Late Assignments, Failed Tests, Sleeping in Class:
My College Students are Not OK
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/13/opinion/college-university-remote-pandemic.html
Jonathan Malesic notes:
The pandemic certainly made college more challenging for students, and over the past two years, compassionate faculty members have loosened course structures in response: They have introduced recorded lectures, flexible attendance and deadline policies, and lenient grading. In light of the widely reported mental health crisis on campuses, some students and faculty members are calling for those looser standards and remote options to persist indefinitely, even as vaccines and Covid therapies have made it relatively safe to return to prepandemic norms.
I also feel compassion for my students, but the learning breakdown has convinced me that continuing to relax standards would be a mistake. Looser standards are contributing to the problem, because they make it too easy for students to disengage from classes.
Student disengagement is a problem for everyone, because everyone depends on well-educated people. College prepares students for socially essential careers — including as engineers and nurses — and to be citizens who bring high-level intellectual habits to bear on big societal problems, from climate change to the next political crisis. On a more fundamental level it also prepares many students to be responsible adults: to set goals and figure out what help they need to attain them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/13/opinion/college-university-remote-pandemic.html
Jonathan Malesic notes:
The pandemic certainly made college more challenging for students, and over the past two years, compassionate faculty members have loosened course structures in response: They have introduced recorded lectures, flexible attendance and deadline policies, and lenient grading. In light of the widely reported mental health crisis on campuses, some students and faculty members are calling for those looser standards and remote options to persist indefinitely, even as vaccines and Covid therapies have made it relatively safe to return to prepandemic norms.
I also feel compassion for my students, but the learning breakdown has convinced me that continuing to relax standards would be a mistake. Looser standards are contributing to the problem, because they make it too easy for students to disengage from classes.
Student disengagement is a problem for everyone, because everyone depends on well-educated people. College prepares students for socially essential careers — including as engineers and nurses — and to be citizens who bring high-level intellectual habits to bear on big societal problems, from climate change to the next political crisis. On a more fundamental level it also prepares many students to be responsible adults: to set goals and figure out what help they need to attain them.
After the pandemic disrupted their high school educations, students are arriving at college unprepared
https://hechingerreport.org/after-the-pandemic-disrupted-their-high-school-educations-students-are-arriving-at-college-unprepared/
https://hechingerreport.org/after-the-pandemic-disrupted-their-high-school-educations-students-are-arriving-at-college-unprepared/
"Now, after two years of cobbled-together pandemic learning, many college students not only are less prepared than they should be, they’ve forgotten how to be students…
Uri Treisman, is nationally known for his techniques and philosophies for teaching calculus. He said the fall 2021 semester of first-year calculus was the most difficult he’s had in his 50-year career.
His students were making basic errors in algebra and trigonometry from the beginning. Despite Treisman doing all he could to help them succeed, about 25 percent of his students failed in the fall — compared to 5 percent in an ordinary year. …
And during the 2020-21 academic year, UT adopted a policy allowing students to designate up to three of their courses to be graded as pass/fail, rather than with letter grades, Patterson said. The standard policy, pre-pandemic, wouldn’t allow students to take advantage of pass/fail grading until they had completed at least 30 credits, which typically excludes first-year students. The emergency policy allowed students to “pass” these classes with a grade as low as a D minus, so students who earned a D grade in a prerequisite course could move on without necessarily having mastered the material".
Uri Treisman, is nationally known for his techniques and philosophies for teaching calculus. He said the fall 2021 semester of first-year calculus was the most difficult he’s had in his 50-year career.
His students were making basic errors in algebra and trigonometry from the beginning. Despite Treisman doing all he could to help them succeed, about 25 percent of his students failed in the fall — compared to 5 percent in an ordinary year. …
And during the 2020-21 academic year, UT adopted a policy allowing students to designate up to three of their courses to be graded as pass/fail, rather than with letter grades, Patterson said. The standard policy, pre-pandemic, wouldn’t allow students to take advantage of pass/fail grading until they had completed at least 30 credits, which typically excludes first-year students. The emergency policy allowed students to “pass” these classes with a grade as low as a D minus, so students who earned a D grade in a prerequisite course could move on without necessarily having mastered the material".
Related:
Disadvantaged kids hurt by keeping pandemic’s
relaxed teaching style
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/05/15/pandemic-easy-teaching-hurting-students/
A veteran teacher sees students being robbed of a chance of learning to handle stress.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/05/15/pandemic-easy-teaching-hurting-students/
A veteran teacher sees students being robbed of a chance of learning to handle stress.