"Stop telling students to study for exams"

A provocative claim from David Jaffee: we should stop thinking that encouraging students to study for exams is "responsible academic practice."

Exams have become, in his estimation, a creature of the pernicious student attitude he calls "instrumentalism":

The Seven Ages of Teaching

You all remember the speech from As You Like It — "all the world's a stage ...And one man in his time plays many parts/His acts being seven ages"?


Paula Marantz Cohen has identified the corresponding Seven Ages of Teaching (below the fold). Which age are you? (I fear I have an age-identity disorder, finding elements of myself in the second, third, fourth, and fifth ages)

The Quotable Teacher, installment 18

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence. (Robert Frost)

'Animals Disappointed in your College Performance'

Don't know how many of you have seen this cute little blog Animals Disappointed in Your College Performance. It's all photos like this, with expressions of disappointment in various student failings:

One more time: Grading on 'effort'

We had a lively discussion a while back on the merits of grading students on effort. Now Maryellen Weimer at Faculty Focus reports on studies comparing faculty and student attitudes about whether grading should depend on effort. The upshot: Students think about 40% of their grade should depend on effort, whereas faculty thought 17% of a student's grade should depend on effort.


The obvious problem in discussing this issue is figuring out what we mean by 'effort'. As Weimer puts it:

A nice graphic on argumentative fallacies

The talented graphic artists at Information is Beautiful have come up with an attractive and colorful visual display of argumentative fallacies. This could be a useful poster in a logic or critical thinking course.

The Halo Effect

There is an interesting discussion (at least some of it is, some of it descends into pettiness)  over on Crooked Timber about grading and halo effects. http://crookedtimber.org/2012/03/28/evaluating-students-the-halo-effect/