Critique
My last blog post! I have to say, the blog post aspect of this class was incredibly fun, interactive, and meaningful. The fact that everyone has their own concrete website in which their thoughts and experiences are shared feels very important for some reason. I love that I’ll be able to look back on these posts and track how my writing styles and beliefs changed throughout the short duration of just a semester.
I have a hard time focusing in class and find it difficult to be proactive during the whole session. Due to this, I tend to steer towards classes that are online or hybrid classes- they allow me to soak up class information by myself at the library rather than in a room with 40 other students. The fact that attendance was not required for this class was overall a positive for me. I was able to read through the course website, work through the homework, read the textbook, and read/watch any supplemental material provided by the professor throughout the day, according to my schedule. The easiest way for me to keep up with online coursework is by doing assignments or reading the textbook during the actual timeslot of the class, if attendance isn’t mandatory. I was not able to keep up with this regime this semester however, as this semester felt like a big streak of bad luck and stress. I probably haven’t had such a difficult time juggling classes and my personal life since high school, and this has had an incredibly negative impact on my academic performance (especially for this class).
This was my first class in which I’ve ever even heard the phrase “soft deadline”. My initial thought was that I would never enact this policy in the first place. This is laughable in retrospect as I have largely taken advantage of the rule, leading me to turn in very few assignments before/on the deadline. I think this could be due to simply knowing that something can be turned in a day or two late. Giving yourself that safety net is a terrible habit and personally was difficult for me to interact with in a responsible way. I do not think that the soft deadline policy is overall bad or that students in general are not capable of being treated with that much mercy. Rather, I think that I need to majorly work on self-discipline and not allowing myself to slip into thoughts of “I can turn it in tomorrow”.
I think the biggest problem with classes that have rules such as soft deadlines and nonmandatory attendance is that it lends itself to constantly being the lowest priority. If I am faced with a list of assignments and exams, those with lenient policies just logically fall to the bottom. This makes me incredibly sad, as it boils down to me taking advantage of leniency given by a professor. I believe that in a semester in which everything doesn’t go wrong I would have dealt with these nice policies in a more upstanding way. However, there’s no way of knowing if this is true or not. Weirdly, this economics course has uncovered many negative things about myself that I previously was blind to. My inability to keep up with work in classes in which the professor is kind is truly depressing and disappointing; I hope that I can improve on this in the future.
These rules impacted the class as a whole in many ways. For one, it was visibly clear that the professor was disheartened by the lack of attentiveness and proactiveness on the part of his students. Kind and generous professors should not be met with laziness and forgetfulness, as this only reasserts in their mind that students are not capable of being responsible in the face of leniency. I also feel that students can become disengaged in classes that they feel they can pass rather easily. I’m not sure if this has changed or if students have always been like this. I imagine a lot of it has to do with social media and online streaming services: having so much content to distract you is definitely a detriment to productivity.
I would recommend having lectures online. I love having access to lectures through a course website, as it ensures my understanding of the material (especially in a class in which attendance isn’t mandatory). I wouldn’t necessarily modify the rules from the get-go. Rather, I would see these rules as preliminary and remain cautious about them. I would introduce them to the class in the first few weeks but stress that if the majority of students are being irresponsible about them, they will be retracted. This will guarantee that students are mindful and aware about how they are using the rules given.
Thank you for this class. I often show my boyfriend your comments and posts that I find sweet (such as the joke about economists brains!!) and he agrees that you seem very genuine and endearing. Have a great break!
A few remarks about definitions. Soft deadlines in previous versions of the class typically meant they posts could be turned in later on Friday, all day on Saturday, and then on Sunday till about 2 PM. Somehow this has morphed into no deadline at all. I would have tried for the earlier version, as my own life reading the posts would be more organized that way, but it became evident that students stress within our class and on campus overall was greater than it has been in the past. So the morphing happened.
ReplyDeleteThe original reason for hard deadlines (taking the baseline as the time when I was a student) was that assignments were turned in on paper during the class session. With electronic submission, the circumstance changes. I will note that most instructors/graders are not retired and they do have a right to economize on their time reading and evaluating student work. But given that constraint, a little flexibility is possible, even if it is not the norm.
Regarding attendance, I'm unclear on the norms for these things since clickers have become prominent, but I know I had no required attendance in any class when I was a student - yet for the most part attendance was good and I, for one, never skipped a class in my major. Nowadays, it seems, students need the incentive of making attendance required. I view this as the tyranny of extrinsic motivation.
The concept of a learning disability is something fairly recent for me - I became aware of it in the middle to late 1990s. There is now a full literature on ADHD kids and how they should be educated. You might find this TED talk interesting, Do Schools Kill Creativity? The reality is that most professors don't know how to teach offering multiple pathways into the subject matter. So that much I understand.
What I think most of the students in the class didn't get in the way my course is structured, however, is that it wasn't designed to be an online class. The face-to-face part was meant to complement the online component. So, from my view most students who followed the path you took ended up getting a partial course only, not the full deal.
I think what I feel is truly unique to you is that you consider student's stress outside of your own class. It is much more likely for a "kind" professor to be one that simply notices how difficult their class is and tries to mitigate this stress for their students. For example, class curves or paper extensions. You seem much more aware of the other classes/job interviews/grad school applications in a student's life than other professors I've met. I wonder if this is because you were a remarkably active student in your past.
DeleteOnline submissions are a concept that I feel like I witnessed the blooming of throughout my own life. It started in late middle school and has since become the most common way of submitting things. Even the LSAT is becoming electronic! This change has occurred within the last year, but still indicates an overall trend for academics.
I know many students who give their friends their clickers and subsequently have their friends click in the right answers for them, thus leaving them as both present and uninvolved. I sometimes see people with 5-6 iclickers in class, covering for their whole friend group. It seems that even mandatory attendance is starting to become a hurdle to overcome rather than a rule to abide by.
I know a lot of adults in older generations don't believe in learning disabilities. I wonder if this is because of the "pick yourself up by your bootstraps" mentality or just a lack of information on the matter. It is obviously fair that professors don't know how to navigate the waters of learning disabilities. There are a multitude of them, and it would be incredibly difficult to find a teaching method that satisfies everyone's conditions.