Blog 3/28/12

Greetings

I hope everyone is doing well.  This will be a long blog, but important.  Please take the time to read through this...

The exam - as I said was difficult to grade due to poor performance.  I Googled the 7 stages of grief and I definitely went through all of them! I am now at the "Acceptance and Hope" stage so I have made it a quick journey.  I want you to know that I went through these stages because I care about my students' learning, so if you did not perform well no the exam I want to encourage you to renew your efforts, keep engaged and ask questions!

The average of the exam was a 52%, pretty low.  I graded them 0-4 using the percentage as a basis: 0 = unacceptable; 1- below expectations; 2- meets expectations; 3- above expectations.  You can find you grade on the your SBG sheet.  For the low grades I included what your grade looked like if I only included those multiple choice questions that were on the pre-test.  Even those grades were low!  I also included how many times you did the pre-tests and your high scores.

I also did some reflection on the grades and my observations of student behavior, attitude and efforts within the group work.  Honestly, there were very few surprises when you include some of these affective aspects into the grading.  Before I enumerate these, I realize that instructional contingencies play a role in student performance - perhaps I was not clear about expectations or learning goals or something else.  I am aware of this potential and am trying to address these in my teaching although I think I have been pretty clear about what I expect; maybe not clear enough.  Here is what I have noted about performance.

Those who received 3 as a score tend to be group leaders or quietly involved in all aspects of the course.  They rarely, if ever, miss or are late for class.  Some in this group had significant previous knowledge and experience with physics.  They appear to be rarely distracted by other things during the class.  All of them have very positive attitudes about learning.

3 out of the 4 who received 2's have missed a lot of class.  Perhaps they will do better if they come more regularly.  The other person missed a couple of questions on material that was not part of the pre-test; this student works hard and I believe understands the material better than the grade.

The group who received 1's tend to miss class or come very late.  Also people in this group seem to be distracted during class, especially by electronic media.

The group who received the lowest grade (0 - not acceptable) are not the group leaders, probably rely too much on other group members to complete tasks, and therefore do not gain the same level of understanding.  Some students in this group have missed a lot of class or did not come to the test.  They also tend to come late to class.  Some of these students probably did not understand a lot of what we did and should have asked more questions.  Many of these people have higher scores when you only count the multiple choice questions form the pre-test.  They probably only studied by doing the pretest although only one of the did the pre-test more then once.  Perhaps just seeing the questions a couple of times has helped them.  Within this group there are 3 subgroups:

• One group includes people who have missed a lot of class or are always late
• One group includes people who struggled with the content, may have relied too much on leaders and should have asked more questions
• One group is very distracted during class and don't participate in group dialogue or work to any great extent.

I really want these observations and comments to be helpful - so please take them as constructive.  The harsh bottom line is that in order to have this class accepted by the College of Education, you have to receive a C or better - a C- won't work.  Now there are a lot of other grades to come.  This grade is ~8% of your total grade.  So, please, if you fall in the 0 or 1 categories you either need to ramp up your efforts and/or come to me for questions and assistance.  I anticipate that the next two sections - geology and astronomy - will be easier for many people, so stay (as they say in the commercial) "hungry" or is it "thirsty".

And I will leave you with a story.  During my first semester in college I took a 200 level religion class that was way over my head.  I was blown away receiving a ZERO on the first essay exam.  And there were only 3 exams for the class.  It was devastating.  I just did not know how to study. But, I stuck with it, did better on the other exams and salvage a decent grade.  I also got to know the religion professor very well, because I was always in his office, and for a bit considered pursuing a religion degree.  The morale of the story (and you probably have ones as well) is to stick with it, work hard, enjoy the learning and good things will happen.

Please let me know if you have questions or comments.

See you tomorrow - dessert will be served.

Be well

Matt