Have Textbook Chapter Review Problems Outlived Their Usefulness?

On February 7, 2019February 7, 2019 By teachingcyborgIn Education Reform, Pedagogy, TextbookLeave a comment

“Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.”
William S. Burroughs

While I don’t remember the specifics, one thing that I remember from many of the course outlines I had as a student is, read pages x-xx or chapter X and then answer the problems at the end of the chapter. The presence of problems in textbooks is in some way directly related to the creation of the textbook.

Homework - vector maths.jpg, Me and my homework, by Fir0002, From Wikimedia commons, published under Creative Commons license: Attribution NonCommercial Unported 3.0 — Homework – vector maths.jpg, by Fir0002, From Wikimedia commons, published under Creative Commons license: Attribution NonCommercial Unported 3.0

The use of problems and answers in the “Textbook” predates the use of the word textbook. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary “The first known use of textbook was in 1779.” However educational books have been in use far longer. During the 4^th century AD, Aelius Donatus wrote school books about grammar one of them Ars Minor is written entirely in the format of problem and answers (Encyclopedia Britannica).

The Ars Minor included both the problem and answer. The instructor used the Ars Minor in a recall method where an instructor would ask a problem, and the student would recite the answer. In most modern textbook’s problems are found at the end of chapters or units.

Modern textbook present review problems in one of three methods, first the textbook will contain all the answers to the review problems. In the second method, the textbook will provide the answers to half or just some of the problems. Lastly, the textbook does not include the answer to any of the problems.

The purpose of review problems in textbooks has historically also had multiple uses. One, students can check their understanding of the material with the problems that have answers. Additionally, if the author presents the solutions in enough detail, they can be used to model problem-solving. The faculty member is meant to use the problems without answers for quizzes and homework assignments. While many publishers are starting to provide access to problem banks, I have seen the addition of “new” problems used as an argument for adopting a new version of a textbook.

In this day and age of interconnectivity and the internet does it even make sense to include problems in a textbook? The concern is students will look up the answers online. The availability of answers online makes the included problem useless for homework and quizzes. Upgrading to a new edition of the textbook ever 3-4 years will probably not help. After all, how long do you think it takes to post answers online? While I have not tested this, I suspect all the answers are on the internet in a couple of days to a few weeks from the publication data of most textbooks.

The availability of so many answers online causes several issues. One, especially when we are dealing with problems at the introductory level plagiarism can be difficult to identify. Even if I ask the students to write out a paragraph, for example, explaining Mendel’s Law of independent assortment how many ways are there to write that paragraph? While I’m not sure how many ways there are to write that paragraph, I suspect many generations of students have already written them.

I know some faculty that say education is ultimately the student’s responsibility and if they choose to shortcut the process, they will only harm themselves in the end. While I think most of this is true, I also think it is the responsibility of the instructor and the institution to hold the line on ethical behavior in the learning environment.

There is a lot of arguments about students using “Google” to answer problems. I have heard a lot of faculty say that it is beneficial for the student to struggle with the answer to problems. While that is true to some point, it is also important that the students have a reasonable starting point. Providing a starting point is where a problem with “complete” answers that model problem solving are useful. Additionally, the problems need to be solvable; if students can’t solve the problems, it can get discouraging.

I also think the issue of looking up problems on the internet touches on another point. Most schools state that part of their educational goal is to foster lifelong learning. When the students graduate and leave the school how are they going to engage in that lifelong learning? They’re going to use the internet. It is desperately important that we teach students how to use the internet, how to evaluate the validity of information, and how to determine credible sources. We need to embrace the internet and start including it as part of our educational process instead of just saying “ITS BAD!”

Lastly, the proper use of problems doesn’t only benefit the students but also the instructor. Problems and their answers should be used to provide feedback on pedagogy and teaching in the classroom. The solutions to the problems should inform revisions and changes to the course based on student difficulties and misunderstandings.

If problems are essential but the internet makes the usefulness of textbook problems suspect what are we going to do about it? One, make it clear what is and isn’t allowed as far as “help” is concerned and do your best to enforce this policy. Help students learn to use research tools, which includes the internet, correctly. Lastly, concerning textbooks, we should stop including and using problems in the textbook itself. We should include problems in a separate workbook that we can change every semester or at least every year. Workbooks will let instructors change problems not only to “try” and keep ahead of the internet but to meet the changing needs of the course without having to change the textbook.

Thanks for Listing to My Musings
The Teaching Cyborg

I’m Awarding 10 points for Learning

On January 24, 2019January 23, 2019 By teachingcyborgIn Education Reform, PedagogyLeave a comment

“I went to Columbia University because I knew I wanted to go to a school that was academically rigorous. I prided myself on getting good grades, but I also hated it.”
Ezra Koenig

When you’re a student, it can seem that your life revolves around points. Your points determine whether you pass a class which determines what else you can take and whether you graduate. It’s no surprise that one of the most come questions students ask is “Will this be on the test?”

Regardless of the school points affect your life. In J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books the phrase “… points for Gryffindor” occurs at least 21 times. This phrase has had such an impact it made its way in the most import of all art forms the meme (Note Heavy Sarcasm)

Memes based on awarding points to Gryffindor in the Harry Potter Books.

In the Harry Potter books, the points are used to give the hero’s a reword at the end of a book or just as comic relief. In real life, students find points stressful or focus on points (grades) to the exclusion of learning.

Some discussions suggest grades, at least as we are using them, might be harming student learning. It is stated in the article Teach more by Grading Less (or Differently)

“Grades can dampen existing intrinsic motivation, give rise to extrinsic motivation, enhance fear of failure, reduce interest, decrease enjoyment in class work, increase anxiety, hamper performance on follow-up tasks, stimulate avoidance of challenging tasks, and heighten competitiveness.”

So why do we use points, as educators our role is to provide the best learning experience possible. If there is any chance that something could be hindering learning shouldn’t we be exploring other alternatives?

When it comes to the idea of eliminating points, I remember a talk I attended in the early days of student response systems (Clickers). A physic instructor was using clickers to poll students in real-time and then using pear-pear instruction to enhance learning. At first, many students were not responding. The effectiveness of the clickers in education is dependent on students responding. However, he did not want the students to feel that clickers were an exam.

The instructor chooses to assigned points to the clicker questions. However, these points only counted as 1% of the course total. This low amount of points was enough to get most of the students to engage. The instructor then used learning gains to show how learning in his class had improved with this increased participation. In this case, points undoubtedly helped motivate students to learn.

So, points can motivate students and promote learning. Well yes, however, the critical thing to remember the physics instructor assigned the points for a specific pedagogical reason. We did not choose many of the parts of the standard grading system for pedagogical purposes.

Have you ever thought about the grading scale A, B, C, D, and F what happened to the E? It turns out the first record we can find for a modern grading scale comes from Mount Holyoke College in 1887 their scale was A (excellent, 95-100%), B (good, 85-94%), C (fair, 76-84%), D (barely passed, 75%), and E (failed, below 75%) there’s that missing E.

Over the years the standardization of the grading scale lost the E. In the case of the current grading scale standardized is an important word. As society changed and grew, more and more students transferred between schools or continued their education at an institution of higher learning. To mediate student movement school needed a way of communicating student abilities and success. Therefore, one of the most significant driving forces of the modern grading system was the need to communicate quickly and precisely between schools.

However, you will also note that the percentages for the Holyoke scale are different than many today. Today the difference from one letter grade to the next is usually 10%, and failing is 60% and bellow. Additionally, there was a push in the early to mid-parts of the 20^th century to standardize grade distributions to the Normal Distribution/Bell Curve with the C set to the mid or average position.

The Bell Curve modified form Standard Deviation diagram.svg,, Auther M.W. Toews from Own work, based (in concept) on figure by Jeremy Kemp, on 2005-02-09. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license.

The bell curve added a component of sorting to a system that was supposed to represent mastery. There is also the question of whether a system (the bell curve/normal distribution) that describes the distribution of physical characteristics (height, weight, strength, etc.) is appropriate to measure learning?

While there is a lot to be said for other grading and assessment methods, the standard grading system is not going to go away anytime soon. We can’t replace the A – F system quickly because it has many advantages, especially in a mobile society. As educators, we need to remember that our job is to motivate and encourage learning, the grades will come from knowledge.

When we design our courses, the assignment of points should be for pedagogical reasons. Just like the clicker in the physics class, we should use points to encourage learning activities. Points should be assigned based on the activity’s importance to learning, not the need to fill a spreadsheet. Lastly, enough points should be used to allow for a complete and accurate assessment and feedback.

Do you consider the pedagogical impact of your point assignment? Do you think about the effects of grades on your students learning and motivation? Lastly, why don’t we spend more time discussing something as important as the effects of points and their associated grades on student learning?

Thanks for Listing to My Musings

The Teaching Cyborg

We Have Always Argued Against Ed Tech

On January 17, 2019January 17, 2019 By teachingcyborgIn Ed Tech, Education ReformLeave a comment

“Classrooms don’t need tech geeks who can teach; we need teaching geeks who can use tech.”
David Guerin

One of the arguments I often hear when it comes to educational technologies is: “we’ve always done it this way.” The idea that we have always done something is such a typical answer about why we use a technique that I once informed a group of academic professionals that I banned that answer from the discussion, and told them if they use it I will ignore everything they said.

Whether or not I would have ignored what they said shall remain a mystery. However, the statement was shocking enough to get the audience to stop and think. Aside from the fact that it is just a lazy answer, it is consummately untrue. What this statement means is in my 10 to 30 years of teaching this is what I’ve always done, or this is what my classes were like when I was a student.

Nothing we do in education has been a part of education since educations inception. Blooms Taxonomy (Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook 1: Cognitive Domain) was published in 1956, 63 years ago. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (1956) and the Kolb Experiential Learning Theory (1984) have both influenced how we teach. The theory of constructive in education (the late 1800s), the Socratic Method (5^th – 4^th century BC) and the invention of written language (earliest known 3400 – 3300 BC), in their time all changed education. All these developments fall far short of the 150 – 200 thousand years since modern humans evolved in Africa.

Teaching has occurred from our earliest ancestors take the form of oral histories or skills passed down from elder to youth in small groups likely the family. I would guess this type of education, accounts for more than 90% of human existence. It is not until the advent of modern civilization about 10,000 years ago that some forms of education even became possible.

We always view changes in education with skepticism. Socrates is an excellent example of this. Today we have the Socratic method as a teaching style. However, we do not have any written words directly from Socrates about his beliefs in teaching. In his writing, The Phaedrus Plato writes about an exchange between Socrates and Phaedrus to demonstrate Socrates dislike for the written word because he felt it made the mind weak and would decrease memory.

So, there you have it Socrates someone still admired thousands of years after his death for teaching was opposed to the technology of writing. According to stories he was often found teaching outdoors while sitting on rocks. I would almost be prepared to say the man was a technophobe. But for the fact that he ran his family’s stone masonry business.

Today the value we place on good written communications makes the teaching of writing and its act an essential part of modern education. The benefits of long-term storage of knowledge, the sharing of the thoughts and ideas of a master, makes books valuable to learning. The formation of the modern University was dependent on the rarity of early books. Try and think about what modern education would be like without books.

Technology has defined the shape of the modern classroom. Some because it is just what we do and how we live in our modern world, electric lighting, heating and air-conditioning, and A/V systems. (If you happen to be fortunate enough to live in the developed world.) Other things whiteboards/smart boards the modern descendant of the slate because it solved a problem. The slate (chalkboard) was used in the classroom because the teacher could present to multiple students at once. Is there a real difference for the students if we show material on chalkboards versus whiteboards?

Some people argue, in some cases correctly, society has driven changes in the classroom because of changes in the underlying technology of society. A great example of this is computers and printers. When I was in middle school, I turned in all written assignments in hand-writing. In high school, we had the option to turn it in typed or hand-written. In my undergraduate days, we had to use computer printers on all our assignments. Nowadays I work with people that except writing assignments as digital files or blog posts. These changes have mirrored the changes in how we write in our day-to-day lives. Remember we do things like we always have.

However, the changes from the handwritten to the computer word processor isn’t universally like. For instance, the teaching of handwriting (cursive) has all but disappeared from modern education. The Common Core Standards prefer the keyboard over hand-written words starting in elementary school. Some research, however, suggests that the elimination of hand-writing will affect the development of the brain, especially concerning reading. The effect of handwriting on the development of the mind is an area where more research is needed.

It is essential to be critical about changes in education after all the goal is to provide the best educational experience we can. However, a knee jerk rejection to something, because it is “technology,” is as equally harmful as excepting everything without thought. After all, everything we use and work within the classroom is technology. So, why do we resist change? Part of the reason for this resistance is our psychology as humans; there are psychological effectors that affect our approach to change. Alternatively, as Ronald Heifetz says, “What people resist is not change per se, but loss.” The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World.

Like so many things the truth about resistance to ed tech is more complicated than our expectation. Regardless of which side of the ed tech debate you belong to do you ever think about why the other side is doing what they are doing? If you’re in favor of a new piece of technology have thought about why people might be resisting the change, is there a better way to present your idea? If you are resistant to the idea of new technology, have you thought about why your resisting? It is import that we all engage with new technology so that it can be used thoughtfully instead of being imposed from the outside.

Thanks for Listening to My Musings
The Teaching Cyborg

Genetics, Sorry Its Actually Math

On December 27, 2018 By teachingcyborgIn Ed Tech, Pedagogy, STEM EducationLeave a comment

“The truth, it is said, is rarely pure or simple, yet genetics can at times seem seductively transparent.”
Iain McGilchrist

Depending on the type of biology degree a student is earning the classes taken can vary. However, in a lot of programs, you will take a basic genetics course as the second or third course of the introductory sequence.

Sometimes I think genetics is a lot like the game of GO simple to learn but challenging to master. Genetics relies on simple rules and principles. These rules and principles can combine to form surprising complexity. There are only five types of genetic mutations and three laws of Mendelian inheritance. A Punnett square (a tool to analyze potential outcomes of a genetic cross) for a cross between to heterozygous (Aa) parents has four boxes. A Punnett square for a five gene heterozygous (AaBbCcDdEe) cross has 1024 boxes.

However, for all the simplicity of basic genetics, many students drop out of biology during or after that first genetics class. So, if the foundation of genetics is simple why do so many students leave or fail genetics. The reason is math, invariably a week or two into a genetics class I always hear students say something like “I choose biology, so I didn’t have to do math.”

Thinking biology does not use math is a funny statement to anyone that has completed any science degree because we all know science always includes some math. Most science degrees require at least some level of calculus graduate. For most biology students’ genetics is the first time where a lot of math is part of the biology.

Beyond the fact that genetics integrates math the bulk of the math is statistics, you could even say that genetics is statistics. Even if the students had statistics, it was probably not embedded into biology. While students might know the basics of statistics, they might have problems with transference, the ability to take preexisting knowledge and apply it to a new situation.

If students are having problems with transference concerning the principles of statistics, or even worse have not had a statistics course, they are not going to be able to focus on biology. Think about a simple piece of information; we tell the students that the probability of a baby being a girl is 50%. Then on a quiz, we ask the students this question (I have seen it used) “In a family with four children how many are girls and how many are boys?” The answer that the instructor is looking for is two girls and two boys. However, I know families that have four girls, or four boys, or three girls and one boy, or 1 girl and three boys. If a student put down one of these other answers, it is technically correct because all these options have happened.

While one problem is the poorly written questions, there is also a problem with understanding what a 50% probability means. One of the most important things that students need to understand is that a 50% probability is a statistic based on population. It is entirely possible for probabilities to vary widely with small sample sizes, as the sample size gets larger the probability of heads to tails to get closer and closer to 50%.

A simple way to think about the sex ration is coin flips. When we flip a coin, we say you have a 50% chance of getting heads. Now suppose I flipped a coin three times and got tails on all three, what is the probability that the fourth flip will be tails? There is two answer I hear most often 6.25% and 50%. The correct answer is 50%. You see every coin flip is an independent event that means each coin flip has a 50% probability of coming up tails.

Coin Toss by ICMA Photos, This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

Now if we were to flip a coin 200 times in a row, the total data set would average out to be close to 50% heads to tails. However, even in this larger sample, there are likely to be several relatively long runs of heads or tails in some case more than seven in a row. People can quickly detect fake versus real data directly from the fact that most faked data does not have long enough runs of heads or tails, you can read about it here.

Therefore, one of the most important things we can teach students is the principle of significance. Students need to understand that it is not essential to merely show that probabilities and averages are different but that the difference between them is significant.

What does all this mean for genetics education? First, students should have a basic understanding of statistics before they take genetics. I believe that if statistics are not required to take statistics as a prerequisite for genetics you are not seriously trying to teach genetics to everyone.

However, even if the students have a foundation in statistics genetics lessons should be designed to help the students transfer knowledge from basic statistics into genetics. The transfer of information is also a situation where technology can help. In many math classes especially at calculus and above students often use software like Mathematica to solve the math equations once the student determines the correct approach and writes the equation.

In a genetics’ class students don’t need to derive or prove statistical equations. The students need to know what equations to use and when to use them. There are several statistics analysis software programs available. We should let the students use these tools in their class, a lot of professional scientists do. If we made statistical analysis software available, then students could focus on learning what calculations to apply were and focus on the biology that the statistics are highlighting.

What do you think should we design genetics classes to try and reach all the students? Could statistical analysis tools help the students taking a genetics class? Have you tried helping your students transfer knowledge from their statistics class to their genetics class? How often do we consider transference when we design new courses, should we be doing it more?

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The Teaching Cyborg

Let Them Run Their Own Labs

On December 20, 2018December 20, 2018 By teachingcyborgIn Education Reform, STEM EducationLeave a comment

“Research is creating new knowledge.”
Neil Armstrong

I suspect that people have been arguing about teaching science since we started teaching science. There are multiple groups that each have their models and best practices. In recent years we have even seen the progression of specialized undergraduate majors. Which suggests that some schools think content that used to be part of a foundational bachelor’s degree is no longer necessary.

One of the things that most of the groups interested in science education agree on is the more like real science we can make the learning experience the better the learning and understanding of science will be. There are even some schools like Reed College that requires all their students to complete a senior thesis and oral defense, under a faculty members supervision, to earn a bachelor’s degree.

Imagine if every bachelor’s student could spend a year studying and writing about a topic in their field that interested them. Not only would students get to “geek out” about a topic that interested them, think about how much we would learn.

Chemical research lab, Beckenham. Two chemists at work, surrounded by equipment and apparatus. Archives & Manuscripts, This file comes from Wellcome Images, license CC BY 4.0

The problem with Reed’s model is that it does not scale. Reed College has an enrollment of 1400 students and a 9 to 1 student to faculty ratio. It’s not feasible to scale this to a Tier 1 research institution that has 25 – 40 thousand students and nowhere near a 9 to 1 student to faculty ratio. Faculty don’t have space in their research labs to support student populations in the 10s of thousands.

There have also been a lot of programs developed and tested to provide students with research experiences. Most of these programs are small only 20 – 30 students. Also, a lot of these programs are short 8 – 12 weeks during summer. Additionally, since most are small, they have become highly competitive leading to access to only the top students.

While these programs have their heart in the right place, they are not going to provide research experiences to all students with program sizes of 20 – 30 students. If we are going to have a goal of providing research experiences for all bachelor’s students, we need another approach.

I have put a lot of thought into the idea of incorporation research into required laboratory science classes. If we incorporated a year-long research project in required laboratory courses all students would get research experiences. Additionally, the class would be more coherent because experiments would flow one to the other based on the results from previous work. However, research as a lab course is an idea for another day.

I recently came across an article that potentially presents another way to give students real research experiences. Before I get to the article, I want to show some of the background ideas that make this idea possible.
One of the most significant problems with scaling research experiences in a large university is the availability of space in faculty research labs and the availability of research mentors. It might be possible to reduce the burden on faculty by using the knowledge of the crowd.

We already use per – per instruction in large lecture classes, why not use it in research. After all, in professional research, you can’t look up the answer to your research question. In professional research, we talk to our colleagues and try out experiments until we get a direction or answer the question. Additionally, many of the groups that are interested in science education suggest having students work in groups.

The idea for undergraduate research comes from an article Pushing Boundaries: Undergrad launches student-driven particle astrophysics research group published in CU Boulder today on November 16, 2018. The article describes a research group formed by Jamie Principato that was established and run by undergraduates. The group is composed of 30 undergraduates who are designing and building an instrument to measure cosmic radiation. The group’s detector has already flown on high altitude balloons. You can read the full article here.

From my point of view, one of the most interesting things is that the 30 members of the group had little or no previous research experience. While Jamie Principato is an exceptional student, I can’t help but think undergraduate formed research groups could be the solution or at least part of the solution to undergraduate research experiences.

Depending on the question some of these groups could run for years with new undergraduates joining each year. If we think of undergraduate research groups having about 30 students than a departmental graduating class of 250 students would need nine groups a class of 500 would require 17 groups. With some proper planning and organizing this seems a reasonable number of groups for a department.

What do you think could student-run, and organized research groups be the solution to undergraduate research experiences for all students? Do you think undergraduate research experiences for all students are something we should be trying to develop? I think student-run and organized research groups could be the solution to undergraduate research experiences for all students, especially at large universities.

Thanks for Listing to My Musings
The Teaching Cyborg