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[llanfair]

I recalled a copy of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in my personal library, and went to look.  Sure enough, there it was.  However, it was "Selected Canterbury Tales, Unabridged."  I was deeply impressed by the apparent contradiction in the title.

Now that I look at the web page, I am inclined to ask: Does anybody know anything about Queen Marguerite's Heptameron?  I'd never heard of it until I saw the title just a bit ago.

I teach the Heptameron regularly.  Not as naughty as Boccaccio or Chaucer, but there are some wonderful tales, nevertheless.

OK, I'm going to see if Gutenberg has a Kindle-compatible version.  Thanks!

[atalanta]

Midterm exams are approaching and tempers are running hot. I had the following e-mail exchange with one of my top students today.

Dear Dr. Atalanta,
There is an error in the grading of online homework assignment. It will not allow me to enter the correct answer. I entered the correct answer twice and each time was marked wrong and docked points. I wanted to let you know as soon as possible to help other people.
Type-A Student

Dear Type,
I checked your first attempts and your answer is indeed incorrect. If you feel that your approach is correct, it's possible that you have misread the question or made a mis-calculation.
Atalanta

[instantaneous reply with no salutation]
I have checked and REchecked and I have made NO mistake. Yet I have lost points. I solved the problem, as stated, correctly by... [longwinded explanation, clarifying exactly how he misinterpreted the problem statement. In essence, his answer is "1/4" instead of "initial value minus 1/4"]. Please advice.
Type-A Student

Dear Type-A,
Your approach is mostly correct, but you have not specified the final value of Basket Energy that the question asks for. The solutions will be posted automatically after the homework deadline. After looking at the solutions, if you still think there's been a grading error, by all means let me know and I'll investigate. Good luck with the rest of your assignment.
Atalanta

[instantaneous reply without salutation]

Yes I'll e-mail you for sure, right after the solutions are posted.
Type-A

I can't wait...

[fosca]

The PI on my grant (who is a super, super awesome prof) forwarded an email he got from a student in the class he's teaching to the department faculty listserv. The message was a lucidly-written mea culpa for missing class on Wednesday because, the writer mumbled, he was in jail. Dr. Awesome, a 20-year professor, prefaced the email to the faculty with "I suppose there's a first time for everything!"

It made me cackle. I got two of those my first semester.

LOL. I had one while I was in grad school as a TA. I haven't had one since, but when I was at LastJob, I had two (on different occasions) who thought they might end up in jail.

I've had the 'in jail' excuses as well. My favorite was combined with a bar fight and a night in the ER. The student was utterly convinced that my make-up exam policy was unfair.* He came to my office in protest ... with a face full of bruises and stitches. He went away in a huff and later that afternoon my chair asked me for background info on the situation as the student had asked for a meeting (via the administrative assistant). I told the chair everything but left out the part about the bruises and stitches. I told the chair later that 'I thought I'd let you enjoy that part on your own.'


* For the record, students were allowed a make-up exam but on my schedule not theirs.

I've had a number of students who were in jail, or who had to miss class to go to court.

This semester I have two students (in the same class, although I don't think they knew one another beforehand) who are wearing GPS anklets, and at least once a class an anklet sounds an alarm and the student has to leave the class and go call their parole officer (or whoever) so they don't get rearrested.  Haven't had one of those before.

[plasmodesmata]

From one of my students who sends me about 10 "clarification" emails a week:

Question: when counting the dots on the EKG do the lines of the square also counts as a dot once you get to the end and need to keep counting???? I hope I made sense.

I am becoming concerned because she is the third student to ask me a similar question this semester. What they are asking is how to measure length. The students are unsure whether or not they count the start point as one. In all my years of teaching science, this is my first encounter with students who basically do not know how to count.

[anakin]

From one of my students who sends me about 10 "clarification" emails a week:

Question: when counting the dots on the EKG do the lines of the square also counts as a dot once you get to the end and need to keep counting???? I hope I made sense.

I am becoming concerned because she is the third student to ask me a similar question this semester. What they are asking is how to measure length. The students are unsure whether or not they count the start point as one. In all my years of teaching science, this is my first encounter with students who basically do not know how to count.

...or measure, observe, communicate, induce, or deduce. Basically science process skills they should have learned the first seven years of life.

[polly_mer]

In all my years of teaching science, this is my first encounter with students who basically do not know how to count.

Then you have gotten off lucky since I deal with that all the time with my education majors.

[plasmodesmata]

I am becoming concerned because she is the third student to ask me a similar question this semester. What they are asking is how to measure length. The students are unsure whether or not they count the start point as one. In all my years of teaching science, this is my first encounter with students who basically do not know how to count.

...or measure, observe, communicate, induce, or deduce. Basically science process skills they should have learned the first seven years of life.

I am now starting to understand why my co-author on the new A&P lab manual is always adding specific instructions that I think are unnecessary. Main campus students have apparently been unable to follow "general" directions such as measure, calculate, or explain your results for some time. My campus attracts a higher percentage of non-traditional students. I was serious when I said I have just recently noticed a significant number of students who are unable to think through the simplest task. And this is A&P II, not Gen Bio.

[polly_mer]

I am becoming concerned because she is the third student to ask me a similar question this semester. What they are asking is how to measure length. The students are unsure whether or not they count the start point as one. In all my years of teaching science, this is my first encounter with students who basically do not know how to count.

...or measure, observe, communicate, induce, or deduce. Basically science process skills they should have learned the first seven years of life.

I am now starting to understand why my co-author on the new A&P lab manual is always adding specific instructions that I think are unnecessary. Main campus students have apparently been unable to follow "general" directions such as measure, calculate, or explain your results for some time. My campus attracts a higher percentage of non-traditional students. I was serious when I said I have just recently noticed a significant number of students who are unable to think through the simplest task. And this is A&P II, not Gen Bio.

A&P II is getting these questions?!  Holy cow!  That's not right.  Gen Bio makes sense to me (as much as any of this failure at the first-grade level makes sense to me), but A&P II should indicate significant remediation has already occurred in these areas.  I would push back on the colleague if I were you since I'm betting learned helplessness is part of the problem in this case.  Why learn it if someone will hold your hand and spoonfeed you?

[plasmodesmata]

And this is A&P II, not Gen Bio.

A&P II is getting these questions?!  Holy cow!  That's not right.  Gen Bio makes sense to me (as much as any of this failure at the first-grade level makes sense to me), but A&P II should indicate significant remediation has already occurred in these areas.  I would push back on the colleague if I were you since I'm betting learned helplessness is part of the problem in this case.  Why learn it if someone will hold your hand and spoonfeed you?

Polly, this is exactly my take on the lab manual situation. However, the main campus instructors are fairly united in their desire to remove any instructions that might be open to individual interpretation. I prefer that students give the activity a shot and then come get me to help them figure out where they went wrong. These are largely pre-nursing and current nursing students. Fill-in-the-blank "lab reports" in no way prepare nurses for the multitude of quick decisions they are going to need to, I don't know, save lives.

But I am mean this way (I hear). Why do I refuse to just tell students the "right" answer?

[pollinate]

And this is A&P II, not Gen Bio.

A&P II is getting these questions?!  Holy cow!  That's not right.  Gen Bio makes sense to me (as much as any of this failure at the first-grade level makes sense to me), but A&P II should indicate significant remediation has already occurred in these areas.  I would push back on the colleague if I were you since I'm betting learned helplessness is part of the problem in this case.  Why learn it if someone will hold your hand and spoonfeed you?

Polly, this is exactly my take on the lab manual situation. However, the main campus instructors are fairly united in their desire to remove any instructions that might be open to individual interpretation. I prefer that students give the activity a shot and then come get me to help them figure out where they went wrong. These are largely pre-nursing and current nursing students. Fill-in-the-blank "lab reports" in no way prepare nurses for the multitude of quick decisions they are going to need to, I don't know, save lives.

But I am mean this way (I hear). Why do I refuse to just tell students the "right" answer?

I'll gladly help you hold this line!

I'm so mean that I even do stuff like put a diagram of a metabolic process on the board, talk about it, and then expect students to write simple chemical equations that describe the process!  I even let them look at my diagram and use their notes to do this exercise.  Probability of partial success is about 0.5.  Probability of complete success is zero.  :(

[rebelgirl]

I've gotten so tired of "clarification" emails that I just revised my email policies for next quarter's classes.  They now tell students that I answer all emails within 24 hours *unless* said emails ask questions that are answered in the syllabus, on the announcements page of our CMS, or in a given assignment handout. . . . that I'm happy to help students through their specific questions about problems they're having with course material, and that to free time to do that for them, I'm tasking them with reading directions for themselves.

(Ah . . . feels better!)

[anakin]

And this is A&P II, not Gen Bio.

A&P II is getting these questions?!  Holy cow!  That's not right.  Gen Bio makes sense to me (as much as any of this failure at the first-grade level makes sense to me), but A&P II should indicate significant remediation has already occurred in these areas.  I would push back on the colleague if I were you since I'm betting learned helplessness is part of the problem in this case.  Why learn it if someone will hold your hand and spoonfeed you?

Polly, this is exactly my take on the lab manual situation. However, the main campus instructors are fairly united in their desire to remove any instructions that might be open to individual interpretation. I prefer that students give the activity a shot and then come get me to help them figure out where they went wrong. These are largely pre-nursing and current nursing students. Fill-in-the-blank "lab reports" in no way prepare nurses for the multitude of quick decisions they are going to need to, I don't know, save lives.

But I am mean this way (I hear). Why do I refuse to just tell students the "right" answer?

I'll gladly help you hold this line!

I'm so mean that I even do stuff like put a diagram of a metabolic process on the board, talk about it, and then expect students to write simple chemical equations that describe the process!  I even let them look at my diagram and use their notes to do this exercise.  Probability of partial success is about 0.5.  Probability of complete success is zero.  :(

The thing about (some? many? yours, plasmo?) A&P classes is that A&P I is largely memorization and little, if any, lab work; for a good proportion of A&P students, the second semester is their first real lab experience - non-cookbook, that is. We've been having some vigorous discussions about our upper-division majors' skills, or lack thereof. It's interesting to me that we all decry the lack of skills, and lament our students' and our communities' futures, but without practice - and lots of it - it's not surprising. You don't learn to observe by reading about the theory of observation and memorizing the ten major advances in observation. This is why classes like polly's are so important and presumably awesome. We have to start thinking systematically about teaching and training apprentice scientists.

[geoteo]

But I am mean this way (I hear). Why do I refuse to just tell students the "right" answer?

Students are absolutely fixated on the concept of the One Right Answer.  They will go to great lengths to try to pry it out of me: flirting, wheedling, demanding.  When I tell them that multiple answers may be equally correct if they can support their conclusions, they are very anxious.

[polly_mer]

But I am mean this way (I hear). Why do I refuse to just tell students the "right" answer?

Students are absolutely fixated on the concept of the One Right Answer.  They will go to great lengths to try to pry it out of me: flirting, wheedling, demanding.  When I tell them that multiple answers may be equally correct if they can support their conclusions, they are very anxious.

The first lab I do with my science for teachers leaves many students extremely anxious because the "right" answer depends on what the data show; at least four possibilities are possible and usually different tables/groups have different answers in the same section.

The only wrong answer is giving me something that clearly is not collected data (i.e., if you look up the "right" answer on the internet, plot that answer, and then submit it, then I know you haven't done the work since the data never EVER look like that with the equipment we have) and say your hypothesis is proven true.  That's a zero and a report to the dean for falsifying data.  You may get lucky and have your hypothesis supported by the available data gathered by your table, but (a) hypotheses are never proven true, (b) the "textbook" solution never shows up in the data (it can't for technical reasons), and (c) I have yet to see anyone propose the hypothesis that actually matches the "textbook" solution, which would at least be a nice change showing that people did relevant literature review and learned from it.

To get back to the A&P discussion, since I don't know, I'll ask, is general bio not a prerequisite to A&P?  Is general chemistry not usually taken about the same time?  How can A&P II be the first lab experience?  I'm not saying that it isn't for some people, but I wonder, as someone who had science every year since the 7th grade even without being a science major, how that's possible.

[anakin]

But I am mean this way (I hear). Why do I refuse to just tell students the "right" answer?

Students are absolutely fixated on the concept of the One Right Answer.  They will go to great lengths to try to pry it out of me: flirting, wheedling, demanding.  When I tell them that multiple answers may be equally correct if they can support their conclusions, they are very anxious.

The first lab I do with my science for teachers leaves many students extremely anxious because the "right" answer depends on what the data show; at least four possibilities are possible and usually different tables/groups have different answers in the same section.

The only wrong answer is giving me something that clearly is not collected data (i.e., if you look up the "right" answer on the internet, plot that answer, and then submit it, then I know you haven't done the work since the data never EVER look like that with the equipment we have) and say your hypothesis is proven true.  That's a zero and a report to the dean for falsifying data.  You may get lucky and have your hypothesis supported by the available data gathered by your table, but (a) hypotheses are never proven true, (b) the "textbook" solution never shows up in the data (it can't for technical reasons), and (c) I have yet to see anyone propose the hypothesis that actually matches the "textbook" solution, which would at least be a nice change showing that people did relevant literature review and learned from it.

To get back to the A&P discussion, since I don't know, I'll ask, is general bio not a prerequisite to A&P?  Is general chemistry not usually taken about the same time?  How can A&P II be the first lab experience?  I'm not saying that it isn't for some people, but I wonder, as someone who had science every year since the 7th grade even without being a science major, how that's possible.

At Flyover State, gen bio was, shockingly, not a prereq for A&P. Indeed, if one played one's cards "right," one could graduate with a degree in nursing without ever taking gen bio. (Fortunately there was still the NCLEX to get through.)

Even if it were, however, the lab experiences in most intro bio courses were cookbook. Hypotheses rarely generated, never tested, only rudimentary data gathered, results rarely written up (or even summed in a meaningful way). This is turning, to be sure, but it's still very much the norm. And that's not even including the way much of science, especially introductory science, is taught in classrooms and auditoria as fact-based, memorization-heavy.

But I am mean this way (I hear). Why do I refuse to just tell students the "right" answer?

Students are absolutely fixated on the concept of the One Right Answer.  They will go to great lengths to try to pry it out of me: flirting, wheedling, demanding.  When I tell them that multiple answers may be equally correct if they can support their conclusions, they are very anxious.

Of course; this is the one and, in some cases only, thing that has ever carried reward for students. When you "move the cheese," so to speak, the organism gets anxious.

(I don't mean this as an oversimplification of the larger problem, but it is certainly and undeniably a part of it.)