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Re: [Phys-l] Federally mandated homework



One worry about such rules that I have is that it provides ammunition to the students who believe time-on-task warrants the grade. I'd be the proverbial rich man if I had 100 bucks for every student who told me that they should get an A because they spent N hours a week on the course.

A regulation such as this will provide them with ammunition, in their minds.

OTOH, I do agree with Mike on the general idea that some of this is simply an attempt to quantify the meaning of a credit hour for comparison purposes and take as such and as a fuzzy standard I have little argument. I'm tempted to quote the currently overused phrase about not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good; though I suspect it would more accurately be in this context, "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the mediocre". I would consider movement towards the mediocre from the atrocious to be a positive step.

_________________________

Joel Rauber, Ph.D 
Professor and Head of Physics
Department of Physics
South Dakota State University
Brookings, SD 57007
Joel.Rauber@sdstate.edu
605.688.5428 (w)
605.688.5878 (fax)


-----Original Message-----
From: phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu [mailto:phys-l-
bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu] On Behalf Of Edmiston, Mike
Sent: Friday, November 04, 2011 1:14 PM
To: Forum for Physics Educators
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] Federally mandated homework

I'm wondering if we're getting too polarized here.

I agree that time-on-task is the not the ultimate goal. But I am not
ready to agree there is zero correlation between time-on-task and
student learning. If that were true, it doesn't make sense to have 3-
hr, 4-hr, and 5-hr classes. Is it no longer the case that we can
expect that average students who passed a 5-credit-hour astronomy
course will know more astronomy than average students who passed a 3-
credit-hour astronomy course?

I would say I measure quality of product. My student's don't get any
credit for spending 10 hours on a lab report. They get credit for
turning in a good lab report. If it's good, I don't care if they
cranked it out in 30 minutes or 10 hours. I am close enough to my
students to know it's a rare student who can go from raw data to a good
report in 30 minutes, yet I have a fair number of students who think
they can do a good report in 30 minutes. They don't get good grades,
and are apt to complain that the only way to get a good grade in my
class is to spend more time than they have available. They're correct
that they need to spend more time. They're not correct that the time
is unavailable. They might be correct if they say their other courses
don't require as much time. That's where I have my problem. I don't
like it when the average student thinks my classes require too much
time. They would be less likely to say this if their other professors
held them to a highe

r quality of product that required them to spend similar time to what
they spend for my courses. So it's not that I want the other profs to
require busy-work to get more time-on-task. Rather, I want the other
profs to require a quality of product for which the average student
needs to spend a reasonable amount of time on the product.

We need to have some standards on this, because I don't want my
students to have profs with so high of standards that the students need
to spend 20 hours a week just to pass a 3-hour course. And I also
don't want them to have profs with such low standards that they can
pass the course with almost no out-of-class time.

I have an older Ohio State University Bulletin that has wording I like.
It's not in front of me right now, but I can pretty accurately quote it
from memory... One hour of credit is assigned for each three hours of
student work, including class time, that the average student must spend
each week to earn the average grade of C.

This provides a reasonable link between time-on-task and quality of
product. The student is graded on quality of product. If the average
student must spend more than 3-hours per week per credit hour to attain
a C-grade for quality of product, then the professor is too demanding,
or the assigned course credit to too low. If the average student is
spending fewer than 3-hours per week per credit hour to attain a C-
grade for quality of product, then the professor is too easy, or the
course credit is inflated and needs to be lowered. If the average
student is spending about 3 hours per week per credit hour to attain a
C-grade for quality of product, then this is normal and we would not
judge the professor as too demanding nor not demanding enough, and we
would not judge that the credit value assigned to the course is
incorrect.

Viewed this way, student learning/performance is the criterion, but we
are offering protection to the students from profs who could indeed be
too demanding and thereby create hardships for students who have other
courses and other obligations... and we are offering some protection to
students (and other faculty) from professors who don't demand a high
enough quality of product and thereby cheat the students and hurt the
reputation of the department and institution.

Certainly this type of wording and interpretation seems pretty
different from the way the law is stated. I don't know if that's
because the people who wrote the law have a screwed up viewpoint, or if
quality of product is indeed the goal and they just didn't state it
very well. I fear they might be motivated more by dollars and cents...
that is... it all boils down to money rather than student
performance.... the government wants to relate tuition cost to hours
spent on task rather than student outcomes. I would certainly agree
that if this is the intent, then it is the wrong approach.


Michael D. Edmiston, PhD.
Professor of Chemistry and Physics
Chair, Division of Natural and Applied Sciences
Bluffton University
Bluffton, OH 45817
Office 419-358-3270
Cell 419-230-9657

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