Teaching and Learning
jstemwedel | January 29, 2008Since much of what I write about the responsible conduct of research takes them for granted, it's time that I wrote a basic concepts post explaining the norms of science famously described by sociologist Robert K. Merton in 1942. [1] Before diving in, here's Merton's description:
The ethos of science is that affectively toned complex of values and norms which is held to be binding on the man of science. The norms are expressed in the form of prescriptions, proscriptions, preferences, and permissions. They are legitimatized in terms of institutional values. These imperatives, transmitted…
jstemwedel | January 24, 2008Via Bint Alshamsa, this is a version of a "social class awareness experience" used in the residence halls (and possibly also classrooms?) at Indiana State University by Will Barratt et al. In the classroom, students are asked to take a step forward for each of the statements that describe them; they don't talk about the exercise (and how they feel about it) until after they've gone through the whole list.
Doing this online, I'm bolding the statements which describe my background. Also, I'm including a second list that Lauren added based on the suggestions Bint's commenters made as to other…
jstemwedel | December 29, 2007As the new calendar year approaches, I can't help but anticipate the coming spring semester -- and to hold out the hope that this one will be the semester in which none of my students commits plagiarism. Otherwise, I'm facing a perfect 12-semester streak.
Near the end of last semester, one of my colleagues related a tale of dishonesty so brazen that it struck us as one for the books. (Or the blogs, anyway.) The crowning offense was that it was committed in the course of an extra credit assignment.
A number of professors offer their students the opportunity to earn extra credit points by…
jstemwedel | December 19, 2007In the 20/27 December 2007 issue of Nature, there's a fascinating commentary by Cambridge University neuroscientists Barbara Sahakian and Sharon Morein-Zamir. Entitled "Professor's little helper," this commentary explores, among other things, how "cognitive-enhancing drugs" are starting to find their way into the lifestyles of professors and students on university campuses, a development which raises some interesting ethical questions.
The questions are sufficiently rich here that this post will just serve as my first attempt to get some of the important issues on the table and to open it up…
jstemwedel | December 17, 2007Grades are due this Friday. Last Friday, the grader assigned to one of my courses was supposed to get me the grades for the online reading discussions that he was weeks behind on grading.
He didn't.
Nor has he responded to the emails I've sent him since then inquiring as to when he will give me these grades.
Nor has he been answering his cell phone, on whose voicemail I have been leaving increasingly frantic messages.
There is a real possibility that I will have to do this grading that the "grader" has already been paid for (since he is "salaried" this term -- as my grader). This could well…
jstemwedel | December 3, 2007A friend of mine in a philosophy department at an Ivy League school asked for my advice in helping students on the market for academic jobs prepare for their interviews:
One of the things our students asked us about was preparing for interviews at schools quite different than this one (e.g., state schools, liberal arts schools, satellite campus, etc.). In particular, they want to know what kinds of questions to be prepared for. The first question one student was asked last year, for example, was "Can you tell us what you think about the ideal teacher/student relationship?" This is not what…
jstemwedel | December 1, 2007In an earlier post, I shared the responses freshman engineering students had made (via electronic clickers) to a few questions I asked them during an ethics lecture I was giving them.
My commenters are pretty sure I left out options in the multiple choice that should have been included.
In this post, I consider some of those other options, and I try to explain my thinking in formulating the questions and the possible responses the way I did.
(Also, I'll include the questions themselves, since the Quimble polls I used to present them in the original post seem not to be working at the moment.)…
jstemwedel | November 28, 2007In the freshman introduction to engineering class, where I am teaching the ethics module, the students have electronic clickers with which to respond in real time to (multiple choice) questions posed to them in lecture. I took advantage of this handy technology to get their responses to a few questions on cheating. I'm presenting the questions here in poll form so you can play along at home:
(In the event that Quimble is down and the poll is thus inaccessible, you can view the questions in this follow-up post.)
What do you suppose the students said?
On why they don't cheat, the…
jstemwedel | November 20, 2007A comment on ScienceWoman's post (concerning, among other things, how her students tend to call her Mrs. ScienceWoman and her male colleagues Dr. MaleColleague), got me thinking about the norms around addressing faculty that prevailed at my undergraduate institution and whether, if they still prevail, they're worth abolishing.
The commenter wrote:
No one I know (just graduated college) would ever dare address a professor by Mr. or Mrs.... As far as I'm concerned, those titles are related to marital status--which has nothing to do with education or as a sign of respect... Addressing a female…
jstemwedel | November 17, 2007... as a result of the incessant drive to make learning too darn safe.
Not that this is a terribly new development (I wrote about this sort of thing here and here), but it appears that anxieties about terrorists and meth-labs are sucking all the chemically goodness out of chemistry sets:
Current instantiations are embarrassing. There are no chemicals except those which react at low energy to produce color changes. No glass tubes or beakers, certainly no Bunsen burners or alcohol burners (remember the clear blue flames when the alcohol spilled out over the table). Today's sets cover perfume…
jstemwedel | November 7, 2007... is to get all the way through the 16 weeks without a single incident of plagiarism turned in as "student work".
Alas, it appears this will not be the semester in which my fantasy becomes a reality. Dammit.
What bums me out is how very obvious the plagiarism is. Three search phrases with Google and I've got them dead to rights.
Am I not supposed to know how to use Google?
Am I not supposed to be conscious enough, while grading papers, to notice content and phrasing utterly at odds with everything else the offending students have given me?
Am I not supposed to care? (Maybe if the…
jstemwedel | November 1, 2007With just over 10 hours left in our ScienceBlogs/Donors Choose Blogger Challenge 2007, it's time to think about what happens next. Supporting classroom teachers with your funds is a noble gesture, but it's just a start.
To really get math and science literacy (and enthusiasm) to the levels we'd like to see, your time and personal involvement can do an awful lot. In this post you'll find ideas from ScienceBloggers about how to turn your good intentions into action.
From Mike Dunford at The Questionable Authority:
There are a lot of children in this country who don't have much in the way of…
jstemwedel | October 4, 2007Fifty years ago today, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I, Earth's first artificial satellite. I don't remember it (because I wouldn't be born for another decade), but the "BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP" heard 'round the world left indelible traces on the fabric of life for my parents' generation, my generation, and for the subsequent generations, too.
Space was part of the terrain of our imagination for as long as I can remember -- after all, the sibling born right after me landed on Earth pretty much right before the Eagle landed on the moon, and my mom insisted on watching the moonwalk in the…
jstemwedel | October 1, 2007Maybe you remember that fund-raiser we did for DonorsChoose last June. We're kicking off another today. But this time, it's not just ScienceBlogs bloggers -- partners like Google, Yahoo!, Six Apart, and Federated Media are watching the efforts across the whole blogosphere to see which blog has the most generous and engaged readers.
But before we get to the frenzy of competition, let's start with what matters: the school kids yearning to learn.
As I wrote last year:
Those of us who blog here at ScienceBlogs think science is cool, important, and worth understanding. If you're reading the…
jstemwedel | September 26, 2007This is a question that occurred to me earlier this month when I had occasion to observe an undergraduate laboratory course: If something goes wrong in the lab, do you tell the lab instructor? The "something wrong" could range from breaking a piece of glassware, to getting a stick with a syringe (of non-biohazardous material), to getting a stick with a syringe (of biohazardous or radioactive material), to spilling a nasty reagent. Of course, it could include other mishaps not enumerated here.
I'm not as interested in hearing when students should tell the lab instructor about a mishap, but…
jstemwedel | September 12, 2007Perhaps you've already seen the new(ish) AAUP report Freedom in the Classroom, or Michael Bérubé's commentary on it at Inside Higher Ed yesterday. The report is such a clear statement of what a professor's freedom in the classroom amounts to and, more importantly, why that freedom is essential if we are to accomplish the task of educating college students, that everyone who cares at all about higher education ought to read it.
Some of the highlights, with my commentary:
On concerns that professors "indoctrinate" rather than educate:
It is not indoctrination for professors to expect…
jstemwedel | September 11, 2007We're going to discuss this at a Socrates Café gathering next week, but I suspect there are current and former students and educators reading who have a view, so I'm opening it up:
Is extra credit fair?
You're free to consider the question from whatever angle you like -- fairness to the person creating and evaluating the extra credit assignment, or to the other students in the class (or in other sections of the class whose meanie instructors don't offer extra credit), or to the person electing to do the extra credit assignment.
You're also free to draw distinctions between situations in…
jstemwedel | September 7, 2007The school year just started again for my kids, and it's pretty hard to escape the conclusion that as public school teachers are being asked to do more, their resources are dwindling. During the summer, the school mailed out the (extensive) lists of basic school supplies needed by kids at each grade level -- the basic stuff, like crayons and pencils and paper, that during the last millennium when I was in grade school were included in the classroom funding like desks and electricity.
It strikes me that as a society, we need to revisit our funding priorities. But in the meantime, there are…
jstemwedel | September 6, 2007The bullets are addressed to different people and organizations, and I doubt very much that some of them would recognize these were addressed to them even if they received an actual memo. (It's been that kind of week.)
Be it known that:
I do not at present have the power to be in more than one place at a time. If I did, rest assured that I would find more interesting ways to use it than simply getting two kids to soccer-related activities in different locations at the same time.
I wrote a detailed FAQ for my online class for the express purpose of helping students locate the answers to…
jstemwedel | September 4, 2007Since scientist-on-scientist communication is a longstanding topic of interest in these parts, I wanted to point out a recent (August 13, 2007) article in Chemical & Engineering News (behind a paywall, but definitely worth locating a library with a subscription) that offers tips for writing journal articles. It's quite a substantial article, drawing on advice from "dozens of scientists and engineers around the world in academia, industry, and government" -- which is to say, the people who read and write journal articles as part of their jobs.
It goes without saying that this crowd has…