Ineffective teaching

denverdoc

It has been a curious turn of fate and circumstance since I last posted here--instead of a mostly wannabe teacher/voluntary tutor here at PF, I became a paid, this-is-my-job kind of teacher. I took Obama seriously, and whether too seriously, time will tell, and ended up at a cc teaching science. I've been at this a few months, gradually developing my own curriculum and materials.

Today I graded papers. A take home exam which was part of the final. I'm ready to hari-kari. Or at the very least find a more fitting profession. But I can't imagine my experience is that unique. Doubtless I have skills in need of honing, but the results were so disparate from the other exams: usu 1/2 T/F or Multiple choice and 1/2 problems, I was losing my mind. I feel like a complete and abject failure. One student of 25 scored a near perfect exam, the remainder were closer to 35-60 percent. Can i have failed this badly?

I should add the students are mostly non-traditional with a range from GED to some college/even degrees and demos are all over the map. It's a private school and an accelerated program which reduces time of study from 4 years to 22 months. Basically an operation that means well, recognizes that a lot of the material for a BS in nursing or respiratory therapy is a waste of time and focuses on clinical skills, but wishes to make a lot of money.

I'm just despondent and need ideas. I don't want to graduate a bunch of idiots, but what is up with science and math. I have college grads in my class who can't do 3/4=x/16.

Evo

HOLY CRAP!!! I was thinking about you the other day. Welcome back!!

denverdoc

I hope it wasn't in connection with the Ft Hood massacre. Instead some really fantastic dream where i managed to compute pi in my head to to a couple hundred digits, or perhaps you decided those of us anthropogenic warming types are correct. Either B.C or none of the above suits me.

Pengwuino

Did you really expect to do a great job right out the door? Give it time :)

Plus some students really don't care about leraning and thus, are... well... dumb.

TheStatutoryApe

This is a big issue. An old member here and I were once chatting and she told me about going to South Africa (I think it was) to teach. She had been incredibly disappointed to find that the majority of the students just weren't interested in learning.

So certainly you should look over your tests and even ask your students and other teachers what they think about the tests (an outside opinion is always good). But don't beat yourself up too badly. Many of the kids that go to college do so because they are expected to and not so much because they are intent on getting an education.

Pengwuino

Here's a kicker, put questions on tests that are actually identical to homework problems or in class example and watch how test scores don't budge. It's as if people do their homework and just hope to god that they can find an equation with all the variables they have and just turn in whatever the result is.

Moonbear

Ah, nursing students. I can sympathize. If their curriculum is anything like it is here, the problem is they really aren't strong students coming in, and then get SLAMMED with clinical courses while still trying to get a grasp on the basic sciences. At least here they are planning to change the curriculum entirely, because it is really clear that the students aren't ready for clinical courses until they've had their basic sciences completed. My students are just burning out...and no, math is NOT their strength by a long shot. Fortunately, I don't have to teach anything that requires math. But, they freak out when they need to pass a test mid-semester that requires some really basic algebra skills to calculate things like what volume injection to give if a drug is X concentration and Y dosage needs to be administered.

But, yes, making their courses clinically relevant does help maintain their interest much more. I also emphasize a lot of teamwork, which is a skill they will need, and then can give them harder problems to solve in teams than they can do individually. They don't even realize that they are answering questions I give to med students on their exams when I give in-class team assignments (I think I'll let them in on that secret on the last day of class to boost their egos just before I hand out the teaching evaluations ), because they can figure them out just fine when they really put their collective minds to it. But, then they screw up the simplest questions on exams.

I will do everything I can to help them learn better, but I will not lower my standards. I DON'T WANT a nurse who doesn't know the humerus from a femur or can't correctly calculate what volume of injection to give! I tell them this bluntly, because they wouldn't want a nurse treating them who doesn't know that stuff either.

What types of topics are you teaching that they aren't grasping? Maybe I can offer some suggestions appropriate for that group of students. Welcome to the challenging world of teaching!

Ivan Seeking

Whoa! Denverdoc, welcome back.

Sorry to hear the first go around has been so rough. You would probably have better luck in the forum for educators and teachers.
http://www.physicsforums.com/forumdisplay.php?f=192

CRGreathouse

I second this. Nursing students need to see the applications!

boboYO

Funny thing is, that actually works (for intro physics at my university at least). Note to instructors: don't set exam questions that can be solved this way, especially if the formulas are on the provided formula sheet.

Pengwuino

I had a quiz a few weeks ago where I had a question where you could just blindly multiply every number given and you would get the answer. Of course, about 50% of my students got it wrong... I suppose in some way that's a good sign if I see it as 50% of them NOT just trying to multiply every number they're given together.

Moonbear

That is a sign of a bad question if the ones who are thinking and trying are doing worse than the ones who are blindly guessing.

rootX

In one final exam we had a question where almost everyone got 1000 times the value we were expecting. So, I wrote on my exam that it is wrong for unknown reasons so I am dividing it by 1000 to make it looks like more acceptable. I spent like half an hour on that question trying to find where I made the mistake

Hurkyl

I've heard a professor tell stories about doing that. I think he even told them he was doing it. He even had a student complain that he put a question on the test that they never learned about in class.

Vanadium 50

I once had an extra credit question - "Which of the following four questions was used as an in-class example?"

Pengwuino

Well it's for our first semester intro to physics for non-engineers/physicists so a lot of answers do end up coming down to practically multiplying every number given together with a 1/2 thrown about here or there and maybe something squared. The amazing thing was on that question... what people kept answering, I have no idea how they could have even come up with that answer. Every piece of informaiton was a multiple of 5 or 10 or 2 or something and one of my wrong answers was 2.3 and like half the class answered it. At that point i was almost at a loss for what to do.

Moonbear

That means they were completely guessing. If I see one specific question on an exam with a distribution of answers that looks like random guessing, or a high percentage are picking one specific wrong answer, I go back and look at the wording of the question to make sure there wasn't an unintentional ambiguity (it happens...you have something in mind when you write the question, but don't think about some other way the question can be read) and then check that it was actually covered in the lectures (sometimes exam questions are written ahead of time or pulled from a bank of questions, and that particular year, a topic got rushed). If I can't find any problem with it and am sure it was covered, then I'll leave it in, but will make a point to go over that question when the exams are returned. At that point, the best you can hope is that they might learn from their mistakes when they get the exam back.