During the last few years, I’ve watched professors and policymakers debate about the purpose of a college education. Some argue that students should learn virtue during college. Others argue that professors should teach students to be social activists.
I will not tell colleagues, particularly those from other disciplines, what they should do in their classrooms. But I keep my own teaching goals simple. In each of the calculus-based introductory college physics classes I teach, I have two primary obligations:
• To provide my students with the best possible opportunity to learn physics with deep understanding, given the other responsibilities of my job; and,
• To assess my students’ understanding of physics with integrity and assign course grades that reflect that assessment.
I make an effort to treat each student with the dignity and respect they inherently deserve, regardless of whether they are struggling to learn physics or finding it easy.
But I am not trying to make my students better people. I would have little chance of success with that since I spend about 80 hours in class with these students and they have spent several orders of magnitude more time with their parents and peers.
I am trying to make them better scientists and engineers – by giving them the opportunity to learn with understanding the physics that forms the foundation of their disciplines. Scientists and engineers who understand the scientific foundations of their disciplines have more potential for innovation than those who don’t.
And perhaps the teamwork we foster in our studio physics classes helps some students understand that human beings are more productive scientists and engineers when they work in collaboration with peers. But helping students build better relationship skills is not on my syllabus, nor on any hidden agenda I have.
When it comes to assigning course grades, I keep in mind that I am sending a signal to the professors who will be teaching these students in their upper division courses in engineering, science and computing. Engineering professors have told me that students who earn B or better in our physics classes are highly likely to succeed in their engineering programs, and that a C in a physics class is a flashing red light. Of course, a D or F stops a student’s progress almost completely. Some students who earn D or F do so because they haven’t taken the challenge of learning physics in my class seriously. Those students can try again. There are other students who have had some sort of disruptive experience in their lives during the semester that prevented them from learning. Withdrawals were invented for those students so that they can have another chance without an academic penalty (although they have lost a semester of their lives, and that is a real cost). There are also a few students who seem to just not have the intellectual gifts required to learn physics at the level I am requiring. That is sad but true.
But I do not give a student whose level of physics understanding is poor enough to merit a grade of “D” a better grade because they are ready to graduate or because they had a disruptive experience. To the best of my ability, I give students grades that reflect their levels of physics understanding.
This is not the sort of thing that makes me popular with students or administrators or even with some colleagues in other departments. But it’s still the right thing to do.
A bit about the “given the responsibilities of my job” phrase in the first item at the beginning of this post: The reader should note that my assignment of responsibilities says that I should spend 30% of my effort teaching my 63- or 72-seat studio physics class. I spend more than that, but there has to be a limit. That means I cannot justify spending out-of-class time tutoring my students individually except during my two office hours per week (each of my two TA’s also holds two office hours per week, so in total we are available to students 12 hours per week including the six class hours). That time constraint also means that I cannot give my students individual oral exams, particularly because I give weekly quizzes on Fridays, which I then grade in time to return at the beginning of our 8 am Monday classes. I’m sure there are professors on my campus who give their students individual oral exams and spend many hours in one-on-one meetings with students each week. Good for them and their students. I can’t do that and also do the other things I am asked to do.
Bridge to Tomorrow 