Re: [Phys-l] Out-of-Class Work (was Lecture vs Advocacy)

["Jeffrey Schnick" <JSchnick@Anselm.Edu>]

Roughly 8 years ago I acted on my concern that students were not putting
enough outside of class time into my courses by trying to get a handle
on how much time they were putting into my courses.  The ideal way to
gain such an understanding would be to measure it but I think that
measuring it without some serious invasion of privacy is impossible so I
measured something that I think correlates with how much time-per-week
students, on the average, put into a given course, namely, how much
time-per-week they estimate and report that they put into a given
course, on the average.  So, on the student evaluation of the course
form for my department, there is the question:

Please circle the range below that represents your best estimate for the
average number of hours per week you spent outside of class and outside
of lab working (reading, studying, doing homework, writing reports,
taking outside-of-class quizzes and/or tests, participating in office
hours, contributing to a discussion board, being tutored, watching
videos/movies, doing extra lab exercises, etc.) on this course:

0-1 h/wk          1-2 h/wk          2-3 h/wk          3-4 h/wk
4-5 h/wk          5-6 h/wk          6-7 h/wk          7-8 h/wk
8-9 h/wk          9-10 h/wk         10-11 h/wk        11-12 h/wk
12-13 h/wk        >13 h/wk
 
Initially, the results were alarmingly low.  Since then, I have made
adjustments to the course.  Now, I am happy with the typical annual
results.  While I don't have research-grade data to support it, I find
that class performance, e.g. on the FCI and on recycled final exam
problems, has increased along with the increase in time reported being
spent outside of class on the course.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu [mailto:phys-l-
> bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu] On Behalf Of Rauber, Joel
> Sent: Monday, May 05, 2008 10:19 AM
> To: Forum for Physics Educators
> Subject: Re: [Phys-l] Out-of-Class Work (was Lecture vs Advocacy)
>
> Couldn't quite get off the soap-box
>
> | It is abundantly clear to me that students coming to college
> | have become used to doing nothing outside the class period.
> | Although this begins in high school, I can't put all the
> | blame on high school because there is ample evidence this
> | also happens in many college courses.
>
> I think some of the evidence is the proliferation of double and triple
> majors that I see.  Back when I was an undergraduate with the
dinosaurs,
> there were very few double majors and triple majors were essentially
> unheard of.
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