Must be great bein’ the king.
Gary Robbins reports that Chapman U’s ubiquitous (and annoying) President James Doti has “asked his faculty to make their classes tougher after alumni said in a survey that they wished that some of their course work had been more challenging.” (Chapman president: Make courses tougher.)This happened at a faculty retreat last month. Or so said the student newspaper.
Chapman routinely surveys its alumni (reports Gary). Graduates rate how challenging their courses have been, and the score has slid from 3.98 (out of 5) in 2001 to 3.9 in 2007.
Doti notes that Chapman is more selective than it used to be, student-wise, and these new and improved students want tougher classes.
The President was asked what faculty might do:
Doti said faculty could do such things as “assign more papers and expect better work in those papers.” In areas like economics, a teacher might “go from general questions about how the Federal Reserve works to asking how the fed would react in a specific setting if certain things happened. The students would have to do a lot more digging for information.”No word on how Chapman’s faculty feel about all this.
I don’t know about Chapman, but, in general, standards have been sliding in higher ed for a long time. Recently, I noted recent reports on grade inflation and the curious factoid that, at many colleges (including those of the SOCCCD), Bs are more commonly awarded than C’s.
At our colleges, by far the most common grade awarded is an A.
Saddleback College’s PE division seems to give away A’s like M&Ms. I think a student in a Saddleback PE class has to show up to classes with a six-pack of Bud and then go sleep in the grass to get a C. If they just show up with the six-pack, that’s a B.
I’m just guessin’.
I’m all in favor of faculty recognizing the Great A Giveaway issue and then developing solutions. But it would piss me off if, suddenly, the college president (or, say, some old guy from the alumni association with a stack of survey forms) showed up and said, “Faculty, you need to get tougher. Go do that.”
There’s a right way and a wrong way to do these things. Orders from on high are almost always a bad idea.
I remember the spring of 2003, here at IVC. We learned that, according to the college’s Vice President of Instruction (a very wealthy fellow these days, it seems), faculty were to cease discussing the war in Iraq.
Just like that.
Later, we asked the VPI for clarification of the administration’s policy concerning discussion of the war. The VPI paused. He then advised us not to pursue clarification, for we might not like what we’d get.
He couldn't have given a worse answer.
27 comments:
Shouldn't PE just be a credit/no credit course? I'm not sure how one would grade a student--on athletic ability? On the amount of sweat produced?
Click on the link provided in the post. It provides the number of grades given and the number of A's (etc.) among those grades.
Of the over 3,200 grades issued (in PE, Health), only 450 were credit/no-credit. Over 2000 were A's.
Wow - and I was always AFRAID of taking PE! Silly me!
10:00:
My children have graded PE classes in junior and senior high school. They are graded on attendance and on being appropriately attired for the class. Obviously regular attendance for any sort of physical training endeavor is important - you can't make up the work or do all the reading at the last minute, or pull an "all-nighter" studying. Appropriate attire, again, is obviously important. Coming to class with out suiting up is like coming to any other class with no paper, pens/pencils, and not buying the required text book. After attendance and attire, the instructors assess effort and attitude, which is a lot like "participation" grades in other subjects. It does make PE sound like an "easy A", but there are many classes that are fairly easy if you attend class regularly and come prepared to do the work. And still, that seems to be hardest part for many students. Just some thoughts...
ES
Gee; "appropriate attire" as a grading criterion worries me, though I suspect that teachers are aware of poverty or parental neglect that makes some kids' wardrobes much more basic than others. I hope that criterion is interpreted broadly (e.g., don't come in a business suit --as if they would!--and wear tennis shoes if you've got 'em , which, I guess, all of them would).
Effort seems a good criterion here--and more appropriately given heavy weight here than it is in some academic courses. After all, some students try really, really hard in Philosophy--but only end by doing B- (or worse) work, in terms of the quality of their essays. But in P.E., it seems fair to count effort, *rather than* innate athletic talent or even achievement.
Just some more thoughts!
MAH
MAH:
In the case of my children, the school specifies a PE uniform, paid for as part of registration at the beginning of the year. I have been able to hand these down over the years (kids are close in age and the uniform is the same basic shorts and T-shirt for girls and boys), so we don't have to buy so many new ones. The kids do already wear athletic shoes most of the time, as you guessed. In college, an instructor is likely to describe the appropriate attire in general terms in the syllabus - tennis shoes (non-marking out-soles if indoor gymnasium is used, t-shirt and shorts or sweatpants. It's pretty easy to tell the difference between clothes that are appropriate for working out, and those that are not. Most students own these clothes already, but if they did not, they could purchase it all including the shoes (and even socks and sports bra) for about the cost of a new text book.
ES
And, I totally agree with the last part of what you wrote, too.
ES
It's best to have some particulars before us. I went to Saddleback College's catalog and found the PE courses. These two seem fairly typical:
CARDIOVASCULAR CONDITIONING
Focuses on individual cardiovascular and respiratory fitness using cardiovascular conditioning as a way of developing and maintaining health. The activities portion of the course will be tailored to meet the
needs of the individual student, considering age, sex and general health. R E 3
STRENGTH TRAINING
Focuses on improving strength through individualized training programs. Suited for men and women interested in improving strength, power, and athletic performance. Includes physiology of strength training; equipment and safety
considerations; sport specific training; program design for power, strength, and techniques of lifting; and nutrition for optimal performance. R E 3
Also listed: the units, lecture hours, lab hours, and "learning" hours. Neither of these courses has any "learning" hours.
See -R
Does this include those "classes" offered at Laguna Woods?
Another thing I just remembered - in my kids' PE classes they would do laps, and I think they were given grades on improving their own performance/time on those laps. So, if at first they could only walk a lap (not the case for my kids), if they were to improve to the point of walking half and running half,, or running the whole lap, then improvement grades would reflect that.
ES
You guys are just jealous.
PE gets the best students and has the best teachers.
PE rules!
11:18:
You're kidding, right? PE should be getting students from all majors/disciplines/areas of interest. It should get the best and the worst and those in between. PE is a life-long learning type class, meant to equip students with the skills and knowledge needed for healthier lifestyles and fitness. The benefit of that to society is obvious.
ES
11:17, as I understand it, the courses at Laguna Woods are so-called "Emeritus" courses, and they involve no credits or units. The instructors/instruction for Emeritus seem to be unconnected to the academic departments or divisons at the two colleges, which are concerned with credit courses. When it comes to Emeritus, it seems, anything goes.
I was always afraid of the ball. I guess I shouldn't have been. Dang.
I'm still afraid of the ball - my head has a magnetic attraction for it.
ES -former runner, cyclist, triathlete...not a ball player!
I agree. Even good ideas should not come to faculty as "orders from on high." Doti's idea may well be a good one. Dennis White's idea was stupid beyond belief. That the guy pulls down 200K a year in retirement is ridiculous. He should be paying back the public for giving him a job. Who else would hire this knucklehead?
Dennis did so much for IVC! Be grateful! Without him where would we be now? How many hours of our lives would be returned to us that were spent in pointless meetings that led to nothing but sure made him -and the rest of them - look busy.
What does he get? 190 K a year?
With Dennis, IVC would have had a compressed calendar that would have been a disaster. He advocated this until Saddleback produced a document (an evidence based document) that was presented to the colleges and the BOT. That stopped that.
And today, look at the number of colleges that have abandoned inter sessions and various other configurations of calendars. Such sessions are, in and of themselves, not the problem. The problem was and is the cost of offering classes under such calendars.
What is a "compressed" calendar?
ES
There are several different "calendars" used by colleges/universities, and some, like ours, sprawl across the year while others are relatively compressed and allow for winter between-semesters sessions, etc.
Aha...I get it. And those between semesters - are they the "inter- sessions"? (When heard spoken, those sound to me like "intercessions" - I've attended too many religious schools!)
ES
At our U., we have "May Term," which used to occur in January and was then called "Interim" (really bad name). For us, this is a special time in which students can (and are encouraged to) do something special, out of the ordinary: many of us offer travel courses for the month; others teach courses that involve community service as well as academics. You can't, of course, cram a 14-week semester into 4 weeks; so we award 3 credits instead of 4 (and this is generous, still). But it's a time for projects that might not work the rest of the year--and can be great fun. Other students do a course that they are afraid of during that time, 'cause they can only do ONE course during May Term.
Many of us dearly love it and are afraid that it might be sacrificed for the sake of the budget....
Wish us luck!
MAH
p.s. That P.E. idea of getting credit for improving on one's "personal best": brilliant!
MAH
MAH,
Wow, that sounds great. I do wish you luck with that. What wonderful opportunities!
ES
OK, so let me get this straight. You acknowledge that there is a problem with grade inflation and that something should be done about it, but you will oppose the solution if it's proposed by a non-faculty member? Even someone who has a vested interest in the success of the institution like - gee I don't know - the college president?
Are you folks really that petty? Wouldn't it be a better idea to have everyone in the institution work together to solve problems like this?
Just wondering...
11:57, you wrote: "...you will oppose the solution if it's proposed by a non-faculty member?"
I suppose your reaction is natural, but, really, you misdescribe what I said. My point was: "There’s a right way and a wrong way to do these things. Orders from on high are almost always a bad idea."
I've gotta run, but I was opposing (1)"orders" and (2) their coming "from on high." Most problems have a complexity that make orders or directives inappropriate. Teaching has a kind of complexity such that it is the teachers who should be developing solutions. (Note: based on what Doti offers over the phone to the reporter, it seems to me that he has no idea what the solultions to this problem are.)
Post a Comment