Thanks, Greg! My physics instructor was new to teaching (I remember those first years can be hard!) and it was clear she wanted to help us learn, but her teaching models from her education were - like for most of us - lecture based with traditional grading. Not her fault! At the end of the semester I "revealed" my true identity and we met to talk about her teaching. I focused on encouraging her by emphasizing the things she's doing well and how the things she's already doing (like Think-Pair-Share) could be transformed with little changes to have a big impact. She has a lot of energy, compassion, and a willingness to try new things, which are all strengths in an educator!
I would note that homework in chemistry and physics is an assessment. There is not enough time and room in exams to touch on all the things that need to be assessed. By not doing the homework there are things you may not have learned.
Possibly in an intro course this isn't apparent, but in my upper level courses the homework has problems that go much deeper than one can do in an in-class exam. Sometimes I address this with take-home exams.
In any course, homework can be an assessment, but it doesn't have to be.
Homework, like any assignment, can be considered practice or performance. Think about what Simone Biles does in her training facility, and what she does in the Olympics: mistake-making, which is an important part of learning, is useful in one situation but not the other. Likewise, in our classrooms, we should be clear with our students about the goals of an assignment: is the goal to learn? Then making and learning from mistakes should be valued, not penalized. If the goal is for the instructor to determine how much the student has learned, then be clear with the student that the goal is performance, not practice. When we mix the two - say, in a homework assignment that is designed to help students learn but where we also grade for correctness - the performance aspect trumps the learning opportunity and the only real incentive is for students to get the right answer, regardless of how they got there. For that reason, I think it's important not to mix practice and performance in a single assignment (the exception being if you offer retakes or revisions on assessments).
In my classroom, my philosophy is that homework is an opportunity for practice, not assessment, and so I grade homework on completion only. In the physics course I took, the homework was set up so I could do multiple attempts to get a higher score, which suggests the goal was practice, not performance.
I use it as assessment because the method is more important than a "right" answer. The students need feedback on the method to learn. Often the problem in the homework is not practice at all but a new concept that is an extention of previous knowledge the student learned. The grading is about much more than the "correct" final answer in such cases. Homework is often group work in my case and they have a chance to work with each other, explaining their thought process as they go through the problem. When this works it is a far more powerful learning experience for the students.
Often one assigns points to motivate the homework engagement - not something I am happy about, but something the students understand and expect. The transendental part is getting the engagement - then the problem becomes more than points. Yet, it can not reach that goal when students are only seeing the course as a grade to get.... this is something I haven't consistently been able to overcome.
Testing has another set of artificial barriers to learning and is often seen by students as assessment without meaning. Grades are the be all and end all for many of the students. Learning is a foreign concept.
I really don't want to grade at all! This is why I am looking at alternatives to convential grading. Clearly, the university and the students will not let me not give grades so I have to satisfy these diverse needs. Connecting real learning to an assessment that really assesses learning is my challenge. Can the grade be removed from the main focus for the students? Do mastery modules become merit badge counting and no differnt from tests, homework, and point collecting? I keep thinking about it.
You are calling out all the issues with industrialized education that many of us are grappling with - motivating students to focus on learning not just grades, assessments as measures of learning not just a barrier to learning, etc. You're right that it's hard to deeply change the impacts on our students when, in the end, we still have to submit a grade. I think about this a lot, for example, for Airbnb hosts. I've stayed in multiple places where the Airbnb host leaves messages in the house that say basically, "It is essential that I get a 5-star rating, let me know what I can do to get it". Are they good hosts? I guess; they did bring toilet paper at the last minute when we ran out. But it feels much less authentic than someone who just wants to make their guests happy. In other words, as Charles Goodhart put it, "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." Airbnb ratings and grades have become the target, so they are no longer good measures.
Terrific recap! And nice job throughout in noting issues with how this instructor was teaching you without making it a mean-spirited blame game.
Thanks, Greg! My physics instructor was new to teaching (I remember those first years can be hard!) and it was clear she wanted to help us learn, but her teaching models from her education were - like for most of us - lecture based with traditional grading. Not her fault! At the end of the semester I "revealed" my true identity and we met to talk about her teaching. I focused on encouraging her by emphasizing the things she's doing well and how the things she's already doing (like Think-Pair-Share) could be transformed with little changes to have a big impact. She has a lot of energy, compassion, and a willingness to try new things, which are all strengths in an educator!
I would note that homework in chemistry and physics is an assessment. There is not enough time and room in exams to touch on all the things that need to be assessed. By not doing the homework there are things you may not have learned.
Possibly in an intro course this isn't apparent, but in my upper level courses the homework has problems that go much deeper than one can do in an in-class exam. Sometimes I address this with take-home exams.
In any course, homework can be an assessment, but it doesn't have to be.
Homework, like any assignment, can be considered practice or performance. Think about what Simone Biles does in her training facility, and what she does in the Olympics: mistake-making, which is an important part of learning, is useful in one situation but not the other. Likewise, in our classrooms, we should be clear with our students about the goals of an assignment: is the goal to learn? Then making and learning from mistakes should be valued, not penalized. If the goal is for the instructor to determine how much the student has learned, then be clear with the student that the goal is performance, not practice. When we mix the two - say, in a homework assignment that is designed to help students learn but where we also grade for correctness - the performance aspect trumps the learning opportunity and the only real incentive is for students to get the right answer, regardless of how they got there. For that reason, I think it's important not to mix practice and performance in a single assignment (the exception being if you offer retakes or revisions on assessments).
In my classroom, my philosophy is that homework is an opportunity for practice, not assessment, and so I grade homework on completion only. In the physics course I took, the homework was set up so I could do multiple attempts to get a higher score, which suggests the goal was practice, not performance.
I use it as assessment because the method is more important than a "right" answer. The students need feedback on the method to learn. Often the problem in the homework is not practice at all but a new concept that is an extention of previous knowledge the student learned. The grading is about much more than the "correct" final answer in such cases. Homework is often group work in my case and they have a chance to work with each other, explaining their thought process as they go through the problem. When this works it is a far more powerful learning experience for the students.
Often one assigns points to motivate the homework engagement - not something I am happy about, but something the students understand and expect. The transendental part is getting the engagement - then the problem becomes more than points. Yet, it can not reach that goal when students are only seeing the course as a grade to get.... this is something I haven't consistently been able to overcome.
Testing has another set of artificial barriers to learning and is often seen by students as assessment without meaning. Grades are the be all and end all for many of the students. Learning is a foreign concept.
I really don't want to grade at all! This is why I am looking at alternatives to convential grading. Clearly, the university and the students will not let me not give grades so I have to satisfy these diverse needs. Connecting real learning to an assessment that really assesses learning is my challenge. Can the grade be removed from the main focus for the students? Do mastery modules become merit badge counting and no differnt from tests, homework, and point collecting? I keep thinking about it.
You are calling out all the issues with industrialized education that many of us are grappling with - motivating students to focus on learning not just grades, assessments as measures of learning not just a barrier to learning, etc. You're right that it's hard to deeply change the impacts on our students when, in the end, we still have to submit a grade. I think about this a lot, for example, for Airbnb hosts. I've stayed in multiple places where the Airbnb host leaves messages in the house that say basically, "It is essential that I get a 5-star rating, let me know what I can do to get it". Are they good hosts? I guess; they did bring toilet paper at the last minute when we ran out. But it feels much less authentic than someone who just wants to make their guests happy. In other words, as Charles Goodhart put it, "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." Airbnb ratings and grades have become the target, so they are no longer good measures.