Re: [Phys-l] Federally mandated homework

[John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>]

On 11/04/2011 11:35 AM, Rauber, Joel wrote:

> 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.

That's a good point.  Not everyone here agrees on what an "A in
the course" should be, but I reckon we can agree that "time on
task" is not it.

Indeed, there are multiple layers of badness here:

 1) "Time on task" is not effort.

 2) Effort is not comprehension.

 3) Comprehension is not insight or creativity or productivity.

When you put it all together, you find that "time on task" is 
several jumps removed what we should be worrying about.  More 
often than not, it is not even /correlated/ with the things we 
should be worrying about.

I made a little diagram:
  http://www.av8n.com/physics/img48/goal-v-time.png

The contours of constant "time on task" are shown using dashed
white lines.  The contours of constant value per task are shown
as solid white lines.  The contours of constant productivity 
are shown as light-blue lines.

*) Point R stands for "routine".   It indicates a routine amount 
  of work leading to routine results.

*) Point Z stands for zero effort with zero results.  It's not
 good, but at least it's not a waste of time.

*) Point B stands for busywork.  It requires a lot of "time 
 on task", with little if anything to show for it.

*) Point G stands for goofing off.  The task takes X amount 
 of time and would have been worth doing if it had been done
 properly, but instead the student wasted X amount of time 
 /pretending/ to do the task, and has nothing to show for it.

*) Point D stands for destruction.  All too commonly, usually
 unintentionally, somebody expends a lot of time and effort 
 in such a way as to leave things worse than they were before.

*) Point W stands for wizardry.  I'm not talking about fictional
 supernatural wizards.  I'm talking about real-life people who
 use cleverness and insight to get the job done quicker and
 better.

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

Remarks:

B) If you assign busywork, the students will hate you for it,
 and the more you "succeed" in forcing them to spend "time on
 task", the more they will hate you.  They would be better off
 at point Z than at point B, and they know it.

 I assume everybody on this list has seen 1000 examples of
 utterly pointless busywork.  If not, let me know, and I'll
 regale you with examples.

 The proverb here is:
    "If the task is not worth doing, it's not worth doing right."

 Dear student:  If you are sure that the class is so worthless 
 that you don't want to spend more than 30 minutes writing a 
 lab report, drop the course.  Cut your losses.  Save those
 30 minutes and apply them to something you consider more
 worthwhile.

D) Here's an example of unintentional destructive activity: 
 Suppose that during cold weather, the heater fails in your 
 house.  It's a central forced hot air system, and the blower 
 isn't blowing.  So you go downtown and buy a new blower 
 motor.  You spend hours installing it.  Then you find that 
 the new motor doesn't solve the problem.  It turns out that
 the original problem was only a blown fuse, but you weren't 
 clever enough to check this possibility before replacing 
 the motor.  You have wasted a whole lot of capital (the new 
 motor) as well as labor ("time on task").

 Examples like this are a dime a dozen.

Z) If you have a bunch of students who are stuck at point
 Z, that's a problem ... but lack of "time on task" isn't
 your only problem and it isn't where you should focus your 
 attention ... or the students' attention.

 If you frame the discussion in terms of "time on task",
 you will be led to the wrong conclusions.  Specifically:
 if you start at point Z and push the students horizontally,
 toward more "time on task", you will make things worse
 rather than better.

 To say the same thing in more positive terms, you need
 to motivate the students to move in the direction of
 greater value and greater efficiency.

 It is exceedingly unlikely that such students can make
 the transition directly from point Z (zero effort) to
 point W (wizardly success and efficiency).  Presumably
 they will have to spend some time toiling in the vineyards
 near point R ... but still the point remains:  if you ask 
 them to move horizontally away from Z, then
  a) they will ignore you, and
  b) they *should* ignore you, because you're asking
   them to do the wrong thing.

The same principle applies to adults as well as young
students.  You have to offer them a /return/ on investment
before you ask them to buy into your investment scheme.

"Time on task" is not the payoff.  It's not the goal.
Over most of the parameter space, it is *anticorrelated*
with the goal.  It is sometimes part of the cost that must 
be paid en route to the goal, but not necessarily even
that.

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

I fondly recall how I was taught about Thévenin and Norton
equivalent circuits:  Hardy Martel drew a diagram and
said something like "Open-circuit voltage, short-circuit 
current, linear circuit, two points determine a line.  
Thévenin equivalent, Norton equivalent.  Useful,  Know 
it."  And that was essentially all that was said.  It was
all that needed to be said.  We all looked at his diagram 
and nodded.  Open-circuit voltage.  Short-circuit current.  
Two points determine a line.  That's kinda hard to forget, 
especially since it *is* actually useful, and gets used 
naturally again and again over time.

  Thévenin and Norton equivalents were not a "task"
  that required us to spend "time on task".  They were
  a skill that allowed us to spend *less* time doing
  the things we actually wanted to do -- things of
  real importance.

Later, at another school, I once saw a professor lecture for 
90 minutes about Thévenin equivalents, Norton equivalents, 
wye-delta transformations, blah blah blah ... for 90 minutes! 
Then he assigned hours of homework on the subject, requiring
students to analyze some cockamamie circuit.  And then there 
was a big lab assignment, to actually build the cockamamie 
circuit and measure it against the Thévenin and Norton 
predictions.  For at least two idiotic reasons the predictions 
were no good, so the students learned that Thévenin and Norton 
equivalents were horribly complicated and useless ... quite 
the opposite of what I learned when I was in school.

Did those students spend lots of "time on task"?  You betcha!
Whenever I hear the words "time on task", this is the picture
that comes to mind.

At this point I hope everybody is jumping up and down, saying
"We would never teach like that" ... "That's not what we mean 
by time on task."

OK, fine.  I will stipulate that that's not what you intended.
However, in accordance with the law of unintended consequences,
that's what you will get, whether you intended it or not.

If there is a Federal requirement for "time on task" (which
there now is) and no corresponding requirement that the 
students actually learn anything (which there isn't), you 
know what will happen.  Seriously, is there anybody on this 
list who doesn't know how this is going to play out?

People will optimize what gets measured.  Therefore, be
careful what you measure -- you might get it.