We ask too much of our students. I believe that by asking less, we would get more. In the large introductory course that I teach in, at least, students are asked to do so many different new things in such a short amount of time that they don’t get a fair chance to really master much of it.
And everybody knows something isn’t right, judging by the amount of complaints from colleagues about all the things students don’t know, understand, or can’t do later on in their Bachelor’s. And whatever it is that’s wrong, it must be our fault, I believe. Because even if students were lazy –which they’re very much not– it’s us who passed them in all those courses.
The metaphor of “setting a high bar” sounds good, but isn’t right. Most courses consist of many different bars to jump over and hoops to jump through. And we give points for reaching almost high enough, but not quite. This means that by cramming our courses full with as much as we can get away with is guaranteed to lead to students passing while having mastered precious little of all that material.
So why do we do it? I see at least three reasons.
Continue reading Do Less, Get More