A Useful Professor-ing Resource

After returning from a conference a few months ago, my department head handed me a thick, lime green book, and said, “I thought this might be useful.”

“Tools for Teaching by Barbara Gross Davis. Great,” I thought, “another 500-someodd pages to read,” remembering that I was about halfway done with another teaching resource guide.

There are so many questions about college-level teaching, and I’m lucky if I’ve found 10% of my answers. Fortunately, for me, I have an excellent department head that is receptive to my concerns and questions. But she’s human and has a life of her own. I imagine this book was a way for her to buy free time from my incessant grilling sessions. I’m not complaining; I’m empathetic.

So I brought Davis home and set it on my nightstand. That evening, I had finished grading, had lectures planned for the next few days, and nothing good was on television, so I figured I’d flip through the book and hoped that it’d be a method for treating insomnia. Within 20 minutes, I had read through 45 pages, which is an amazing feat for a synthetic organic chemist. In fact, my achievement prompted me to open my computer and schedule time throughout the week to read. I actually started finding time to take lunch breaks!

Davis is a truly fascinating read, and I imagine that many fledgling professors would feel the same way, though might even be useful for more experienced profs. Here’s the gist of the book. Tools for Teaching (second edition) is a 550-page bible that covers notions ranging from course design to running undergraduate research projects to interacting with large enrollment classrooms. Her ideas are short, to the point, and well referenced (if you want to read further on a particular issue). The other strength is that the major themes Davis presents are independent of each other, meaning you can jump around from chapter to chapter. I’m now in the throws of redesigning my syllabus, learning how to better advise students, and how to grade with more precision and efficiently (a task we all need to master). It’s gotten to the point that I’ve been carrying this book with me everywhere.

Pertaining to The Lab Bench, as scientists, we’re naturally wrapped up in our fields, so much so that we forget about other equally important attributes: eating; sleeping; etc. Particularly at teaching-focused colleges, it’s necessary to hone our “professing” skills (to a razors edge) to best serve the students—our clients/customers.

Teaching the Soft Stuff

The topic of skill sets came up in the midst of the conversation with colleagues the other day. Specifically, the topic at hand was whether or not soft skills have a place in the science-based undergraduate curriculum independent of the institution type (i.e., big university to community college).

There are countless reasons to support the idea of teaching soft skills in technical-based programs. And although I imagine that teaching soft skills is generally a good idea (there’s certainly is resources available to support this notion) there are also reasons on the other side of the argument. Here were some points that were made on behalf of the more “hard skill-ers.”:

• Why teach a science major discipline-specific writing when they’re destined for a professionally “hands-on” career (i.e., medicine, pharmacy, etc.)?
• Many undergraduates majoring in technical degrees cannot perform basic calculations or negotiate pertinent, yet fundamental, information. Teaching soft skills would likely cut into opportunities to develop these skills.
• Many physics, chemistry, and engineering students do not know how to properly use technology such as calculators, career-specific software, or routine “workhorse” instruments. Teaching soft skills lessens the chances that students will gain the exposure required for career preparation.
• Many companies offer pre-professional development programs that train employees on important managerial skills (i.e., document drafting, one-on-one communication, how to hold a meeting, etc.). Since these opportunities are offered further down the career path, it doesn’t seem important to develop these skills within the technical major.
• Many programs require a fixed amount of credit hours specifically in writing-based courses. Offering more, especially to students with an already good writing skill set, might be perceived as beating (the proverbial) dead horse.

Critically interesting ideas to consider.

Correlating Grades with Student Evaluations

It’s course evaluation time, and like many professors, I’m curious to see how my students perceived their learning experience over the past few months. Ironically, this time of the semester also coincides with the initial stages of grade calculation (a task that probably causes more irreparable harm to the professors than their students). So, after students work their way through two pages of bubble sheets, my office is then inundated with people who want to see their current course standing.

The intersection of grades and course evaluations is nothing new. However, it is the focus of a recently published study by David A. Love and Matthew J. Kotchen (Eastern Economic Journal 2010, 36, 151-163), two professors who developed an economic model that links grade inflation and student behavioral responses (i.e., course evaluations). The culmination of the study appeared quite quid pro quo. Assuming that strong student evaluations increase the likelihood of achieving tenure, many professors appear to (subconsciously) “buy” good student evaluations in exchange for inflated grades.

Here’s one recommendation that stood out among the rest:

“We find that grade targets can be an effective policy not only because they limit grade inflation, but also because institutions can set expectations to improve teaching and research productivity without affecting student effort."

Interesting idea. I guess, in theory, it could work. One summer, I TA’d for a professor who encouraged difficult grading (to keep the averages low) then let us assign our own grades, except that no more than 20% of the class could get A’s. This policy helped distribute grades a bit better, but several tears were shed over the diminishing chances of entering medical school. Interestingly, he was one of the most respected, most liked, and highest rated professors in the department. Another professor, for whom I TA’d, worked hard to keep the grades low then ranked the students. Ultimately, their place in line (so to speak) corresponded to the grade they received; talk about being stressed out. On the other end of the spectrum, I’m familiar with one chemistry department that, in the 1990’s, mandated that 40% of the general chemistry students would fail outright. I imagine that the evaluations were horrid.

In my experience, so long as you’re fair and honest with the grading, students will generally remember this characteristic as they work through their evaluations. Of course, achieving objectives in the syllabus doesn't hurt either.