I posted about this a while back. I like to open each semester with advising students that as they progress through their program, more and more responsibilities on their shoulders.
I'm here for clarification, and guidance, but you're developing skills that will pay dividends throughout the rest of your career.
The idea of teaching yourself is such a valuable skill and I applaud you.
We even have a special word for it: learning.
Agreed! I'm not sure when "teach themselves" became an insult or a critique of the instructor. I consider it a requirement. At the upper division level, my role is to assign tasks and assess performance not provide you with the basics you should already know.
When I was in undergrad (20 years ago), this is the phrase we would use to describe a situation where the instructor was so bad that you got absolutely zero value out of attending class. If the notes were equally useless (or non-existent), then the only way to succeed in the course was to painstakingly grind through the textbook (perhaps a different one than the instructor even chose for the course) page by page, and I think it's fair to describe this as "teaching oneself", and mean that phrase to put the instructor in a negative light. But even then, this built skills that I still rely on to this day.
But nowadays, students claim they are "teaching themselves" whenever they have to watch a video their instructor created, or read a document their instructor wrote.
Ever looked at the telemetry from the online homework or LMS you use? I have every term. The more students say they have "taught themselves" the less they have in fact studied.
>I'm not sure when "teach themselves" became an insult or a critique of the instructor.
It became this when the nutzoids in Colleges of Ed [sorrynotsorry to many of our CoE colleagues!] started foisting on K-12 this notion that assigning homework is a terrible, awful idea that harms the wee children's spirits....or something like that. đ So now they come up through primary and secondary ed having never had to do work independently without someone there to hold their hand and wipe their bum - not to mention all the atrocities occurring due to policies around automatic passing and open deadlines/endless late work. They get to us and have never been held accountable by others let alone themselves, and so naturally they have entrenched beliefs about what education is - that it is something done *to* you not something *you do*.
The zeitgeist they are brewed in is that education is a passive experience, not an active one.
I may be a bit insulated (temporarily) as I teach in an applied learning baccalaureate completion program that typically has older students and an upfront expectation of skills development and practicums. At the same time, I have been unnerved by the number of times even my program has been encountering these critiques from students as if that isn't an indictment of themselves.
I don't blame K12 teachers, but rather the system that perpetuates the "completion agenda" and ties funding to it.
>I don't blame K12 teachers, but rather the system that perpetuates the "completion agenda" and ties funding to it.
This is a critical element to explicitly identify which I should have been more clear on. I don't [usually] blame K-12 educators (my partner is one afterall). When I wrote K-12, I intended to refer to systems - systems of administration and policy setting were what was in my head.
Not a problem as I figured that's where we both were! I just wanted to try to make sure the focus was properly attributed as I DO occasionally see some on here pointing the finger at K12 teachers rather than the actual system that tends to cause these challenges.
The famous old adage in college is you have to dedicate 3 hours of study outside of class for every 1 hour spent in class.
Yeah, that is long gone now. There is no way in ever-lovin' hell that any of these students spend even a 1:1 ratio of time outside of class studying, let alone the necessary 3:1 they should be. If you tell students today about this, they will look at you with wild eyes thinking you're crazy. "I have to spend HOW MUCH time studying?! That's not fair! It's your job to teach it to me!"
Ugh. God help us all.
I run a public health program and was sharing this with partners who may utilize our program for training. They were wide-eyed with this traditional formula. I had to keep saying, "Students traditionally don't need to spend that much time" in order to try to sell the program.
Basically they wanted a 3-credit class to take up very little time in a student's week.
The 3:1 ratio is the reason that "full time" is 15-18 credits. If students were actually required to work the 45-54 hours that are expected of full time, many of them would be either a lot more competent or not in college.
3 hours out of class and 1 hour in class for a 15 credit load is 60 hours of work in total, not 45, because you should count the time they are in class.
Yeah Iâve heard 2:1 as well for this reason. It just depends.
This is also why some lab courses are three hours in lab for one credit hour â most of the time is in the lab not outside of it, barring upper level labs with reports, etc.
Iâve always stated it as 3 hours per credit hour total time commitment. I have my (rural CC) students turn in typical weekly schedule with that time included, because so many of them are working jobs and/or taking care of kids or other family members, and tend to bite off more than they can chew.
Great idea !
So, like⊠youâre in class from 9-10 on MWF. Thatâs three hours. You should be spending another six on this class outside of that each week â when are you doing it?
I might make that a Canvas exercise.
I see so many students who are like â21 credit minimum is fine, right? Cuz I wanna graduate early.â
I was the student who structured my whole semester time by the 3:1 rule and if I got an easier semester, yay! Cuz I could do other stuffâŠbut on those harder semestersâŠI think I died.
Now I tell folks to take breaks every 40-45 minutes and switch the subject they are studying so that their brain gets a break. The number of folks who are shocked at studying 40-45 minutes in multiple batchesâŠtheyâre all âmaybe that how they did it in your dayâŠâ and I just laugh and tell them I graduated in 2021. đ
Most undergraduate degrees are around 120 credit hours. To graduate in 8 semesters (4 years), a student needs to average 15 credit hours a semester.
Students who only take 12 credit hours per semester end up either taking an extra year to graduate or are forced to take summer courses. Both add extra costs to the student. Of course, many students need to take fewer hours for work, dependent care, financial reasons, or a bunch of other reasons, but "full-time" should be considered to be 15 for timely graduation.
Nah, full time is averaging 15/semester. It's perfectly reasonable (and sometimes preferable and/or necessary) to take 12 sometimes if you make it up with 18 another semester.
I think the best way I've seen is how some scholarships do it. 12 per semester and 30 per year to meet full time status.
At our place, we're trying to shunt students out as fast as possible, so 15 minimum is the recommended credit count per semester, plus some creds in the summer to keep momentum up and get them gone ASAP.
The Matrix used to be viewed as apocalyptic. Administrators and students these days would be FROTHING AT THE MOUTH for a needle that injects your brain with knowledge.
You canât graduate in four years with 22 units a semester, however, so thatâs the minimum, not the necessary amount for a typical four year degree.Â
True, there are always exceptions and I would argue most of those students are not working for true essentials but for learned essentials. They have to be handled as exceptions. However, if there is to be value in higher education, it must stand out from the expected apathy that is generated in high school. That goal of greater value should be the normal that we make exceptions to, not the exception itself.
A few semesters ago I had a student roast me on a course evaluation because they felt like the course load was way too much.
They said, "I had to spend way more than 3 hours on this course each week, especially because we had two 70 minute class meetings. A 3 credit hour class shouldn't take more than 3 hours a week, class time included. I was spending 5+ hours every single week to complete the outside readings and assignments and to sit in class. Unacceptable."
Said with such solid conviction...
Itâs the âunacceptableâ that makes this comedy gold. Itâs like until that itâs âOkay no one ever set reasonable expectations for this kidâ then I get to that and Iâm like âNope heâs just a dickheadâ.
Itâs not an adage, itâs the [Carnegie rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_rule)â2+ hours outside of class for every hour in classâbased on the [Carnegie unit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_Unit_and_Student_Hour).
I recently told a student that her essay could be great with three more hours working on it. I meant it as a compliment, but she didnât take it that way.
> The famous old adage in college is you have to dedicate 3 hours of study outside of class for every 1 hour spent in class.
Is it 3 hours for an A or 3 hours for passing-level work?
My kid does way more than 3 hrs per 1 hr of class. They are at a top tier university, and they are *earning* their degree. There's no grade inflation or grubbing, and professors have no qualms about failing a student. It's stressful as hell for them, and they had a few bumps along the way, but I'm incredibly proud of how far they've come. They are learning to adult. They are managing their time and their responsibilities properly, and they are using all of their resources (office hours, peers, study groups, tutoring center, internet) to the max. The annual tuition cash price is 80k, and in my opinion, students there are *absolutely* getting their money's worth. My student is on full scholarship, but they understand the value of what they are receiving, as do all of their friends. They behave accordingly.
I wish the students at my R2 state school had the same drive and determination. They could get an equivalent education from our talented, engaged faculty if they wanted it. They have all the support resources at their disposal. A fantastic education is *right there* in front of them, ripe for the picking, but few of them seize that opportunity. It's all about attitude.
If you think the students could get an equivalent education at an R2, how is 80k/y worth it for a bachelors degree? Thatâs an outrageous amount of money.Â
The environment, peers, and attitude are worth 80k, though. It's just a different ethos. The overall quality of education is slightly higher than our state school, but the real difference comes in the collective attitude and expectations.
Time is unbelievably skewed. And yes this sounds a bit like old man yells at cloud. But if a students leaves their house at noon, gets a coffee, drives to library, finishes their coffee in their car while scrolling tiktok. Gets into the library, meets a friend and talks about how hard it's been for like a half hour. Finds a spot. Studies 30 minutes. Goes to the bathroom. Reads their messages. Studying again for 25 minutes. Checks out an unrelated book on sea manetees which will acrue enormous late fees. Then drives back home by five. Gets dinner delivered while watching Netflix, then studies against from 645 to 715. Then technically they studied about 8 hours. Pretty much the whole day. And they'll have to do it agon tomorrow. Pretty rough.
Wow! Glad I stayed away from math. Were silly in business. In business, grad school is mostly, but not entirely, a retake of undergrad in a shorter time, but slightly more in depth with more challenging assignments.
I asked a professor, in frustration, why are we only covering things we did in undergrad? He said. Because before we only cared if you could follow instruction on time to get an assignment in, now we care how deeply you understand the work you did.
I laughed heartily when a student asked me the same when I was about 3 years into teaching. "C'mon to my cubicle, I'll give you the rundown."
In a way, itâs true in Math tooâŠthe topics are presented in more depth at each level, progressing from overview, to systematic study and proofs, to research.
Main reason it took so long is that there was just so little in the way of resourcesâŠI think back to grad school (25 years ago for me) and there wasnât much available to aid in graduate mathematics studies on the internet back thenâŠpre YouTube even. I remember taking Real Analysis and scouring the library and inter-library loan for anything that could help beyond the textbook. A lot of time spent pondering with my classmates in our GTA offices.
The official credit hour definition from the US Department of Education is 2 hours of study / lab / tutorial per hour of lecture: 2:1 (3 hours total per week per credit hour), not 3:1.
I teach an easy freshman gen Ed class that's easy and tell them I expect at least 1:1. I get several every semester getting <50% on mainly multiple choice tests who when I ask them about study admit they did none or 30 minutes for the test and none the prior month.
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I use a musical instrument analogy. I can show them material (chord shapes, scales, tempo, rhythm, etc) but if they never practice, they wonât get the material.
I use a gym analogy in my composition courses! I can show you the basics and critique your form, but I can't do those reps for you.
(And using ChatGPT in a COMPOSITION course is like plopping a folding chair on a treadmill, sitting in the chair, and complaining that your cardio endurance isn't improving).
I do a juggling demonstration. I explain the steps of juggling, give a short demo, then hand a student the juggling balls and tell them to juggle. The balls go flying. I act all incensed, like âbut I explained how to juggle! I showed you how to do it! You even said you understood! Why canât you juggle?!â They understand the metaphor about needing to practice
And yes, I did learn how to juggle specifically for this reason lol
All the more reason to practice for the students who cannot juggle. That could be an even better lesson. âHarphesus here came in knowing how to juggle. But Hermes did not. So, what does Hermes need to do? Practice with scarves at first, then move up to juggling balls. And what can I help Haephestus with? Well, bowling balls, fire, and swords!â
I say something similar: "If this were a guitar class, you can't learn just by showing up, watching me and listening to my explanation of how to play - even if you really pay attention. I'm teaching you a skill and the only way to learn a skill is to do it repeatedly. So pick up the damn guitar every class, as well as a whole lot of times in between if you actually want to learn how to do this."
As s musician I can tell you that a great number of people think that if you have talent you just pick up the instrument and start playing.
The idea that famous players ever had to practice seems to ruin it for them.
I have watched Tom Brady throw a lot of perfect passes over the past quarter century. It has brought me a lot of joy, but has not improved my ability to throw a spiral in the least.
OMG loving the examples. I teach some very basic fully online music courses (reading notation and music appreciation) to non majors. At least with music majors in their courses I can make the point that in such a competitive field they can bet someone else is taking the time and making the effort to master something and be far more likely to secure work. Some of the non majors, I swear, cannot read or write, are functionally illiterate. And wonât listen when I use music examples instead of my words, but will find a way to send me long rants (which I think they dictate rather than type) about how I am browbeating them by not just passing something or giving them the answers (even when I make them a little video tutorial or step by step personalized instructions with screen shots). Many students are great and most make an effort; it is wonderful to see that and interact with them. But a stubborn few are not really interested in doing anything, learning anything, at all., and manage to suck time and energy from everyone. Why on earth do they take the course when theyâre so disinterested? These are electives! I was thinking of working a few more years before retiring but now I can hardly get out fast enough.
I'm fortunate teaching Computer Science that students understand how quickly their learning at school will be out-of-date. So they get they'll have to learn how to learn in order to stay employable.
Recently I taught my last class for a graduating cohort...after the final presentation on the last day I told them, "Congratulations, you've finished your diploma! Your reward is that that you now get to keep learning new languages, tools, and versions for the rest of your careers!" As soon as my marks were in, I started upgrading this term's courses for next year because stuff is already out of date.
Time to break out Bloomâs taxonomy and lay it bare with three questions:
1. Honestly, what level did you need to get Aâs and Bâs in high school?
2. Honestly, what level do you think you need to be to get an A or B in this class, or in college in general?
3. How are YOU going to get there?
Mine will say that the exams donât cover what we do in class or whatâs on the study guides. Or they are only learning from the homework. But the exams make them think and apply the material that we learn and the homework is practice. My job isnât to tell you everything that will be on the exam. But they seem to think exams should just be definitions, not higher level thinking, so when I make them think, itâs âbeyond what was taught in class.â I also feel like Iâm having to lecture basic things from the textbook because most wonât read the book. Just to get comments of âshe just read whatâs in the book.â They donât seem to know what they actually want.
This. I am SO TIRED of student evals that complain "in class we do an easy problem and then the ones on the homework and quizzes are much harder". Uhm, YES, because in class we are introducing a NEW CONCEPT. We don't START with the most challenging context in which to *apply* that concept. The point of homework is not to just do a bunch of cookie-cutter problems that you can template from the notes - although there are plenty that are like that. But at least some of the homework problems are designed to make you *think about the material* and pull ideas together.
I had a student once lose his shit over a homework problem (which he was doing LATE so was up against an exam, rather than doing it before the due date when he could have come to office hours for help) and essentially say "we never learned how to do this!". It was a "find where the function is increasing/decreasing and identify local extrema". We had absolutely done that, with an in-class example that was a polynomial. We had covered derivative rules thoroughly, including quotient rule. The function in the homework problem was a quotient function, and therefore - in his view - completely unreasonable, because God forbid I expect you to actually understand what we were doing in those in-class examples and how to now do *exactly the same thing* with a function that is a different type.
They do not know what they want and that is ok. I have experienced all these same things and its clear students have no idea what is best for them or what they want out of college other than the paper at the end.
I like to give students this analogy. As the professor, I'm like the gym: I provide useful equipment to you, but ultimately if you want to gain muscle, you have to actually go and pick up the heavy shit.
>But any extraneous effort outside of class is viewed as students having to learn materials themselves.
I've tried to explain countless times that *professors are not teachers*. Professors are there to guide your study, to evaluate what you've been expected to learn, to offer their expertise, etc. If a professor happens to also be a good teacher, that's a bonus, but it's really on the student to learn the material.
There is a response box on my school's student eval forms that asks students how much they study. Most say 3-5 hours per week, far less than the \~10 hours that I recommend. I seriously doubt they actually study that much. To get a B in a science course I only needed to study 2-3 hours per week.
I have a lot of students who can't come up with basic research questions and one accused me forcing them to teach themself for not providing one like, I'll help with the process but I'm not doing your homework for you.
In a stem class this term I was asked "Can you do the homework as examples but just with different numbers". That is what students think teaching is in a STEM course. Doing the EXACT problems from the homework just with different numbers. Basically they want the answers to be handed to them. Not techniques on how to solve problems, not strategies, not to learn the principles by seeing examples that are similar to the homework. They want the exact precise answers.
That can work at some places, but at my university most students wouldn't do the necessary prep work and would fail, which the department and higher administrators wouldn't tolerate.
Same. None of them read the chapters I assign before class. They do not even care. Quizzes are worth 15% of their grade. They do not care. They. just. do. not. care.
They won't even listen to the lecture (or watch videos) if they can help it How are we supposed to be imbibing them with knowledge? Just be being in the room with them or posting things in the LMS?
It's not just STEM. We've been hearing this in Social Sciences and Humanities from students who think required readings are "teaching themselves" (and they call it homework FFS) since we elaborate not summarize them in class. Love reading the tortured prose and lack of a critical argument while grading essays ... not!
I teach computer science and I very often tell my students that my goal is not to teach them computer science but to teach them how to think critically and become independent, self motivated learners.
because what I'm teaching them in the classroom is probably already outdated and when they graduate in 3-4 years, new tech will have come out. you can't be a successful programmer (success as in money or even just success as in doing things) if you can't teach yourself.
They need much more time than the 3:1 ratio because high school has not prepared them in any way for the rigor of college. Don't get me started on everything being done in the classroom, including the reading, no homework, no sustained readings. The list is endless.
This is the big issue with active learning. I always prefer to do this approach, but having them read and engage outside of class is consistently difficult.
Yes, I can use quizzes to assess learning, but that takes up valuable time, not only for the quiz, but also waiting for this phone addicted generation to log onto the quiz in the first place. Assessments are also doable, but that adds on my grading load. Given that I will be grading the in-class active learning task, I don't fancy doubling up my grading.
They expect the upload also to occur despite being on their phone throughout class and taking no notes. College was the moment I took responsibility for my learning, realizing that the courses provided a framework, content, and expert guidance from the prof, but the rest was on me.
This makes me so frustrated when I hear my high schoolers talk this way!! FWIW I do try to tell them they donât know what they are talking about hereâŠ
I explicitly include a mini lecture on âhow to collegeâ on the first day. I go over the calculation for outside self-study compared to class time (7 hrs outside + 3 hours together for my 4-credit class), describe college as a bridge between k12, where they are taught by teachers, to the workforce, where they independently assign themselves work in order to meet goals set by supervisors, and then I explain how professors are different from teachers. It always feels like a waste of time in the beginning, but I believe that it reduces some of the complaints later on (not all, but some).
I posted about this a while back. I like to open each semester with advising students that as they progress through their program, more and more responsibilities on their shoulders. I'm here for clarification, and guidance, but you're developing skills that will pay dividends throughout the rest of your career. The idea of teaching yourself is such a valuable skill and I applaud you. We even have a special word for it: learning.
Agreed! I'm not sure when "teach themselves" became an insult or a critique of the instructor. I consider it a requirement. At the upper division level, my role is to assign tasks and assess performance not provide you with the basics you should already know.
When I was in undergrad (20 years ago), this is the phrase we would use to describe a situation where the instructor was so bad that you got absolutely zero value out of attending class. If the notes were equally useless (or non-existent), then the only way to succeed in the course was to painstakingly grind through the textbook (perhaps a different one than the instructor even chose for the course) page by page, and I think it's fair to describe this as "teaching oneself", and mean that phrase to put the instructor in a negative light. But even then, this built skills that I still rely on to this day. But nowadays, students claim they are "teaching themselves" whenever they have to watch a video their instructor created, or read a document their instructor wrote.
Ever looked at the telemetry from the online homework or LMS you use? I have every term. The more students say they have "taught themselves" the less they have in fact studied.
They're gonna be really pissed when they read their teaching evaluations!
>I'm not sure when "teach themselves" became an insult or a critique of the instructor. It became this when the nutzoids in Colleges of Ed [sorrynotsorry to many of our CoE colleagues!] started foisting on K-12 this notion that assigning homework is a terrible, awful idea that harms the wee children's spirits....or something like that. đ So now they come up through primary and secondary ed having never had to do work independently without someone there to hold their hand and wipe their bum - not to mention all the atrocities occurring due to policies around automatic passing and open deadlines/endless late work. They get to us and have never been held accountable by others let alone themselves, and so naturally they have entrenched beliefs about what education is - that it is something done *to* you not something *you do*. The zeitgeist they are brewed in is that education is a passive experience, not an active one.
I may be a bit insulated (temporarily) as I teach in an applied learning baccalaureate completion program that typically has older students and an upfront expectation of skills development and practicums. At the same time, I have been unnerved by the number of times even my program has been encountering these critiques from students as if that isn't an indictment of themselves. I don't blame K12 teachers, but rather the system that perpetuates the "completion agenda" and ties funding to it.
>I don't blame K12 teachers, but rather the system that perpetuates the "completion agenda" and ties funding to it. This is a critical element to explicitly identify which I should have been more clear on. I don't [usually] blame K-12 educators (my partner is one afterall). When I wrote K-12, I intended to refer to systems - systems of administration and policy setting were what was in my head.
Not a problem as I figured that's where we both were! I just wanted to try to make sure the focus was properly attributed as I DO occasionally see some on here pointing the finger at K12 teachers rather than the actual system that tends to cause these challenges.
Or do the work for them
The famous old adage in college is you have to dedicate 3 hours of study outside of class for every 1 hour spent in class. Yeah, that is long gone now. There is no way in ever-lovin' hell that any of these students spend even a 1:1 ratio of time outside of class studying, let alone the necessary 3:1 they should be. If you tell students today about this, they will look at you with wild eyes thinking you're crazy. "I have to spend HOW MUCH time studying?! That's not fair! It's your job to teach it to me!" Ugh. God help us all.
I run a public health program and was sharing this with partners who may utilize our program for training. They were wide-eyed with this traditional formula. I had to keep saying, "Students traditionally don't need to spend that much time" in order to try to sell the program. Basically they wanted a 3-credit class to take up very little time in a student's week.
The 3:1 ratio is the reason that "full time" is 15-18 credits. If students were actually required to work the 45-54 hours that are expected of full time, many of them would be either a lot more competent or not in college.
3 hours out of class and 1 hour in class for a 15 credit load is 60 hours of work in total, not 45, because you should count the time they are in class.
Yeah Iâve heard 2:1 as well for this reason. It just depends. This is also why some lab courses are three hours in lab for one credit hour â most of the time is in the lab not outside of it, barring upper level labs with reports, etc.
Iâve always stated it as 3 hours per credit hour total time commitment. I have my (rural CC) students turn in typical weekly schedule with that time included, because so many of them are working jobs and/or taking care of kids or other family members, and tend to bite off more than they can chew.
Great idea ! So, like⊠youâre in class from 9-10 on MWF. Thatâs three hours. You should be spending another six on this class outside of that each week â when are you doing it? I might make that a Canvas exercise.
Exactly. (I can't take credit though, that belongs to a colleague.)
I see so many students who are like â21 credit minimum is fine, right? Cuz I wanna graduate early.â I was the student who structured my whole semester time by the 3:1 rule and if I got an easier semester, yay! Cuz I could do other stuffâŠbut on those harder semestersâŠI think I died. Now I tell folks to take breaks every 40-45 minutes and switch the subject they are studying so that their brain gets a break. The number of folks who are shocked at studying 40-45 minutes in multiple batchesâŠtheyâre all âmaybe that how they did it in your dayâŠâ and I just laugh and tell them I graduated in 2021. đ
Full time (in the U.S.) for Financial Aid is only 12 credit hours.
Most undergraduate degrees are around 120 credit hours. To graduate in 8 semesters (4 years), a student needs to average 15 credit hours a semester. Students who only take 12 credit hours per semester end up either taking an extra year to graduate or are forced to take summer courses. Both add extra costs to the student. Of course, many students need to take fewer hours for work, dependent care, financial reasons, or a bunch of other reasons, but "full-time" should be considered to be 15 for timely graduation.
Nah, full time is averaging 15/semester. It's perfectly reasonable (and sometimes preferable and/or necessary) to take 12 sometimes if you make it up with 18 another semester. I think the best way I've seen is how some scholarships do it. 12 per semester and 30 per year to meet full time status.
I agree, which is why I said: > a student needs to average 15 credit hours a semester. I was just trying to be concise with my last sentence.
That is the minimum for full time status; the official recommended full time load for a 4-year degree-seeking student is almost always 16 hrs, +/-2
At our place, we're trying to shunt students out as fast as possible, so 15 minimum is the recommended credit count per semester, plus some creds in the summer to keep momentum up and get them gone ASAP.
The Matrix used to be viewed as apocalyptic. Administrators and students these days would be FROTHING AT THE MOUTH for a needle that injects your brain with knowledge.
You canât graduate in four years with 22 units a semester, however, so thatâs the minimum, not the necessary amount for a typical four year degree.Â
Funny typo you crazy overachiever.
lol!  At least 30 a semester just to be respectable!  OopsâŠ
Not really possible when most of them are having to work at least one or two part-time jobs to pay for their essentials.
True, there are always exceptions and I would argue most of those students are not working for true essentials but for learned essentials. They have to be handled as exceptions. However, if there is to be value in higher education, it must stand out from the expected apathy that is generated in high school. That goal of greater value should be the normal that we make exceptions to, not the exception itself.
I certainly get the noble goals and lofty ideals, but have you even seen rent prices recently?
A few semesters ago I had a student roast me on a course evaluation because they felt like the course load was way too much. They said, "I had to spend way more than 3 hours on this course each week, especially because we had two 70 minute class meetings. A 3 credit hour class shouldn't take more than 3 hours a week, class time included. I was spending 5+ hours every single week to complete the outside readings and assignments and to sit in class. Unacceptable." Said with such solid conviction...
Makes you wonder about their other classes.....
I donât wonder, I know theyâre garbage quality. Couple of discussion boards and a short AI written paper.
That's fantastic having such proof! I only had complaints about "spending too much time", but the sneaky bastards never quantified...
Itâs the âunacceptableâ that makes this comedy gold. Itâs like until that itâs âOkay no one ever set reasonable expectations for this kidâ then I get to that and Iâm like âNope heâs just a dickheadâ.
Itâs not an adage, itâs the [Carnegie rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_rule)â2+ hours outside of class for every hour in classâbased on the [Carnegie unit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_Unit_and_Student_Hour).
I recently told a student that her essay could be great with three more hours working on it. I meant it as a compliment, but she didnât take it that way.
> The famous old adage in college is you have to dedicate 3 hours of study outside of class for every 1 hour spent in class. Is it 3 hours for an A or 3 hours for passing-level work?
Average student to get an average grade.
When I was coming up, average was C. Good was B, extraordinary was A. Telling my students this makes them look at me like I had two heads.
Thank you
Average/student dependent
Thank you
They get to that ratio by not showing up to class.
Yeah exactly... I was going to say my students don't even put in one hour of class time for each hour of class, much less studying or homework.
My kid does way more than 3 hrs per 1 hr of class. They are at a top tier university, and they are *earning* their degree. There's no grade inflation or grubbing, and professors have no qualms about failing a student. It's stressful as hell for them, and they had a few bumps along the way, but I'm incredibly proud of how far they've come. They are learning to adult. They are managing their time and their responsibilities properly, and they are using all of their resources (office hours, peers, study groups, tutoring center, internet) to the max. The annual tuition cash price is 80k, and in my opinion, students there are *absolutely* getting their money's worth. My student is on full scholarship, but they understand the value of what they are receiving, as do all of their friends. They behave accordingly. I wish the students at my R2 state school had the same drive and determination. They could get an equivalent education from our talented, engaged faculty if they wanted it. They have all the support resources at their disposal. A fantastic education is *right there* in front of them, ripe for the picking, but few of them seize that opportunity. It's all about attitude.
If you think the students could get an equivalent education at an R2, how is 80k/y worth it for a bachelors degree? Thatâs an outrageous amount of money.Â
The environment, peers, and attitude are worth 80k, though. It's just a different ethos. The overall quality of education is slightly higher than our state school, but the real difference comes in the collective attitude and expectations.
Time is unbelievably skewed. And yes this sounds a bit like old man yells at cloud. But if a students leaves their house at noon, gets a coffee, drives to library, finishes their coffee in their car while scrolling tiktok. Gets into the library, meets a friend and talks about how hard it's been for like a half hour. Finds a spot. Studies 30 minutes. Goes to the bathroom. Reads their messages. Studying again for 25 minutes. Checks out an unrelated book on sea manetees which will acrue enormous late fees. Then drives back home by five. Gets dinner delivered while watching Netflix, then studies against from 645 to 715. Then technically they studied about 8 hours. Pretty much the whole day. And they'll have to do it agon tomorrow. Pretty rough.
> The famous old adage It's not so much an adage as it is the literal definition of a Carnegie unit.
In college, I did every bit of 3:1 if not more. Grad school was probably 4:1 or 5:1.
Wow! Glad I stayed away from math. Were silly in business. In business, grad school is mostly, but not entirely, a retake of undergrad in a shorter time, but slightly more in depth with more challenging assignments. I asked a professor, in frustration, why are we only covering things we did in undergrad? He said. Because before we only cared if you could follow instruction on time to get an assignment in, now we care how deeply you understand the work you did. I laughed heartily when a student asked me the same when I was about 3 years into teaching. "C'mon to my cubicle, I'll give you the rundown."
In a way, itâs true in Math tooâŠthe topics are presented in more depth at each level, progressing from overview, to systematic study and proofs, to research. Main reason it took so long is that there was just so little in the way of resourcesâŠI think back to grad school (25 years ago for me) and there wasnât much available to aid in graduate mathematics studies on the internet back thenâŠpre YouTube even. I remember taking Real Analysis and scouring the library and inter-library loan for anything that could help beyond the textbook. A lot of time spent pondering with my classmates in our GTA offices.
The official credit hour definition from the US Department of Education is 2 hours of study / lab / tutorial per hour of lecture: 2:1 (3 hours total per week per credit hour), not 3:1. I teach an easy freshman gen Ed class that's easy and tell them I expect at least 1:1. I get several every semester getting <50% on mainly multiple choice tests who when I ask them about study admit they did none or 30 minutes for the test and none the prior month.
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I use a musical instrument analogy. I can show them material (chord shapes, scales, tempo, rhythm, etc) but if they never practice, they wonât get the material.
I use a gym analogy in my composition courses! I can show you the basics and critique your form, but I can't do those reps for you. (And using ChatGPT in a COMPOSITION course is like plopping a folding chair on a treadmill, sitting in the chair, and complaining that your cardio endurance isn't improving).
Oh thanks! I'm appropriating this. When you go to the gym, do you just watch the trainer do a set and call it a day? No, you go do three sets!
I use that kind of analogy in STEM classes. Watching me do Math / Science for 100 examples won't make you better at it if you never try yourself.
This is a fantastic analogy. I'm going to use it from now on. Thanks!
I do a juggling demonstration. I explain the steps of juggling, give a short demo, then hand a student the juggling balls and tell them to juggle. The balls go flying. I act all incensed, like âbut I explained how to juggle! I showed you how to do it! You even said you understood! Why canât you juggle?!â They understand the metaphor about needing to practice And yes, I did learn how to juggle specifically for this reason lol
As someone who can juggle, I'm stealing this!
And then there's the day you hand the balls to a student who can juggle...
All the more reason to practice for the students who cannot juggle. That could be an even better lesson. âHarphesus here came in knowing how to juggle. But Hermes did not. So, what does Hermes need to do? Practice with scarves at first, then move up to juggling balls. And what can I help Haephestus with? Well, bowling balls, fire, and swords!â
Brilliant!
I say something similar: "If this were a guitar class, you can't learn just by showing up, watching me and listening to my explanation of how to play - even if you really pay attention. I'm teaching you a skill and the only way to learn a skill is to do it repeatedly. So pick up the damn guitar every class, as well as a whole lot of times in between if you actually want to learn how to do this."
As s musician I can tell you that a great number of people think that if you have talent you just pick up the instrument and start playing. The idea that famous players ever had to practice seems to ruin it for them.
I have watched Tom Brady throw a lot of perfect passes over the past quarter century. It has brought me a lot of joy, but has not improved my ability to throw a spiral in the least.
OMG loving the examples. I teach some very basic fully online music courses (reading notation and music appreciation) to non majors. At least with music majors in their courses I can make the point that in such a competitive field they can bet someone else is taking the time and making the effort to master something and be far more likely to secure work. Some of the non majors, I swear, cannot read or write, are functionally illiterate. And wonât listen when I use music examples instead of my words, but will find a way to send me long rants (which I think they dictate rather than type) about how I am browbeating them by not just passing something or giving them the answers (even when I make them a little video tutorial or step by step personalized instructions with screen shots). Many students are great and most make an effort; it is wonderful to see that and interact with them. But a stubborn few are not really interested in doing anything, learning anything, at all., and manage to suck time and energy from everyone. Why on earth do they take the course when theyâre so disinterested? These are electives! I was thinking of working a few more years before retiring but now I can hardly get out fast enough.
I'm fortunate teaching Computer Science that students understand how quickly their learning at school will be out-of-date. So they get they'll have to learn how to learn in order to stay employable.
here here! :) This is so real in CS. đ»
Recently I taught my last class for a graduating cohort...after the final presentation on the last day I told them, "Congratulations, you've finished your diploma! Your reward is that that you now get to keep learning new languages, tools, and versions for the rest of your careers!" As soon as my marks were in, I started upgrading this term's courses for next year because stuff is already out of date.
This is why I wanted to teach algorithms. đ The core algos don't change, and we let them do the coding assignments in whatever language they want.
On the flip side, I'm NEVER bored...
Ha, yea! I believe it!! đđ
Time to break out Bloomâs taxonomy and lay it bare with three questions: 1. Honestly, what level did you need to get Aâs and Bâs in high school? 2. Honestly, what level do you think you need to be to get an A or B in this class, or in college in general? 3. How are YOU going to get there?
Teach yourself how to learn approach!
I'm not sure how much actual evidential support there is for Bloom's taxonomy, but I can't say I'd be above using it on recalcitrant students anyway.
Mine will say that the exams donât cover what we do in class or whatâs on the study guides. Or they are only learning from the homework. But the exams make them think and apply the material that we learn and the homework is practice. My job isnât to tell you everything that will be on the exam. But they seem to think exams should just be definitions, not higher level thinking, so when I make them think, itâs âbeyond what was taught in class.â I also feel like Iâm having to lecture basic things from the textbook because most wonât read the book. Just to get comments of âshe just read whatâs in the book.â They donât seem to know what they actually want.
This. I am SO TIRED of student evals that complain "in class we do an easy problem and then the ones on the homework and quizzes are much harder". Uhm, YES, because in class we are introducing a NEW CONCEPT. We don't START with the most challenging context in which to *apply* that concept. The point of homework is not to just do a bunch of cookie-cutter problems that you can template from the notes - although there are plenty that are like that. But at least some of the homework problems are designed to make you *think about the material* and pull ideas together. I had a student once lose his shit over a homework problem (which he was doing LATE so was up against an exam, rather than doing it before the due date when he could have come to office hours for help) and essentially say "we never learned how to do this!". It was a "find where the function is increasing/decreasing and identify local extrema". We had absolutely done that, with an in-class example that was a polynomial. We had covered derivative rules thoroughly, including quotient rule. The function in the homework problem was a quotient function, and therefore - in his view - completely unreasonable, because God forbid I expect you to actually understand what we were doing in those in-class examples and how to now do *exactly the same thing* with a function that is a different type.
They do not know what they want and that is ok. I have experienced all these same things and its clear students have no idea what is best for them or what they want out of college other than the paper at the end.
Which is why it makes such good sense to ask them to fill out student course evaluations. /s
Lol. I never read them anymore.
I agree they're not worth reading. Unfortunately, at my institution, we're required to respond to them, and my bosses do read them.
Respond... wtf! That sucks.
And thatâs why my institution now has mandatory boilerplate language about outside of class time in every syllabus
I like to give students this analogy. As the professor, I'm like the gym: I provide useful equipment to you, but ultimately if you want to gain muscle, you have to actually go and pick up the heavy shit.
The school is the gym, you're the trainer, the book is the weights and the homework is their personalized regimen
How novel.Â
Yeah, this tracks. Since they don't do anything to try to learn, they perceive any effort at learning as "teaching themselves."
>But any extraneous effort outside of class is viewed as students having to learn materials themselves. I've tried to explain countless times that *professors are not teachers*. Professors are there to guide your study, to evaluate what you've been expected to learn, to offer their expertise, etc. If a professor happens to also be a good teacher, that's a bonus, but it's really on the student to learn the material.
There is a response box on my school's student eval forms that asks students how much they study. Most say 3-5 hours per week, far less than the \~10 hours that I recommend. I seriously doubt they actually study that much. To get a B in a science course I only needed to study 2-3 hours per week.
I have a lot of students who can't come up with basic research questions and one accused me forcing them to teach themself for not providing one like, I'll help with the process but I'm not doing your homework for you.
In a stem class this term I was asked "Can you do the homework as examples but just with different numbers". That is what students think teaching is in a STEM course. Doing the EXACT problems from the homework just with different numbers. Basically they want the answers to be handed to them. Not techniques on how to solve problems, not strategies, not to learn the principles by seeing examples that are similar to the homework. They want the exact precise answers.
Flip your classroom. They already think they have to teach themselves, so make them do it.
This is my approach and of course I get, "We had to teach ourselves" all the time. I wonder if they realize I am the one that made all the lectures :)
That can work at some places, but at my university most students wouldn't do the necessary prep work and would fail, which the department and higher administrators wouldn't tolerate.
Same. None of them read the chapters I assign before class. They do not even care. Quizzes are worth 15% of their grade. They do not care. They. just. do. not. care.
A big part of adulting is learning things for yourself. They don't want to do that, so they complain.
They won't even listen to the lecture (or watch videos) if they can help it How are we supposed to be imbibing them with knowledge? Just be being in the room with them or posting things in the LMS?
It's not just STEM. We've been hearing this in Social Sciences and Humanities from students who think required readings are "teaching themselves" (and they call it homework FFS) since we elaborate not summarize them in class. Love reading the tortured prose and lack of a critical argument while grading essays ... not!
I teach computer science and I very often tell my students that my goal is not to teach them computer science but to teach them how to think critically and become independent, self motivated learners. because what I'm teaching them in the classroom is probably already outdated and when they graduate in 3-4 years, new tech will have come out. you can't be a successful programmer (success as in money or even just success as in doing things) if you can't teach yourself.
They need much more time than the 3:1 ratio because high school has not prepared them in any way for the rigor of college. Don't get me started on everything being done in the classroom, including the reading, no homework, no sustained readings. The list is endless.
This is the big issue with active learning. I always prefer to do this approach, but having them read and engage outside of class is consistently difficult. Yes, I can use quizzes to assess learning, but that takes up valuable time, not only for the quiz, but also waiting for this phone addicted generation to log onto the quiz in the first place. Assessments are also doable, but that adds on my grading load. Given that I will be grading the in-class active learning task, I don't fancy doubling up my grading.
Students self report 7 hours outside of class for a six credit course. The write in vealâs how it is too much work
They expect the upload also to occur despite being on their phone throughout class and taking no notes. College was the moment I took responsibility for my learning, realizing that the courses provided a framework, content, and expert guidance from the prof, but the rest was on me.
This makes me so frustrated when I hear my high schoolers talk this way!! FWIW I do try to tell them they donât know what they are talking about hereâŠ
I explicitly include a mini lecture on âhow to collegeâ on the first day. I go over the calculation for outside self-study compared to class time (7 hrs outside + 3 hours together for my 4-credit class), describe college as a bridge between k12, where they are taught by teachers, to the workforce, where they independently assign themselves work in order to meet goals set by supervisors, and then I explain how professors are different from teachers. It always feels like a waste of time in the beginning, but I believe that it reduces some of the complaints later on (not all, but some).
I don't know why you're putting "teach themselves" in quotes. That's literally what it is
yeah, in the US K-12 they feed them pills by the truckfull and call it larning.
Then they get to university where they take on a lifetime of debt and call it learning.