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

[ciao_yall]

Ugh.

My master's students are freaking out about having to read an entire book for class next week. It is short (125 pages) and makes a straightforward argument. It's a communication theory course -- reading a book is not an unreasonable amount, especially for MA students, right?

Right?

Right?

They just have no idea.  The moment I started my MA program in history, we had to read three to five books a week in one of my classes.  And few of them were less than two to three hundred pages.  That was one of my first-semester classes in grad school.

I had a little less to read than that -- usually a book a week for each of my classes. They were densely theoretical, and they took concerted effort. What I've tried explaining to my students is that my goal is for them to leave my class with the conceptual tools they need to do MA-level research, and that involves more than memorizing lecture notes. They need to see how writers build arguments, and how arguments move through material.

The level of freaking out over one 125-page book has me concerned about what the rest of this semester looks like.

Maybe they need a little more direction in creating study/jigsaw groups?

Could you provide  study guides - not summaries, but setting up key questions to help them focus. What are author's key arguments? How are these framed? How do these contrast with other arguments you have seen/heard?

[traductio]

Ugh.

My master's students are freaking out about having to read an entire book for class next week. It is short (125 pages) and makes a straightforward argument. It's a communication theory course -- reading a book is not an unreasonable amount, especially for MA students, right?

Right?

Right?

They just have no idea.  The moment I started my MA program in history, we had to read three to five books a week in one of my classes.  And few of them were less than two to three hundred pages.  That was one of my first-semester classes in grad school.

I had a little less to read than that -- usually a book a week for each of my classes. They were densely theoretical, and they took concerted effort. What I've tried explaining to my students is that my goal is for them to leave my class with the conceptual tools they need to do MA-level research, and that involves more than memorizing lecture notes. They need to see how writers build arguments, and how arguments move through material.

The level of freaking out over one 125-page book has me concerned about what the rest of this semester looks like.

Maybe they need a little more direction in creating study/jigsaw groups?

Could you provide  study guides - not summaries, but setting up key questions to help them focus. What are author's key arguments? How are these framed? How do these contrast with other arguments you have seen/heard?

That was actually my exact approach, although I gave them a bit more substance than that, since this is our first reading. (Our semester started Wednesday.) I said, "Here are the two questions the author is asking," and gave them the questions. I said to watch how the author answers them -- both in substance and in form.

They couldn't hear me though, it seemed, as the they seemed stuck on the idea of reading an entire book.

[mamselle]

Tell them about the places where first-year freshers are given 1000 pages to read in a week.

M.

[AvidReader]

Humanities Master's here. 3-8 books per week per course (4-5 the norm), with another list of recommended supplemental reading.

AR.

[traductio]

Humanities Master's here. 3-8 books per week per course (4-5 the norm), with another list of recommended supplemental reading.

AR.

When I was doing my PhD (in communication arts), I took a few doctoral courses in comp lit, mostly because I was working with questions of translation. Holy crap, but they had reading. And the students' comprehensive exam reading lists -- wow.

[Parasaurolophus]

I feel like COVID teaching has ruined them. I've had multiple students who can't read a syllabus, as in, they don't understand what "Read: Chapter 2, pages 25-33" means. I've had a few who have said they don't know when things are due - not only is every assignment listed next to its due date in bold, all the due dates are in the LMS and it emails you the day before they are due. Another student said that she didn't know what an essay question was. Finally, one student asked me if all of the assigned readings were power points. It's clear to me that this isn't because they are unintelligent; they just literally have no academic skills. How am I supposed to teach you to write a research paper when you can't read a syllabus, use a calendar or write a 2-paragraph essay, and haven't read anything longer than can be included on a power point slide?
So far I have kept my poker face and walked them through what "Read" means, but I'm about to lose it.

I get so much of all that, especially the thing about not knowing when things are due (or what topics are covered on the quizzes--despite the quizzes being explicitly labelled, and it should be obvious from context anyway that it covers everything we've learned since the last quiz...). Ugh.


On reading: just for a counterpoint, I'm in a discipline where even graduate courses usually only assign about 40-60 pages of reading a week, max. One or more books would be insane. But from what I've seen, we're responsible for the material in a different way from many other fields (i.e. in minute detail). I had several classes as an undergrad, master's, and PhD student where we spent the whole semester going through a single book, one line at a time. One of these books was quite short (~120 pages), the others pretty long (~400-600 pages).

That said, I see nothing wrong with assigning a 125-page book, especially when it's not a big departure from disciplinary norms. That's just 18 pages a day, after all, and even with very dense material--which it probably isn't, being a short book!--that's manageable (if tiring). And besides, traductio, you've been doing this long enough that you totally know what's appropriate, and what your students are capable of! I'd trust your judgement any day.

[Parasaurolophus]

I get so much of all that, especially the thing about not knowing when things are due (or what topics are covered on the quizzes--despite the quizzes being explicitly labelled, and it should be obvious from context anyway that it covers everything we've learned since the last quiz...). Ugh.

In fact, here's one now:

I hope you are doing good. I just have question regarding the syllabus as what is the syllabus for the quizzes, midterms and finals, etc. from where we can study to do them.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

I get so much of all that, especially the thing about not knowing when things are due (or what topics are covered on the quizzes--despite the quizzes being explicitly labelled, and it should be obvious from context anyway that it covers everything we've learned since the last quiz...). Ugh.

In fact, here's one now:

I hope you are doing good. I just have question regarding the syllabus as what is the syllabus for the quizzes, midterms and finals, etc. from where we can study to do them.

Yikes!

[poiuy]

I get so much of all that, especially the thing about not knowing when things are due (or what topics are covered on the quizzes--despite the quizzes being explicitly labelled, and it should be obvious from context anyway that it covers everything we've learned since the last quiz...). Ugh.

In fact, here's one now:

I hope you are doing good. I just have question regarding the syllabus as what is the syllabus for the quizzes, midterms and finals, etc. from where we can study to do them.

Yikes indeed!

Might it be that this student's first language is not English?  I agree that what some students don't know comes very unexpectedly. 

Is this a face to face class?  Or online?  In either case, it sounds like a one-on-one conversation with this particular student might yield better clarity than more written explanations that might spiral into their own communication gaps.

In any case I would love to know if you were able to clarify for this student and what it took to achieve clarity.

[Stockmann]

According to many of my students, there are 18 C between -1 C and 19 C. We're in a country that uses Celsius, so it's not a lack of familiarity with the scale.

[OneMoreYear]

According to my students, the mean of a series of numbers in which the highest value is 25 is equal to values greater than 25.  The logic is not strong with this group.

[Thursday's_Child]

According to my students, the mean of a series of numbers in which the highest value is 25 is equal to values greater than 25.  The logic is not strong with this group.

They might be doing order-of-operations errors with the calculator, and then believing whatever it tells them rather than thinking.

[Parasaurolophus]

Might it be that this student's first language is not English?  I agree that what some students don't know comes very unexpectedly. 

Is this a face to face class?  Or online?  In either case, it sounds like a one-on-one conversation with this particular student might yield better clarity than more written explanations that might spiral into their own communication gaps.

In any case I would love to know if you were able to clarify for this student and what it took to achieve clarity.

Oh, definitely--and it may not even be their second or third. Something like 93%+ of my students are international (compared to ~25-30% for my colleagues), and it's not just because these are the online and asynchronous sections we're offering.

It's the weekend, however, so I'm not dealing with it until Monday. I expect the fix to be simple, though: they just want to know what's on the quizzes. The topics are clearly labelled, and they can access the quiz at any time (it's not timed) to see for themselves.

[OneMoreYear]

According to my students, the mean of a series of numbers in which the highest value is 25 is equal to values greater than 25.  The logic is not strong with this group.

They might be doing order-of-operations errors with the calculator, and then believing whatever it tells them rather than thinking.

It appears what actually occurred is that they divided by the number I used in the example in class, which was a smaller array, rather than dividing by the actual number of digits in the array for the homework. As they are grad students, I remain concerned.  Admittedly we get a lot of math phobic grad students, but usually, they can take an average with the assistance of a calculator. This does not bode well.

[Parasaurolophus]

According to my students, the mean of a series of numbers in which the highest value is 25 is equal to values greater than 25.  The logic is not strong with this group.

They might be doing order-of-operations errors with the calculator, and then believing whatever it tells them rather than thinking.

It appears what actually occurred is that they divided by the number I used in the example in class, which was a smaller array, rather than dividing by the actual number of digits in the array for the homework. As they are grad students, I remain concerned.  Admittedly we get a lot of math phobic grad students, but usually, they can take an average with the assistance of a calculator. This does not bode well.

Wow. Just wow.