B has finished final grades for the traditional class - a relatively even distribution of As, Bs, and Cs, with a couple of Ds. That's unusual for us - we usually see reverse bell curves - a bunch of As and a bunch of Cs and Ds, with a gap in the B and high C range.
Possibly the higher grades are due to the fact that students were REQUIRED to take reading notes and turn them in for a grade, before the classroom work began. This meant that, even if they did a half-assed job of typing out some definitions and chapter subheads, they had had to engage even if in a desultory way with the content of the day. Thus they understood more in class and did better on the exams.
But should we require notes to be turned in for college students? I tend to think that they have been informed as to what constitutes useful study practice, and they can do it or not as they see fit. (I always wanted to take reading notes but rarely could keep up with it.) Are we as professors obligated to MAKE them do better by putting in place this sort of policing of class preparation? I am of two minds about it: on one hand, part of the job of college is becoming fully an adult and learning for yourself how to learn, even if (perhaps especially if) you make some mistakes along the way. On the other hand, if we can make good preparation for the class session happen simply by requiring (and grading) notes, then shouldn't we do it? It would certainly improve the pre-learning and up the sophistication of what we could do in the classroom.
but then: who the hell wants to grade reading notes?? Yuck.
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Well... Since all I teach are the most basic introductory geography classes... I feel that part of my missions is to instill good college student practices on their futive minds.
ReplyDeleteIf anyoine is interested I think this was a NECESSARY assignment in this instance as it was a shortened 5-week summer class that was supposed to cover the same material as a 15-16 week class. If the students had been "normal" students - they would NOT have read the material before class and only done it as a skim reading before the exams. This provided them with a reward (graded assignment) as motivator to actually read and be prepared for classroom interaction (vs. passive classroom edutainment) during the very short time span.
I am planning on using this in all my classes in the Fall as an experiment.
And again, just for clarification, I was asking for an annotated outline of the material - not formal reading notes. So simple listings of the minor topics (with little if any notation) and more explanatory writing for the major topics worked out fine. They were also cautioned NOT to simple write book definitions or explainations - I expected them to read, understand and then explain it to me in their outlines.
-B