Hard work, grades, and study strategies

There was an article in the New York Times last week about students' grade expectations. (Summary: student expect high grades, especially if they feel that they worked hard. Professors disagree.) Much commentary ensued, at the NYT, in academic blogs, like Female Science Professor, and in my work e-mail.

Like most professors, I think my grades mean something. Exactly what depends on the class. Usually the grade says something about my confidence that the student will be able to use the concepts and skills from the class in future work, either in classes, research, or a job. But then there are general education classes, where the students could be anything from future geologists to future teachers to people who will need to live on this planet for the rest of their lives - I'm less confident that my grading methods match my goals for all of those students. But I keep trying.

I've never had a student formally challenge a grade in one of my classes, but every semester I've got students who do poorly on the first exam or paper, and want to do better on the next ones. And that's where it gets tough: if hard work isn't enough for a good grade, what kind of advice do you give to a student who wants to do better?

Like most professors, I suspect, I've got quite a collection of ideas about how to study effectively, and how to get better at doing things that aren't easy. Sketch and label diagrams from the textbook or lecture. Write definitions of unfamiliar words. Get together with friends and explain things to one another. Try to write questions that I might put on an exam. Etc., etc., etc. But they don't always work.

I heard an incredibly depressing geoscience education talk at last fall's GSA (McConnell, 2008). Dave McConnell had students report the strategies they used for studying in their intro class, and coded them as "rehearsal" (such as re-reading notes or the textbook), "elaboration" (such as many of my suggestions, I think - writing definitions or labeling sketches), and "organization" (such as outlining or categorizing material). And the correlation to class performance? None. (Well, except for one outlier, who did nothing and got a grade of 20 or so on the exam.) All of the students preferred to use the easier study strategies (such as reading notes or memorizing terms), and disliked the more difficult ones (such as drawing pictures or writing summaries) - the students who did well in the class didn't use the more challenging strategies any more than the struggling students did. Nothing seemed to help - some students just did well, and some students did poorly.

When I came home from the meeting, I graded my intro class's first exam, returned it, and told the students who got D's or F's to come talk to me. And then I had no idea what to tell them. I had just heard this talk that showed that effort had no effect on mastery of the course material, and there I was, trying to tell students how to study for their next test. What was I going to say? "You know, when I took tests, I just re-read my notes, took the test, and got an A. Except for math classes - I never studied for them at all. So good luck, and I have no idea what I'm talking about - and I'm not sure the geoscience education researchers know, either." No way. I teach certain material, give certain assignments, and put specific questions on tests because I think they're important, either as life skills or as knowledge about the world we live on. I want the students to do well enough to get A's or B's, not because it would make us all feel better, but because if they don't, they've missed something worth knowing.

I gave the students the same advice. And met with some of the same students after the second exam, to keep brainstorming new strategies for learning.

I hope that somebody does a study that focuses on struggling students, because I want to know what strategies help people learn better. I don't want to be a gate-keeper, separating students who would succeed no matter what they did from students who aren't going to make it. I want to help people get over barriers, or open doors, or... well, pick your metaphor. This planet is too cool and too important for geology to be restricted to those that learn it easily.

Four Corners Geological Society talk tomorrow

I'm the speaker at this month's Four Corners Geological Society meeting in Durango. (The title is "Stitching plutons or magma-enhanced deformation: reaction textures, deformation, and thermal modeling from the aureole of the Victory Pluton, NE Vermont." I realize that 1) the title is way too long, and 2) at least one person reading this blog will wonder whether I have actually done anything in the past eight years. The answer, btw, is that I'm trying to wrap up some things related to the Vermont work, and I thought the FCGS members would be more interested in hearing about that than about pedagogy research.)

If anyone reading would like to come, it's in the basement of the College Union Building (the "Sub-CUB Pub"). There's a social hour at 5:30 pm, dinner at 6:30 pm, and the talk at 7:30 pm. Normally we take RSVP's for dinner, but there should be some extra space. (Let me know, though - I don't think there are many Durangoans reading this, but I could be wrong.) Dinner is $20, the talk alone is $2, and if you're a Fort Lewis College student, the talk is free.

Four Corners Geological Society website

(And to those wondering how I'm adjusting to moving all my old images to Powerpoint, the answer is... well, you know how you can scan slides? I had a work-study student doing that for some of mine, but they were scanned at the size of a postage stamp. When I opened the files, I felt kind of like the guys in Spinal Tap when the eighteen-inch Stonehendge set appeared. Fortunately, I've got new digital thin section photos, and maps and graphs that open in Illustrator, and thermal modeling results that open in Excel. But I had a moment where I wondered whether I could just do the entire thing with slides, except for the part that uses new data...)