Category Archives: Student Expectations

What Do Students Owe Their Teachers?

Posted on January 26, 2012 by | 1 Comment

Michael Beltz, Department of Philosophy & Religion, University of North Dakota

As the modern university system becomes more focused on a contractual model of education, an increasing attention ends up being paid to the various obligations and rights that the different members of the contractual relationship have to one another. This focus seems to have its philosophical basis on the notion that higher education is a social institution. Like any social intuition, higher education not only has common goals and values, but it also establishes distinct role morality for all of its members. The social institution places individuals into discrete positions and establishes the proper standard of conduct for individuals within those roles. One important aspect of social institutions is that the roles and obligations generated by those roles are primarily in relationship to the larger collective values and goals. Thus, the responsibilities of a student role end up emphasizing what students owe higher education itself.  For example, a student may have the obligation to be academically honest. This obligation tends to focus on how dishonesty undermines the goals of higher education, like creating an informed citizenry; if large numbers of students are regularly dishonest, the end result is a citizenry that is no more informed than if those students had not attended a higher education institution.

Understanding the contractualization of higher education as only establishing obligations between the individual roles and the goals and values of the social institution misses a key component of contractual relationships. Contractual relationships do not just establish obligations between the roles and the social institution; they also establish the obligations that the individual roles have to each other. Instructors in the higher education social institution often think through what they owe the students. What is less often considered is the question of what students owe their teachers.

In his 1988 book, Another Sort of Learning, James Schall directly addresses this question. Schall focuses his third chapter on the title question “What a Student Owes His Teacher.” Before explaining what students owe teachers, Schall gives a compelling vision of the social benefits and core value of education. He argues that education is about finding ‘inner truth.’ By this he means that students will come to a better and more accurate worldview that is based in reality. When the student has done learning, they will grasp the working of the world they live in better than they did before starting the educational process. Schall states: “The student ought to become independent of the teacher to the point of even forgetting his name, but not the truth he learned.”

To reach this goal, Schall lays out a list of four obligations that the student owes his or her teachers. At first glance this list may seem overly narrow and modest, but this is intentional. Schall is attempting to focus on the interrelational obligations of the student to the teacher, not the student’s obligations to the social institution or the student’s obligations to himself or herself. He argues that the student owes: (1) In the first week of classes, at least, the student owes the teacher a moderately good will towards the teacher. This is a confidence to admit to oneself that the teacher probably has thought through the subject and knows where the instruction will lead. (2) An amount of faith that the student can learn something that seems unlearnable in the beginning. This is a trust the student must have in himself or herself. (3) “The virtue of docility,” which is the fact that they must allow themselves to be taught. He further articulates this as open-mindedness to the subject and instruction. (4) A willingness to engage in the effort of study. This is the ability and desire to ignore distractions and other desires to try to learn.

While some may look at this list of obligations and consider it to be too small to capture all of the things a student owes a teacher, my reaction is that this list may actually include too many obligations. When we consider the nature of obligations, we must be able to find a harm that might occur if the obligation is not fulfilled. In the case of an obligation to a person, there must be a potential that the person to whom we have an obligation will be worse off if the obligation is not fulfilled. When we consider what students owe their teachers, as articulated by Schall, it is not clear how the instructor is being harmed when any of the obligations are not fulfilled. Consider two different students who might enter the classroom. The first student has good will toward the teacher; this student fully embraces the fact that the teacher has a more thorough understanding of the subject and knows where the course will lead. The second student has absolutely no good will toward the teacher; this student does not believe that the teacher better understands the subject matter or course trajectory. This second student cares nothing about the subject matter, but has the desire to meet the credit requirement. This student does not want to learn, but wants the outward benefits of passing the course (for example, they want the course credits on their transcript and want positive benefits to their grade point average). There is good reason to believe that the second student has harmed the goals of ‘inner learning’ and being party to an informed citizenry; that student has not learned anything and will not make more informed decisions that they would have without having taken the course. But this does not mean that the second student has harmed the teacher. We can further imagine that the second student has learned how to appear to be a student of good will. Without having learned this, the student might not pass the course or might negatively affect his or her grade point average. In short, the student owes it to himself or herself to appear to be a student of good will. The first student, on the other hand, we might imagine, has not developed the social skills to seem to have good will. When he or she attempts to make statements expressing good will, they come out awkwardly and are easily misunderstood as being of bad intention. Which of these students poses more potential harm to their teacher? It is the first student that is most likely to disrupt the flow of the teaching, to agitate the teacher, to undermine the confidence of the teacher, and to sow discord within the fellow students about the competence of the teacher.

It does not seem that students actually owe their teachers the inner mental state of good will. Instead, the student owes the teacher the appearance of good will. I believe that the same conclusions can be reached with the other three points that Schall argues students owe their teachers. The student owes the teacher the appearance of good will, the appearance of being open-minded, the appearance of trust in himself or herself, and the appearance of being willing to ignore other distractions. This does not mean that the four qualities that Schall highlights are not valuable for the student; they are. These seem to be qualities that the student owes himself or herself, but not the teacher. This is because it is the student who is harmed when they do not have these internal mental qualities; the teacher is only harmed when the student does not have the outward appearance of these qualities.

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Posted in Michael Beltz, Student Expectations

Teaching Thursday: Building Communities

Posted on September 10, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Bill Caraher, Department of History, University of North Dakota

As I reflected on the series of posts grouped loosely around the idea of the “new” future of teaching, I was struck by their common focus on defining, building, or structuring community at the University.  Bret Weber and my post on the 24/7 professor, Cindy Prescott’s response on boundaries and manner, and Dean Benoit’s post on mentorship all reflect the desire to evaluate and forge productive social relationships at the modern university. Several of the responses share a similar focus: particularly Anne Kelsch’s response to Dean Benoit’s post, but also a response offered by Mark El-Dweek show that the call for an increased focus on mentorship is neither limited to the faculty-graduate student relationship nor without challenges.  Other graduate student responses to Prescott’s post on boundaries and manners (which itself originated as a response to our post on the 24/7 professor) likewise showed that both social and professional boundaries required constant negotiation and a keen eye for context.  When I proposed the topic for the first series of posts this year, I had half expected a gaggle of posts on new teaching lingo or technological innovations (and, of course, such posts are still welcome).  It is interesting to see that most of the concerns that contributing faculty and administration have are with very basic issues of social and community organization on campus.

My impression is that a concern for community is a longstanding one both at American universities in general and at the University of North Dakota specifically.  A quick perusal of L. Geiger’s University of the Northern Plains or any subsequent works on the University’s history shows that throughout its history the University of North Dakota has represented a kaleidoscopic amalgam of different groups ranging from early student organization like the Adelphi Literary Society to factions of faculty like the influential band of “Young Turks” who exerted such a key influence on University affairs throughout the 1960s.  In many ways, the history of the University was the history of these groups. The sense of community achieved by these informal or formal groups represented a way that students and faculty warded off the feeling of alienation and dislocation when they moved from tight-knit and sometimes distant communities to the challenging climate and often transient, artificial culture that characterized university life in North Dakota.  (The inability of the University to retain faculty throughout its history was legendary to the point that some senior faculty around mid-century would quip that certain young scholars were “only camping” during their short stays on campus.)  So, the challenges of alienation, dislocation, and fractured communities are not new in American academia (nor unique to our campus), but perhaps their effects are particular heightened at this time and at our university which represents the best elements of democratized higher-education while at the same time embraces its increasingly globalized character and confronts dynamic changes in many academic professions.

Efforts by the Office of Instructional Development to foster community among faculty members through the Alice Clark New Faculty program in recent years complemented the work by Greek and other fraternal organizations on campus to make the trip to the University in Grand Forks less socially disruptive.  There is still work to do, it would seem, to structure the kind of complex communities that can function across an increasingly diverse body of students and faculty members in a time when new social challenges, opportunities, and tools make traditional communal bonds increasingly tenuous and, in some cases, obsolete. The need to establish the kind of common expectations that undergird social order and facilitate productive communication remains a central concern for good teaching, while at the same time these concerns extend well-beyond the the four walls (or Blackboard webpage) of the classroom.  These posts have shown that teaching at the University involves as much responding to the changing expectations of the professional, student, and administrative communities that form the foundation for the University as influencing these communities by changing student, faculty, and administrative expectations.

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Posted in Bill Caraher, Future Teaching, Student Expectations

Teaching Thursdays: Boundaries and Manners

Posted on September 1, 2009 by | 4 Comments

Cynthia Prescott, Department of History, University of North Dakota

While I appreciate Bill Caraher‘s passion for creating learning communities any way that we can (see The New Future of Teaching: Social Networks and the 24/7 Professor), I wonder whether we risk reinforcing an assumption that seems to exist among some students that faculty exist only to meet their individual needs (and perhaps cease to exist outside of class time, unless such needs present themselves).  Millennial students prefer professors they perceive as “informal” and accessible (see Christy Price, “Why Don’t My Students Think I’m Groovy?” The Teaching Professor Vol. 23, no. 7, 7-8).  While I sincerely desire to engage with my students as individuals, I sometimes wonder whether my efforts at informality and accessibility discourage students from recognizing that (a) I am an authority figure (after all, I do control their grades, and need some degree of control over what happens in the classroom), and (b) I have other responsibilities beyond meeting their individual needs.  How can we be accessible and even “groovy” without introducing chaos into our classrooms or our daily lives?

As summer turns to fall, my dreams of engaging classroom activities and heart-to-heart chats with each of my individual students are replaced with a yearning for some golden age when students had manners and respected boundaries between themselves and their professors.  Should we develop some basic guidelines for these interactions?  Aside from my distaste for devoting class time to preaching a list of rules for behavior, I wonder whether we as faculty could ever agree on what those rules should be. 

Were I to create a list of rules, here are some things I’d want to include:
1) I will respond to emails and other special requests as soon as time permits.  (I, like Bret Weber, find that it is sometimes convenient for me to respond quickly, but this is not always the case.)
2) Any email to me should begin with a courteous greeting (call me Doctor or Professor, if that’s what I have requested), and should provide your first and last name and the course and class meeting time (or section number) in which you are enrolled.
3) If you email me a question or concern (particularly overnight or on weekends), check your email account for my response before approaching me at the beginning of class to ask whether I received your email.  Do not assume that I will remember the topic of your email, particularly in large classes where I do not know everyone’s name.
4) The purpose of office hours is for me to be accessible.  If you are not available during my posted office hours, please make a separate appointment.  Whether or not you arrive during office hours, knock and wait for permission before entering.

What “rules” (if any) would you include?  Would students (and faculty) benefit from having these expectations clearly defined?  Or would this stifle student-faculty interaction?  Would distributing a set of behavioral guidelines prevent me from being a “groovy” professor?  Should I even be striving to have my students like me?

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Posted in Bill Caraher, Boundaries, Bret Weber, Cynthia Prescott, Student Expectations

Using Models to Teach

Posted on April 9, 2009 by | 1 Comment

Carenlee Barkdull and Bret Weber, Department of Social Work, University of North Dakota

As two instructors comparing notes about using models in our instructions to students, we find we have very similar results.  We each assign at least one project per class that requires an experiential learning project that engages a non-linear, networking approach.  To help students understand expectations we use detailed written examples to reduce some of the guesswork around the instructions that we provide.

There have been two distinct results.  One is that students more readily understand and are able to produce work that looks like what we had in mind when we designed the projects.  This reduces anxiety among students and frustration for both them and us as we attempt to assess their work. The other less fortunate outcome is that the work is often less inspired.

Our favorite assignments require archival investigations, some work online, and, most importantly, contact with live individuals engaged in work relevant to the topic.  This might include professional researchers, political and community leaders, or persons in some other position of direct relevance to the subject the students are trying to better understand. 

This process is necessarily non-linear. Each group must develop their own set of strategies and networks to accomplish the task.  There is no simple, set, formula or process that will work for everyone.  This requires a degree of creativity and problem solving unfamiliar, if not unprecedented, for most of the students.  Similarly, there is an almost universal discomfort in the beginning because they prefer the more traditional formats they’re used to.  There is an equally common excitement that usually develops around the process.

One strategy for reducing student discomfort and communicating clearer expectations involves the use of models; indeed, the more refined and specific the instructions and examples provided, the lower the frustration and anxiety levels.  Unfortunately, the creativity, problem solving, and even the overall satisfaction for the students and us also seems reduced.  Rather than the strengthening of the mind that can come from heavy lifting, the models seem to facilitate a path-of-least-resistance approach in which students simply begin “filling in the blanks” rather than really grappling with the material and the process.

Bottom line: We worry that use of modeling works to successfully bring more students along what is a less profound journey.

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Posted in Bret Weber, Carenlee Barkdull, Models in Teaching, Student Expectations

Student Entitlement: Another View

Posted on February 26, 2009 by | Leave a comment

I find value in both Professors Anne Kelsch and William Caraher’s reactions to the recent NY Times article “Student Expectations Seen as Causing Grade Disputes.”  I even felt some comradeship with the complaints in the article itself.  However, those discussions miss a critically important teaching/learning opportunity presented by what the article presents as a negative dynamic.  Let me begin by touching on points of agreement as a way to set the stage for an important reframe.

Kelsch offers excellent suggestions about striving to make expectations as transperant as possible, or what Vanderbilt’s Dean Hogge calls ‘the rules of the game.’  I’ve added these devices (grading matrices, lists of criteria, etc), along with models of what I deem to be top tier work.  I’ve been pleased with the results.  I think that these tools clarify expectations for many students, and I try to vary my approaches in an attempt to facilitate as many learning styles as possible.  I think this begins bridging the ‘expectations’ gap, but fails to make the necessary leap to a new paradigm.

Caraher offers a critical examination of the hidden text of grades and credits, and—being the good historian that he is—looks to various roots in the American psyche.  Rather than an ahistoric “kids these days” conclusion, he ties the assertiveness of our students to aspects of American exceptionalism.  Still, he does not sufficiently break from the simplistic whining valorized in the article.  To focus on claims that “a third of students surveyed said that they expected B’s just for attending lectures, and 40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the required reading,” is insufficient to claim a new “sense of entitlement.”  How did students respond to these questions in the 1980s or 1940s?  What of an age when aristocratic sons were the main recipients of education—did they expect to work harder than today’s students? I think it likely that some of the instructors in the article do not like to have their authority challenged.  Grades are the currency that allows one group to lord over the other in the university community.

But there’s little use in a pissing match over research design or by trying to start a class war.   Instead, I would like to suggest that the main problem is in framing the dialogue as an ‘us vs. them’ issue.  I’m not looking for a ‘grades free’ university or a radically democratic retreat from my responsibility as a professor.  Actually, as I believe my students will agree, I am a demanding grader.  What I am suggesting is that grading disputes offer a great opportunity for an open dialogue and process of learning.  I (almost always) encourage, enjoy, and enrich challenges to grades from students.  I see this as a great opportunity to get to do additional teaching.  That, rather than bitching about students, is actually my job.

I tell students (from the bully pulpit of the lectern) that I am fallible and that many of them are likely more intelligent than myself.  For those reasons, if they see a problem or have a question with any grade they receive they should come talk to me.  I remember, even as a non-traditional student, what a daunting experience that could be, and so I try to give them encouragement, meaning, I try to bolster their courage to come discuss the matter with me.  Sometimes I have simply made a mistake and I correct their grade.  Most of the time my grading holds up under inspection but I get a chance to engage the student in an important discussion of the material.  My experience is that several years later those students remember very specific details about those ‘grading’ conversations.  Sometime they recall substantive aspects related to the material of the class; just as often they learned new ways to professionally assert differences of opinion.  Regardless, I almost always offer some ‘bonus’ increase in their grade simply for having taken the time and initiative, and for demonstrating the courage and ability, to advocate for themselves.  Colleagues might think I have a line of students at my door looking for this grade ‘dole.’  Let me assure them that is not the case.

As a final statement, let me suggest that rather than bemoaning students who seek higher grades we should encourage that.  I make my students work harder than most of my professors did with me.  With that said, I must admit that it is often annoying when I open an e-mail from one of my partners in learning who are questioning my judgement.  Then, after I sit down with them, I almost always feel like the exchange was worth their time and mine.  With that said, those quoted in the NY Times article might suggest that I am playing into “the system in place.”  So be it.  What a terrible world if 40% of the students expected to earn LOWER grades for attending lectures and doing the reading!

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Posted in Bret Weber, Student Expectations

Faculty Expectations Matter, too

Posted on February 26, 2009 by | Leave a comment

This week when Bill sent me the link to an article from The New York Times by Max Roosevelt entitled “Student Expectations Seen as Causing Grade Disputes” (Feb. 18, 2009), my first response was an inward groan. Although we all need the opportunity to collectively kvetch and reflect (sometimes very expressively) on our frustrations with students, I try to resist dwelling at length on what is wrong with “them.” I am always more interested in what we can do right with the students we have. That is not to say that students don’t bring lots of things to college with them that are obstacles to their learning—and unfounded expectations of high grades are clearly among them. But I always figure they are who they are, and we need to meet them there if we want them to come forward with us. Given that, I wonder how we can disabuse students of the notion that they “deserve” a high grade — that “A is the default” — while still inspiring them to genuinely learn and hopefully earn that grade.

The most obvious thing that comes to mind is that we need to be very explicit about our expectations. While this seems simplistic, in my experience it is actually fairly rare for a faculty member to be very clear and concise about their expectations in ways that are meaningful to students. Most of us think our expectations are obvious, and we “know good work when we see it.” However our standards are often foreign to our students—especially to freshmen—and we really do have an obligation to spell out for them what we expect them to be able to do. In The New York Times piece the author notes students often believe that if they have tried hard and put a lot of effort into something, they should receive a high grade. This problem is perhaps best addressed by making clear that outcomes, not inputs, are evaluated. While some students are always going to feel entitled (and more so in this current generation than those past according to psychologist Jean Twenge, author of Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled – and More Miserable that Ever Before ), being explicit about what “A” work looks like gives you much firmer ground to stand on when students come to convey to you their frustration with unsatisfied expectations. An even better practice is giving them the grading criteria or rubric that you use to grade an assign beforehand, so that they can evaluate their own performance. By making the process more transparent, we help to shift the academic responsibility back to our students. As you might predict, they won’t always come to the same conclusion that you do about the grade they should receive. But they will have a much clearer sense of how you got to that grade, and how they can work to get to the one they think they deserve. Admittedly it takes some fine crafting of thoughts and words to explain clearly what constitutes your standards, but this is an important part of educating our students. If their standards are not our standards, don’t we have some responsibility to articulate for them what our standards are? If they don’t know something important that we think they should know, shouldn’t we teach it to them? We also need to talk to one another about our standards, and perhaps make them explicit in our programs and departments (a good example is of this is posted by the Psychology Department at the University of Victoria).

Happily the article ultimately moves past complaint to potential solutions. Perhaps most importantly it reminds us that as educators we sometimes have to educate beyond our field and explain to our students the process of education itself. Research shows that the more we talk with students about their learning and explain why we approach teaching the way we do, the more they learn. And while we all might wish that students’ focus was intently on their learning when they enter our class (and somehow our recollection is that we were always very focused in our classes when we were students), it is often on a million other things—financial concerns, social pressures, family problems – that collectively reduces their approach to our class to “I deserve an ‘A’” at times. We can lament it (and believe me, I do). But ultimately it is more productive to show them that the learning required to earn that “A” is what gives meaning to the grade itself.

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Posted in Anne Kelsch, Student Expectations

Student Expectations in an Age of Anxiety

Posted on February 26, 2009 by | Leave a comment

I’ve had some time to mull over the recent NY Times’ article on the growing sense of  student entitlement at American universities.  It has caused some buzz in the blogosphere where a colleague captured some of my immediate reactions.  My gut response is always to side with the students, and it is virtually impossible to shake that perception in this case.  After all the article does not articulate a sense of entitlement without foundation.  The students assume that if they do the work, they will get an above average (i.e. B or better) result.  While many teachers (myself included) think that we can counter this kind of attitude through the careful manipulation in the utopian space of classroom, the historian in me sees many of these notions to be deeply rooted in American culture. The idea that hard work will produce above average results must derive at least in part from long held ideas of American exceptionalism.  The spirit of American exceptionalism translated to a suburban environment where two generations of Americans witnessed how a work-a-day life could produce a steadily rising standard of living and slowly built up the comforting arrogance that the grinding routine of a 40+ hour work week could grant one access to a wonderful world of consumables and luxuries.  This might all change as the worsening “global economic crisis” threatens not only the economic basis for American optimism, but also calls into question the authenticity of the values on which this optimism rested.  Despite these threats, the common paean in the news today is that hard work will bring America back from the brink.

When we walk into the classroom and confront a group of students who will likely work hard — if not in our class specifically, then in their classes in general (and if not “hard” by our standards, “hard” by their standards) — we aren’t confronting simply another example of botched communication between student and teacher, but the realities of over 100 years of American culture.

If a sense of student entitlement is rooted in part in American culture, it is compounded by a university system that can be quite confusing on a number of levels.  Despite efforts to standardize classes across the curriculum, they still represent a bewildering diversity of demands, requirements, expectations, and work loads.  For example, most departments offer courses at different levels (100, 200, 300, 400).  The lower numbers represent “lower level courses”, but what exactly does this mean?  Is it that the higher level requires more background and expertise?  Or is the workload in these classes higher?  Are they simply “harder” as many students assume?  Students often seem to think that lower level courses should require less work and upper level course require more work.  But, if upper level course do require different things or are harder or have a greater workload, it’s strange that they all count for the same number of credits (generally).  And credits are what the student needs to graduate. And to make matters more complex, credits do not correlate precisely to grades.  I student can get a C in virtually all of their undergraduate classes and still graduate.  And as the NY Times article reports, most faculty assume that a C is the minimum amount of knowledge sufficient to receive credit for the course.  On the other hand, the maximum knowledge gleaned from a course does not, at the end of the semester or academic career, equate to more credits — the basic standard required for graduation.  (It’s interesting to note that the University of North Dakota, like many universities, did experiment with tying grades to credits awarded during the 1920s (I think)).

Another key aspect of the current system is that the expense of college education grows yearly.  Now more students invest more money in their college education than ever before.  The effect is predictable.  As the stakes get higher with the spiraling cost of tuition the tactics students use to get the most obvious public results for their money become more creative and strident.  In part, this is because students feel that they should expect more and more of the university experience, in general, including the faculty.  This puts faculty on the spot as the rapid increase in tuition has not, from what I can tell, corresponded to an similar shift in campus culture.  In particular, we probably need to develop strategies to confront the reality that all students are not all going to learn successfully the material presented in a class, despite the fact that they will pay — sometimes huge sums of money — to learn the material.  While its distasteful to consider on the level of an individual class, could it be that we need to put into place some kind of guarantee that student hard work will allow them acquire or achieve something within a system created by the university itself?

Of course, much of this debate also reveals the incredibly contingent nature of so much education in any event.  I see this particularly with graduate education in the humanities where the pressure to come up with a thesis topic, do research, write well and creatively, and complete the degree in a reasonable amount of time can be enormous (Go! Be creative! Quickly!).  The difficult thing, of course, is that it might not be possible to come up with a “good”, much less exceptional, thesis topic in set amount of time, and so much good research is at least partially tied to luck.  Of course it’s hard to sell luck in an environment where costs continue to spiral upward and hard work is touted as the solution.  A student can work hard, in some cases, and still not succeed.

These observations should not, of course, serve as an excuse not to communicate our expectations to students clearly.  Nor should it give us reason to grade capriciously and without any attention to the learning processes that take place when a student works hard and comes up short.  What we can learn is that some expectations are not simply the break down in classroom communications or another indication of the decadent or irresponsible student behavior.  The issues that are manifesting themselves in changing attitudes toward classroom grades, the purpose of higher education, and the role of faculty in this process are complex and largely rooted outside what we can immediately control in the classroom.  What we can do is to engage openly and transparently both the root causes of changing student attitudes and adapt our methods to accommodate and whenever coopt these attitudes more effectively into the structure of the university and our classroom.

Cross-posted at the Archaeology of the Mediterranean World Blog!

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Posted in Bill Caraher, Student Expectations