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-----Original Message-----
From: phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu [mailto:phys-l-
bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu] On Behalf Of John Denker
Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2011 2:15 PM
To: Forum for Physics Educators
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] Federally mandated homework
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=201010
29:1.21;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.
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