05/27/20

A Good Question

The idea here is that if one can generate a ‘good question’ from ones readings, listening to lecture or podcast, or watching video, one is well on the way toward effective learning.  If one is able to pose a question, a question that engages with the material at hand, that integrates it across domains of thought, then one is really moving forward with understanding and being able to use the knowledge one gains.

 

The good question exercise is one I often use in teaching. But more than that, it is an approach to learning and research that I use myself.

I try first to understand a piece of writing, say on a subject that is new to me or one that I might have a divergent perspective from the author. I am a strong believer in the efficacy of comprehension before critique.   It is so easy to create a shopping list of all the things wrong with something I disagree with.  It is more intellectually challenging to try and understand the logic, perspective, data, and argument of an author first. It will ultimately make any critique (positive or negative) more effective and nuanced in the long run. In my blog post ‘What does the prof want?‘ I discuss this approach in a bit more detail with an eye toward effective study technique.

Here is a standard set of instructions that I often use as the basis of a group activity in a class.

  • Each group is to generate two or three ‘good’ questions based on the reading assignments. Take a few minutes -no more than five- to brainstorm ideas within the group. Write them down so that you can consider them. These ideas should not be fully formed questions.
  • Next, review the ideas and begin to design questions from them. Ask yourself if the questions challenge you to think through the issues of fieldwork or do they help you understand the context of the two research sites. Be mindful that the answers must be in the readings and/or film. Also, the questions should not be designed to elicit opinion; they should require reference to information from the readings listed above.
  • After everyone in the group has asked and discussed the questions revise and winnow the questions to two or three that you would be interested in presenting to the class.
  • As part of this process you should also sketch out a brief answer to each of the questions.
  • After finalizing the questions each group will present one question to the discussion group. At the end of this session hand in the questions and answers.

Whether used as a group activity, or an individual learning technique, the idea behind the good question draws upon a variation of Bloom’s Taxonomy. This is a kind of hierarchy of learning and knowledge. Imagine that the first step is simple memory and recall. Then we start to build comprehension. We apply our knowledge in some way. From there we start to analysis novel situations with our knowledge, link it together synthetically with other types of knowledge and then finally are able to evaluate (or critique our knowledge).

The good question approach is based on an idea of active learning – go beyond memory work- integrate the knowledge into one’s one understanding and make use of it. Doing it this way is one effective way to become a more proficient learner and ultimately a better researcher.

 

04/8/15

Grades: “in full honesty, my paper deserves a better grade.”

Late December brings the sound of jingle bells, carols, and grade appeals. It’s a seasonal thing that returns again just after the Easter Bunny has handed out chocolate eggs.

Let me first highlight the positive. Alongside of grade appeals, requests for clarifications or outright indignation, faculty also receive cards of thanks, emails of appreciation, and the occasional modest gift. There are students who make an effort to express their thanks for the opportunity to learn. These expressions are all very much appreciated. In fact, they go a long way to offset the worry we experience as faculty when the grade appeal season get started

Between the end of a course and the submission of final grades there is a brief moment of calm. There was a time when grades were posted on paper outside a faculty member’s office. The time involved in making one’s way back to campus to check the grade, separating the submission of a grade and a student’s awareness of it by days or weeks rather than minutes, allowed a period of reflection that forestalled rash responses. Email has created a more immediate reaction. I will often get queries mere moments after the grades are posted online.

In math, chemistry, or physics grades can be presented and determined with a more objective tone and complexion then seems to be the case in the social sciences. That said, most social science faculty members do use clear and transparent marking rubrics. Most of us make a serious effort to lay out evaluation criteria in our course outlines. But that doesn’t ever seem to stop the modest flood of critique and appeals that we receive around the end of term.

There are times when grading has been too severe (also too easy). In my large classes where I work with teaching assistants I make a point to ensure that from a meta level the grades produced by each marker are consistent across the entire class. I personally check low and high grades and a few in between from each individual marker’s portfolio. In classes that I mark myself I double check each grade assigned to ensure that I have been consistent. All this is to try to reduce any potential errors, omissions, or unfairness in marking. Just the same, there are almost always queries and occasional mistakes do slip in.

There are three basic approaches that students take toward grade appeals.

  • There must be something wrong
  • I am confused about how you arrived at my grade
  • Can you explain how I could do better next time

Each of these approaches telegraphs a specific message.

The first approach is essentially an outright challenge (except in the cases when there is indeed something wrong). Students should use the first form of complaint sparingly. Check and double check before you speak to a prof with this approach. We are human and, as humans, do make mistakes from time to time. But proceed with caution.

“I am confused” is often a very sincere response. Typically the student who professes confusion has handed in work that is of middling quality. This is the normal type of work they do and for some profs they get good grades and others they get worse grades. Students have a right to feel confused. I share your confusion with colleagues who took the easy path, gave you a B+ or an A in their course, and thereby avoided having to meet with you to explain why they “only” gave you a C+ or B- (which very likely is what you should have been given). Truth is, we don’t do you any favour by giving you a high grade when what you really deserved was a grade that said good job, you met the criteria: C+. But in today’s world everyone wants an A (even if folks have forgotten what is involved in getting one). This is part of a grade inflation trend that is hard to escape from.

“Can you explain what I can do next time” has two variants: the sincere and the passive aggressive. The passive aggressive variant is a modified version of “there must be something wrong.” This student is concerned about upsetting the prof so settles upon the neutral “can you tell me what I could do next time approach.” Yet, lurking beneath the surface is a feeling that the prof did it wrong and the student wants her/him to figure it out and correct it. Unlike the sincere variant, the passive aggressive variant of this trope typically won’t relent and sometimes will, in a moment of exasperation, shift into the “there must be something wrong with how this was marked” style. The key indicator here is that the student will repeat a stock set of questions that inevitably circle back onto their idea that their paper was not correctly evaluated.

The sincere student is trying to figure things out. They are less interested in the grade then they are in learning the material and how to be an effective student. They may simply not understand how to differentiate between a modest quality of output and a high quality of output. The sincere student may also confuse the quantity of labour invested into an assignment or studying with the quality of time (in fact many studnets make this mistake). There is a useful concept called “socially necessary labour time.” Defined as: “The labour-time required to produce any use-value under the conditions of production normal for a given society and with the average degree of skill and intensity of labour prevalent in that society.” What does this have to do with grades? Simple: quantity of effort expended does not equal quality of output produced. That is, one doesn’t deserve a high grade simply because one spent the most time they ever had doing this assignment. The trick is to balance the amount of work required with the desired outcome in a way that conforms to the standard quantity of time a competent student spends completing a particular assignment.

Ultimately focusing on grades deflects a student from the fundamental idea of learning. It is a lot to ask of students (given our societies’ hyper-concern with evaluation, ranking, and grading) to focus on learning as opposed to grades. Why should a student be any different then other people – grades are unfortunately seen as measures of worth and as a kind of capital used to buy privileged positions in society? My answer is that learning is not always reflected in grades. Ideally I would remove scarcity based grading (which is what I call current models) and shift to a more qualitative form of assessment that measured a students learning in terms of how their understanding of a subject evolved, where did a student start? How has their understanding and knowledge expanded? What new process skills have they learned? Can they demonstrate these new skills and new understandings in novel settings?   Grades are one small measure and a decade or more after this class is over I doubt a student will remember the grade they got. They might recall a classmate, a discussion, a particular reading or lecture. That is ultimately what is most important.

01/26/13

Reflections – ANTH 330, 2.

By Mercedes McGuire (Jan. 11, 2013).

It is hard to believe that next week we will be entering the second week of classes- already!  Time has gone by quickly, lectures, readings, and discussions melting together under one umbrella- education. I have been a student for some time now, and yet find that I am continually learning.  One thing which catalyzed this learning process, and encouraged me to embrace its true meaning, was a comment made my Professor Menzies on the process of critiquing- questioning the way in which the work of someone who has committed themselves to becoming experts in a particular field can so easily be torn apart by people who haven’t attained to the same rigor of understanding.  This resonated with me, both reminding me to listen before I interrupt the flow of words from another, and actually hear what the other person is trying to communicate.  This is an invaluable skill to develop in all areas of life, but is particularly interesting in the context of academia, where the exchange and development of ideas creates knowledge which shapes our society.  I realized that there is a pull, however, as students to profess that we know something.  To perform confidently on exams, papers, publications, with answers to questions.  There seems to be a strange and paradoxical dichotomy between continually learning and knowing.

Ways of knowing, depths of understanding, and methods used to interpret the world around us all play a role in informing that knowledge.  I was reminded of the complexity of communication during an activity the first day wherein we hid from ourselves the identity of a particular object and tried to describe it to a partner simply based on what we felt with our less dominant hand.  I was holding a pinecone in my left hand, and while I could identify it as such for myself, the reaction of the person to whom I was describing it was very telling; she was curious about this strange object, this mysterious artifact.  Despite the common relationship we each have to a pinecone, without experiencing it for herself, she was left to imagine what this strange, spiky, cone shaped creature with a somewhat organic feel could possibly be.

How much more is my own understanding of the world and the inner workings of its dominant systems interpreted according to my own imagination due to lack of tangible experience, and depth of knowledge and understanding of it?  Capitalism, for example, and the experiences of people living and labouring within this system. I remember taking an introductory microeconomics class and arguing with what I was learning because I disagreed with the ethics of such a system, but I think I failed to actually understand it before I critiqued it, making my arguments void of power due to lack of knowledge.  The subject of this course is the anthropology of rural people in a global economy, and we have begun with the works of Eric Wolf and Anthony Brewer, as well as a film directed by Lorraine Gray in which the timeless tensions of labour, society, capital, and justice have been explored. There are so many facets from which to engage with these concepts, in terms of society, economy, environment, politics… And while they describe a unique facet, there is a deep interconnection which persists in threading together these different ways of knowing which have been fragmented into ‘disciplines’.  As I engage with this material in the context of my education as a whole, I can only understand society and culture(s) as elements within expansive and complex ecosystems, continually embedded within multiple other ecosystems.    Ecosystems are complex, they are dynamic, they are ever changing, and they are alive. So, how do I, on those grounds, begin to know about them; to engage in understanding and gaining knowledge about such awe-inspiring organisms?

Readings:

Wolf, Eric (1982). Europe and the People Without History.“Introduction,” 1-23; and “Chapter 3 –Modes of Production,” 72-100.

Anthony Brewer (1980). Marxist Theories of Imperialism: A Critical Survey. “Introduction,” 1-24.

The global assembly line (Lorraine Gray). 58 mins