SoFla Winter Meet 12/5/09

[agile_one]

What about the Woo?

The Woo? You want the Woo? You can't handle the Woo.

Ok, I'll bring it ... Woo not?

[crappyjones123]

woo is always nice to look at. and listen to.

[boomana]

Has anyone talked to stevieo?

[Sherwood]

terribly distressing news, all. Class that weekend -- cannot make it to Florida. Please get drunk in my absence.

[Dusty Chalk]

As opposed to "...in your presence"?

[manaox2]

terribly distressing news, all. Class that weekend -- cannot make it to Florida. Please get drunk in my absence.

I, for one, do not approve of class on weekends.

[grawk]

Everyone know's he's lying, he never has class.

[crappyjones123]

terribly distressing news, all. Class that weekend -- cannot make it to Florida. Please get drunk in my absence.

i have an exam on that friday that i am trying to get out of and you cant miss class. wtf man, wtf?

[Wmcmanus]

Everyone know's he's lying, he never has class.

Anyone with class wouldn't be associated with us to begin with!

[Wmcmanus]

Oh, on the class skipping thing, I'm with Sherwood on that one. Make your education count, man. Take it seriously and do as well as you can. These days, every edge you can get is bound to help you out at one point or another.

Besides, class skippers really piss me off. About two years ago, I finally convinced my Dean that I should be able to do anything I want to do with the point allocations for courses I teach. So now, class attendance and participation is -- get this -- 50% of their grade! Used to be 10%, which didn't have any impact whatsoever. People skipped when they wanted to skip. I haven't had one student miss more than one class during the past two years.

If they miss more than 3 classes there is no way they can earn an A. It's mathematically impossible. But the reality is, once they make a real commitment to learning, they do well anyway, and just "being there" really is half of the equation. If someone knows they will have to miss a class and, 1) notifies me about it in advance, 2) submits the assigned work via email on time, then I'll let it slide -- but only once. Any unexcused absences are penalized. Same goes when someone shows up to class but hasn't done the work, they're marked absent even though they are bodily present. Totally objective. If they can't show me they've done the work, they might as well not show up.

Friggin' works like a charm. I've never enjoyed teaching more than I do now, knowing that ALL of my students will show up to EVERY class and will ALWAYS be prepared. It took me more than 20 years of experimentation to finally realize that you have to force a fair percentage of students to take responsibility for their own actions, or they simply won't do it on their own accord. Those who would have consistently shown up to class well prepared are now being rewarded for what they would have done anyway; those who would otherwise be slackers have nowhere to hide and now get A's and B's instead of C's and D's in my classes. Some of them grumbled at first, but fuck 'em. I'm not there to make friends. I'm there to help dipshits have a chance of becoming CPAs and lawyers.

[grawk]

I'd think making 100% of the grade the final exam is what would make students take responsibility for their own actions. Giving them 50% just for showing up penalizes people who understand the subject matter and don't need to go to class for the remedial education. If they can ace the final, why does attendance matter?

[Dusty Chalk]

I've had teachers who were more distracting from the course material than they were actually instructive -- if they made attendance mandatory, I'd have dropped them. There was one teacher (fantasy lit.) who made participation mandatory. Each class, we'd get assigned a book to start to read, and the next class, we had to start discussing it. The first one was C.S.Lewis, The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe. The next class, we each had to say one thing about how what we read so far had brought "joy" to us.

She never got to me, and I dropped the class after that. I mean, the only thing that would have taught me would be how to say things that someone of authority wants to hear -- which, admittedly, I'm still not very good at.

And then there's was this one comp-sci professor who always wore short-sleeved shirts, even in the middle of winter, claiming it was a "mind over matter" thing.

Epic tangents. That's what I learned (and, admittedly, just went off on one).

[screaming oranges]

Well, see, now here we have an issue based on a grave misunderstanding that the meet is recess. Mike's meet is more of a class where one can learn many things! So the issue is not that you are missing out on school, but which school do you want to miss out on?

[Sherwood]

I'd think making 100% of the grade the final exam is what would make students take responsibility for their own actions.

That's only if you consider the cost of the course to pay for only the instructor, the room, and the books. At this stage of my education, I get a lot from discussion with my fellow students, and I pay for them to be there, just like they pay for me.

In any case, I wish I could come. Heck, I already sold some gear to pay for the ticket. I'll be at CJ '10, and hopefully something before then, as well.

[grawk]

You get from a class what you put in, but grades should entirely depend on knowledge of the subject.

[Wmcmanus]

I'd think making 100% of the grade the final exam is what would make students take responsibility for their own actions. Giving them 50% just for showing up penalizes people who understand the subject matter and don't need to go to class for the remedial education. If they can ace the final, why does attendance matter?

Depends on who you're working with. Caribbean people are extremely laid back. It's a totally different culture here, and education has never been highly valued, other than for the extra dollars it can bring in the job market to have a "piece of paper". In North America and Europe, and I'm sure elsewhere as well, there are much stronger competitive forces at play. I agree, that in those environments, where it's sink or swim, only the strong survive (and such), placing more emphasis on the final exam (and maybe midterm) does the trick. Try that here and 80% of them would flunk.

In fact, most of them wouldn't show up to the final because they would rather not take it than face the embarrassment of taking it and flunking it. It would be more "cool" to just not show up. Totally different mentality in a country where anyone who is from here is more or less guaranteed a good job as a birth right. Mind you, 50% of the total labor force is expatriate, and it's more like 80% of all professionals. What that means is that we can graduate people who don't know crap and they'll still get good jobs because the local firms are legally bound to hire "qualified" Caymanians (which is kind of an oxymoron). The reason there are so many expats is that there is a huge shortage of locally qualified people. Thus, any fool with a piece of paper is golden, and they know it.

All of this creates a bit of a silver spoon effect, since they know that all they have to do is pass courses and graduate, and don't necessarily have to prove anything to anyone. Of course, it eventually catches up with them and only the best will ultimately rise within their professions, pass external exams, make partner, etc. But to someone who is 21 and likes to party and can make $5k to $6k per month tax free, live at home with mom, and drive a BMW, what's the incentive to want to excel? There is always time for that later on in life.

My mission is to get them to wake up now and realize their potential such that they can get a jump start that will take them a bit further, or at least to the next step. In other words, not just to get a job, but to be able to pass the CPA exam, or to get into law school (I'm teaching mostly accounting and business law to undergrads). To accomplish that, they need to be in class. Most of them simply couldn't do it on their own. It's not a bunch of touchy feely stuff where there are no right answers, so there ins't a whole lot of "class participation" as such. They do a ton of work outside of class, and in class they figure out where they went wrong (or right) and get valuable reinforcement.

Proof is in the pudding in terms of their exam performance, and that's way better than I've ever experienced in my 13 years teaching in Cayman. The 50% allocated to attendance and participation is a ruse anyway because it's not the first 50% that earns someone a grade anyway. It's your ability not to lose more than 10% that gets you an A, or not to lose more than 20% that gets you a B. The exams are structured in such a way that it's almost impossible to finish them on time unless a student knows the material inside and out. So the same people that would have earned A's and B's under my old system are still earnings A's and B's. No real change there. (We do have a fair number of excellent students who could compete anywhere.)

But the slacker-minded majority can no longer slack. They're not being rewarded just for showing up, but for showing up well prepared and having done all of the required work. In the process, they teach themselves something, and are likewise actually "ready" to learn when they're in class (as opposed to being lost, as before). They don't view the 50% as being "free" points, because they've got piles of work to do for every class. Do I have them do work just for the sake of doing work? Nope, not at all. Without doing the work as the class progresses, they're almost sure to fail the midterm and final (as was the case for many years when they were left to self regulate by virtue of the slack attendance and participation policy).

BTW, for my MBA classes, attendance and participation is 0%. I've taken just the opposite approach there. I don't want to hear people babble about their jobs and how the class is "relevant" or whatever. For MBA students, it's project work (50%), a take-home midterm (20%) and an in-class final (30%). They're mature enough (pretty much all of them) to respond well to this type of structure, and they're in class whether they need to be or not anyway because they enjoy the interaction.

Ok, back to the regularly scheduled topic.

[Dusty Chalk]

... education has never been highly valued, other than for the extra dollars it can bring in the job market to have a "piece of paper".

Okay, you lost me right there. "Knowledge of the subject matter" should be valued above all else. Not the sheepskin, the actual knowledge. And that's what education should be fore. Were there some correlation between the sheepskin and the actual knowledge (as grawk -- and I -- would have it), well, that would just make things better.

[flecom]

every time I have gone back to school my professors have convinced me to drop out lol

[grawk]

me too frank

[screaming oranges]

.

[Wmcmanus]

Okay, you lost me right there. "Knowledge of the subject matter" should be valued above all else. Not the sheepskin, the actual knowledge.

Not sure if you're agreeing with this or not, but that is definitely my position. Yet, in a job market that is extremely hungry for fresh "locally qualified" warm bodies, as is the case here in Cayman where 80% of all professionals are imported and Government puts extreme pressures on firms to hire locals, all that really matters is that they graduate.

Therein lies the conflict.

What matters to me is that they learn something, somehow, not even that I teach them anything. They can teach themselves or learn from each other. Doesn't really matter. But my goal is to put out as many competent people who have a fighting chance of passing the CPA exam as possible, not just to push warm bodies out the door who will fail miserably within the first 2 years on the job in public accounting, and then get hired by an equally hungry bank or captive insurance company, only to repeat the process as nauseum throughout their quote-unquote "professional" careers.

What matters to them is the piece of paper. Once they have it, they're golden, so they're not necessarily motivated to do anything more than they have to do to achieve that singular task. Mediocrity becomes the goal, and teaching into a sea of such faces is not the most terribly exciting thing you can do for a living. Many of them (accounting graduates) know that they'll never pass the CPA exam, and thus won't rise within the profession, but don't care.

They just need to graduate, then suck on the teets of a big 4 accounting firm for 2-3 years as they "try" to pass the CPA exam (not really, but it's a free trip to Atlanta for the review course every 6 months). After that, they just bounce from job to job for 40 years, always under-qualified for whatever their current level of responsibility happens to be. But they're paid well from Day 1, and don't mind being incompetent in a system that allows them to survive at any given job for 2-3 years before they can fool the next employer, equally anxious to please Government, meet quotas, etc.

And that's what education should be fore. Were there some correlation between the sheepskin and the actual knowledge (as grawk -- and I -- would have it), well, that would just make things better.

That's my point as well. I'd like for there to be a better correlation, so I've finally resorted to dealing with the reality of the cards that I've been dealt in terms of how the system works here. Changing the reward structure in a dramatic way (in terms of the point allocations for my undergraduate courses) has had an extremely positive effect; a far greater percentage of students are by far more competent when they graduate than was the case in prior years. They're no longer just sliding by; they're now actually working at it and realizing much of their potential.

[Dusty Chalk]

Okay, maybe next time I should read less haphazardly. I didn't realize you were bemoaning the faults of the system rather than glorifying them.

[crappyjones123]

oddly enough i agree with dan on this one. the classes ive had to teach, have mostly been largish undergraduate classes (~130 students) and only 3 grad courses (~10 students). the grad courses people just came to class without any issue or requirement for attendance. complete nightmare with the undergrads. people who were there to cause trouble only distracted the students who actually wanted to be there. it was better to have them just stay at home. 86% of the students who attended got a B or higher. 13% of those who didnt got a B or higher. take that however you like.

personally, id rather have students who care to learn in my class.

[manaox2]

I had classes that were 100% required or you fail that were required to graduate. Its a good lesson to be in attendance on-time and prepared when your a teacher.

You get slackers whose sole purpose is to annoy and continue to play sports/meet women/party or all three, but a person will almost always have these distractions around them. A good teacher knows how to handle them (If your a sympathetic teacher, you might even tell them to straighten up once before you throw them out and give them their grade). You'd think that in college, you wouldn't have to ask an adult to not act like a middle-schooler (you don't either, you can return the favor and treat them like one). Sadly, not always the case in undergrad. Grad courses were always a pleasure to attend.

[Dusty Chalk]

The trick is to have a hot guy and gal in every class who always attend, then everyone would attend.