial credit by having a good explanation of a not-quite-right answer.  The hedgers were not at all happy.

I learned that the student is on track to become an education major. So if Stu becomes a teacher, Stu can teach that exam strategy and the fine art of grade grubbing to Stu's own students!

[cathwen]

And yet there are folks who work in construction and have had no formal math past grade school who can frame a house, tell you exactly how much cement you'll need to pour a pathway, or determine how many gallons of paint you'll need to repaint your living room.  I bet a lot of our students would benefit from some "real life" apprenticeships with construction companies.

This reminds me of the year-end assignment in my sixth grade math class:  Build a swimming pool.  We were given the dimensions, and then had to calculate how much of one building material, how much of another, and so on, and how much water it would hold.  I can't remember all the details (that was about 60 years ago), but I do remember how hard I worked on it.  And I remember the debriefing after we handed our papers in, which included a little lecture about how math actually applies to life. 

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

Upon inspection of my post history I also posted about them about 2 weeks ago.

I really think they're dyscalculic and what I want to know is how the hell they got placed into this class.

If stu has the $$$, then the Registrar puts them in whatever class they want. I've had students in Calc-based Physics who only had Algebra!- no Precal even!!!

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

When I teach engineering cost estimating, I use a made-up term I call "the reasonableness factor." If they're trying to calculate the cost of machine time per part, is $1.2 million even reasonable? How about $1.20? Or 12 cents? Just because the calculator, or the spreadsheet, gave you an answer, doesn't mean it's anywhere close to correct. Check and see if it's reasonable.

I call this the JAR check; Just Ain't Right.

And if you fail the JAR check you aren't eligible for partial credit.

We call it a 'Sanity Check.'

[OneMoreYear]

Upon inspection of my post history I also posted about them about 2 weeks ago.

I really think they're dyscalculic and what I want to know is how the hell they got placed into this class.

If stu has the $$$, then the Registrar puts them in whatever class they want. I've had students in Calc-based Physics who only had Algebra!- no Precal even!!!

That sounds . . . not in the best interest of the student.  Were you required to pass them? Or could you hold the line?

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

Upon inspection of my post history I also posted about them about 2 weeks ago.

I really think they're dyscalculic and what I want to know is how the hell they got placed into this class.

If stu has the $$$, then the Registrar puts them in whatever class they want. I've had students in Calc-based Physics who only had Algebra!- no Precal even!!!

That sounds . . . not in the best interest of the student.  Were you required to pass them? Or could you hold the line?

Not required to pass. When I realized the Registrar was doing this with transient students, I started polling my classes about how much Math they had. It was eye-opening to say the least. How the hell are you supposed to get through basic Physics if you don't know basic trig functions?

[OneMoreYear]

Upon inspection of my post history I also posted about them about 2 weeks ago.

I really think they're dyscalculic and what I want to know is how the hell they got placed into this class.

If stu has the $$$, then the Registrar puts them in whatever class they want. I've had students in Calc-based Physics who only had Algebra!- no Precal even!!!

That sounds . . . not in the best interest of the student.  Were you required to pass them? Or could you hold the line?

Not required to pass. When I realized the Registrar was doing this with transient students, I started polling my classes about how much Math they had. It was eye-opening to say the least. How the hell are you supposed to get through basic Physics if you don't know basic trig functions?

I don't know. I'm required to teach stats to students who cannot add single digit numbers, so let me know if you figure this out.

[polly_mer]

My solution to large numbers of students who simply did not have the background was to leave the classroom instead of trying to do an impossible job.

[kiana]

It's one reason why I really like teaching beginning algebra. Even if they don't know arithmetic, they're somewhere within shouting distance of the course materials.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

Banging my head on the wall.

TWO Physics students turned in 'formal' lab reports using the lab template (which is just a doc file for their data. results, etc.) even though it states in all caps AND is highlighted to NOT turn the template in as a formal lab report.

Ugh!