Diary of a Colloquium Instructor #4

September 1st was our third Thursday class. By now I know my students, and with the exception of mixing up two students with very similar features (long dark hair and glasses), I was able to take attendance in my mind perfectly. I received a last minute email from one student who wouldn't make it because he just had surgery. Hmm... interesting he never mentioned it before. I'll be waiting for his doctor's note. One student who thought she wouldn't make it and communicated it to me well in advance, had a change in a work obligation and was able to attend.

I started this class off with some housekeeping and a reminder the first paper is due next week. Then, I did something a little different. I gave them a quiz.

Brief Interlude:
Last semester I taught this course I had a class full of students who were fun and liked the field trips, but I could tell they were not keeping up with the reading. I got really frustrated with them mid-semester. It sucks trying to facilitate a class activity or discussion when the students are ill-prepared. One week I finally got disgusted and showed up with a pop quiz. There is no denying it, I did it to punish them. I am not a test person. I'm not into tricking my students either. But none of my soft approaches were convincing them the reading was important. When I announced it, they looked petrified, and with good reason. Mot of them would have failed. We scored them together and then discussed why I gave it. I told them I wasn't putting it in the grade book, but that I meant business. Things got better after that.

I announced at the beginning of the semester that we would do a lot of work in class and that's how they earned their assignment and attendance points. I am not a lecturer. One of the activities, I told them, would be an occasional quiz. I gave them that information in advance. I decided the night before class that I would give a quiz, five points for each of the two articles they were to read, for a total of ten points. The other ten class points would be earned through a partner activity they would do in class, after the quiz. When I asked them to clear their desks, and I approached the rows with the quiz, several of them looked like deer in the headlights. You know that look, we all do. Most of us have had the moment in a class at some point when we've wondered whether or not we were really prepared- a few perhaps when we knew we weren't.

Like me, some non-artists chose an acrostic.

I handed out the quiz, which had three multiple choice and one written response question for each article. I gave them twenty minutes to complete the quiz. I walked around the room, watching for cheating, hoping not to find any. They all seemed pretty clean. I collected them and asked the students if they wanted me to go over the answers. They were noncommittal. I decided to go over it, figuring it would be a good catalyst to discuss some of the important takeaways. That's exactly what went down.

I asked them to pair up for the next activity, and again I let them choose their partners. They already seemed to like regrouping with the people they worked with the previous week, and I was totally okay with that- even the love birds. As long as the students do good work and participate, what do I care who they work with? This week I gave them a poster and markers, and asked them to do a little research on some of the important concepts from the first module. I wanted to make sure they were grasping what they were reading, and not just reading for the sake of compliance. It was a chance to have a little fun and get creative. A good balance with the quiz from the first part of class.

One of the posters created to depict climate change.

As they worked on their posters, I graded their quizzes. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. Most of the students had clearly done the reading, and there were a lot of 90s and 100s. Just like grade school though, there was a handful of students who left the written response blank. Translation: they skimmed the reading enough to answer multiple choice questions, but didn't read closely enough to be able to analyze the issues and write in their own words. I had to wonder. Was this sheer laziness on the part of the students, or lack of preparedness from their multiple choice test-taking days in grade school? Maybe a combination of both. One of them pulled a classic (one I'm admittedly all to familiar with). He couldn't answer the question, but clearly did some of the reading. So he just ranted on, for all five lines provided, about other random stuff in the article. Hey, at least he cared enough to prove to me he read. A couple of the others just left them completely blank. I'm anxious to see what their first papers look like.

Anyway, I set the pace for the rest of the course. I don't know that I'll give another quiz for the entire semester. But at least now they know I could, and I might. Some professors give one at the start of each class, just to incentivize reading. Me, I hate quizzes. I'd rather listen to them discuss the issues in class and do mini PBLs. I'd rather see them create and listen to them debate. It's just another way I'm getting to know my students.