Disclaimer: This is more of a blog page, check out the following link for a bulleted list of lessons I've learned: Lessons Summary
During my first semester at Butler, I was tasked with teaching PH 107- introductory physics 1 for non-physics majors. I had a class of 52 students! With the rise of AI, and having graded so much AI slop in homework at my last position, I decided at the beginning of the semester that I would altogether eliminate the homework category as something that I would spend time grading and putting in the gradebook. I continued posting "optional" homework, and solutions to those homeworks a week later for the students to still get practice. I assigned instead weekly participation assignments called "Slips and Bugs" that worked as an error tracker. At the end of each week, I asked them to submit a document outlining at least 3 mistakes they'd made on any physics problem: Write the original problem down, how you approached it, the correct solution, and write a reflection. I thought the accumulation of these assignments would be a helpful study guide for exams approaching, and that it would encourage them to work extra problems. Setting up my class this way had many issues that I later realized:
1. The weekly error tracker created a somewhat negative atmosphere- It got students to reflect often on their mistakes/errors, but I did not balance this assignment with any confidence-boosting activities.
2. When I eliminated the homework category altogether and did not tie points to those assignments, it either communicated to students that the extra practice was not important, or it did not force them to do the problems like they should have. I was under the assumption that the students would have the discipline and instrinsic motivation needed to act like adults and do the problems without outside motivation. This was a critical mistake. These students are mostly high-achieving medical students that really only care about their grade in the course. Hence, they hyper-focus on sources of points and ignore activities that to not win them ponts. This was counter-intuitive to me because I thought the points associated with the exam would get them to study.
Anyway, for exam 1, I gave a lot of announcements about it approaching, I released a practice test with solutions well ahead of it, I regularly told them about the homeworks that they should look at, and I reinforced important problems in weekly recitations. I extended my office hours to make myself accessible. I stayed after class every lecture to try to encourage them to ask questions. I thought I was doing everything right.
They took their first midterm on a Friday morning in class. I timed myself- I took 11 minutes so I gave them 50 minutes. I made sure students needing accomodations were scheduled to test under the correct conditions at Butler's disability testing center. When I started grading the exams over the weekend, I was overwhelmed with how many 20-40% grades I encountered. I was careful to grade generousy and give out a lot of partial credit for showing work, writing equations down, and at least having the correct method or correct units on answers. A surprising amount of the exams felt like many students had not reached the learning objectives that I wanted. The exam ended up having an average of 70%, and a median of 71%. It was a normal distribution, with a small handful of students ranging down as low as 20%. Historically, the lowest exam average I had seen up to that point was MAYBE an 82%. Because of these issues, I met that weekend with a Butler colleague for coffee. Shelby Terwillegar- she holds a PhD in education research and is a psychology lecturer. She also teaches classes in gender/sexuality.
I learned many things from Shelby. I summarized many of these lessons in myLessons Summary page. But in general, I realized that not assigning homework for a grade communicated to students that it wasn't important. It also didn't force them to engage with the problems. Hence, even though I was posting optional homeworks/solutions often and announcing it, I suspect many students didn't bother looking at it. This meant that very few students were thinking about physics at home and reinforcing the concepts. That greatly hurt their learning.
After talking to Shelby, I planned to restrcture the course asap. I spent the weekend redoing the gradebook, adding assignments in their learning management system, and preparing the lecture for Monday so I could communicate clearly how the class was going to change. I decided to assign very short problems after every class to be due by the following class time. I call these "supplemental problems". In addition to that, I switched all the homework assignments to be for a grade every week, and I updated all the documents to reflect that. I had a plan in mind when I came to campus on Monday.
On Monday, I held my lecture and discussed the changes. I was vague about the exam performance because I still had a few students who hadn't taken it and I didn't want to scare anyone. Unfortunately, the Butler students were already anxious and upset about it, and it was difficult to maintain a calm and positive environment in the wake of the exam.
The following week, I held a group exam. I told the students that their final exam 1 score would be 40% raw grade + 60% group exam grade. That way, I turned a negative experience into a positive one and they learned a lot in the process. The group exam went very well. They chose their own groups, everyone was chatty and smiling, and it raised the average from a 70% to a healthy 86%. I liked that everyone had the chance to gain mastery over the topics, and they earned their own curve.
Even though I took measures to recalibrate the class, reassure students that everything was ok, and put everyone on a better path by assigning more regular work, a handful of students continued to be a bit hostile in class.
Overall, it's been a very tricky process to balance student opinions, their desire to do as little work as possible, and my desire to provide a strong and slightly challenging but high-quality education. Physics already gets such a bad reputation, and in the age of AI, many people are finding shortcuts and outsourcing their thinking. My pedagogy is in direct conflict with many of their attitudes. It's been harder to navigate this than I was expecting.