19 February 2009

Workout notes yoga with Ms. V. (I was distracted) followed by my Sprindale/Glen Oak course in 1:08:51. I had made it a goal to do the upper loop (Adams to Adams) in under 30 minutes and I got 30:45.
Weather: 14 F with a moderate wind; needless to say it was cold though the footing was excellent.

Even though it was cold, it was sunny and pretty; this still beats the treadmill! I cooled down with a 1 mile walk….ok “froze down” would be like it.

Of course, when I drove home, all of the frozen “stuff” on my face started to melt; that was gross beyond words!

Other odds and ends:

Michelle Bachmann:

Science: birds have the ability to move their bodies while keeping their heads still:

Academia: There is some truth in this article: too many students expect to be awarded for effort rather than for results:

Prof. Marshall Grossman has come to expect complaints whenever he returns graded papers in his English classes at the University of Maryland.

“Many students come in with the conviction that they’ve worked hard and deserve a higher mark,” Professor Grossman said. “Some assert that they have never gotten a grade as low as this before.”

He attributes those complaints to his students’ sense of entitlement.

“I tell my classes that if they just do what they are supposed to do and meet the standard requirements, that they will earn a C,” he said. “That is the default grade. They see the default grade as an A.”

A recent study by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found 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.

“I noticed an increased sense of entitlement in my students and wanted to discover what was causing it,” said Ellen Greenberger, the lead author of the study, called “Self-Entitled College Students: Contributions of Personality, Parenting, and Motivational Factors,” which appeared last year in The Journal of Youth and Adolescence.

Professor Greenberger said that the sense of entitlement could be related to increased parental pressure, competition among peers and family members and a heightened sense of achievement anxiety.

Aaron M. Brower, the vice provost for teaching and learning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, offered another theory.

“I think that it stems from their K-12 experiences,” Professor Brower said. “They have become ultra-efficient in test preparation. And this hyper-efficiency has led them to look for a magic formula to get high scores.” [....]

In line with Dean Hogge’s observation are Professor Greenberger’s test results. Nearly two-thirds of the students surveyed said that if they explained to a professor that they were trying hard, that should be taken into account in their grade.

Jason Greenwood, a senior kinesiology major at the University of Maryland echoed that view.

“I think putting in a lot of effort should merit a high grade,” Mr. Greenwood said. “What else is there really than the effort that you put in?”

“If you put in all the effort you have and get a C, what is the point?” he added. “If someone goes to every class and reads every chapter in the book and does everything the teacher asks of them and more, then they should be getting an A like their effort deserves. If your maximum effort can only be average in a teacher’s mind, then something is wrong.”

Sarah Kinn, a junior English major at the University of Vermont, agreed, saying, “I feel that if I do all of the readings and attend class regularly that I should be able to achieve a grade of at least a B.”

Here is how I attempt to handle such things: I ask them: “when you go to choose a product to buy, what factors do you consider?” They tell me things like “quality and price”. I then ask them: “you don’t take into account the amount of effort that went into the product”?

I also ask them that if an engineer designed a bridge that collapsed, did it matter that he/she tried hard? Or, if the patient dies during surgery, does the surgeon get an “A” for effort?

Of course, since I teach mathematics, there isn’t as much subjectivity in my grading; when I tell them that “no, the derivative of e^x is not x*e^(x-1)” the usually believe me and don’t argue.