Re: [Phys-l] Federally mandated homework

[John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>]

On 11/03/2011 11:12 AM, Folkerts, Timothy J wrote:
> § 600.2 Definitions.
> * * * * *
> Credit hour: Except as provided in 34
> CFR 668.8(k) and (l), a credit hour is an
> amount of work represented in intended
> learning outcomes and verified by
> evidence of student achievement that is
> an institutionally established
> equivalency that reasonably
> approximates not less than-
> (1) One hour of classroom or direct
> faculty instruction 
>
> AND A MINIMUM OF TWO HOURS 
> OF OUT OF CLASS STUDENT WORK 
 
  http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?sid=473ab369b9b3a0636d2a56d0122de50f;rgn=div2;view=text;node=20101029:1.21;idno=34

This is an outrage.

It looks to me that if there is even one student in the class
who spends less than two hours on the homework, the class as
a whole is in violation of this new federal regulation.

That is, I am pointing out that the regulation says "minimum"
... as opposed to average, or one-sigma confidence level, or
anything like that.  The word "minimum" leaves no wiggle room
at all.

Let me repeat some of what I said in the recent discussion of 
"time on task".

People will optimize whatever is being measured.  Therefore,
  *Be careful what you measure;  you might get it.*

Anyone with any sense would maximize the /results/ ... not
maximize the amount of time spent getting the results.

  If a certain amount of time-on-task is necessary to
  achieve the results, so be it ... but still you should
  measure the results, not the time.

  *Measure the thing you care about.*

In the world I live in, the student who can learn the material
in less time should be considered the better student ... not
considered a threat to accreditation and a threat to federal
funding.

In the world I live in, the teacher who can teach the material
in less time should be considered the better teacher.

===============

When I took freshman physics, I didn't do the homework, and
neither did my roommate or any of the dozen or so folks in 
the recitation section I was in.  We /looked/ at the assignment
to see if there was anything there that looked challenging
enough to be worth doing, but usually there wasn't, so we
went on to other things.  Twice a week we went to recitation,
and the TA would ask if there were any questions about the
homework, but there almost never were, and he would then 
launch into some topic he had prepared, tangentially related 
to what had been covered in class.

It wasn't like we were goofing off;  we were all spending 
about 80 hours per week on academics ... but the school
treated us like adults and trusted us skive off the stuff 
that wasn't challenging and then fill up the time by finding
challenging and important stuff to work on ... stuff that
didn't show up on any credit-hours calculation.  There were 
plenty of students who found the first-year physics course 
to be challenging (!) -- just not this particular cohort.  
(We didn't all wind up in the same recitation section by 
accident.)

This is how I was taught, and this is how I teach:  The name
of the game is to master the material without spending more
time than is necessary.  The amount of "necessary" time will
vary considerably from student to student ... and will also
depend on how well the subject is taught.  It is routine to
find that if you think about something the right way, you
can learn it in a fraction of the time.

  As one example among many:  If you learn a misconception
  and then have to unlearn it, this wastes a treeemendous
  amount of time.

My time is valuable, and I treat the students' time as
valuable.  Requiring somebody to spend a certain amount of
time on the task, whether or not it is needed, is just
unbelievably disrespectful.

Also as pointed out in the NASAD analysis, this causes all
sorts of problems for new or experimental programs.
  http://nasad.arts-accredit.org/index.jsp?page=Advisory_Repeated_Courses-Credit_Hours

It is bad enough that we have federally-mandated "standardized"
tests that don't measure anything worth measuring.  Now we
have federally-mandated time requirements, which are even
further removed from measuring anything worth measuring.

It's an outrage.