No more questions? Really?

[steuard]

My students are apparently remarkably calm about this exam I'm giving tomorrow. I've had a big chunk of office hours this morning, but not a soul showed up to ask me anything. Even in class yesterday, one section got out a few minutes early because nobody had anything else to ask. (And I had to resort to torture to draw out the question before that: I started singing until a student asked something to shut me up.) I know there's not a whole lot of new material on this test, but some of it's pretty tricky. I'm surprised.

I guess that means I don't need to worry too much about difficulty level, eh? :)

Comments

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Please tell me you were actually singing the linked song.

One thing that is occasionally spooky-effective for eliciting audience participation, if you haven't tried it: count (in your head) to 10 after you ask a question. It will feel like forEVer -- seriously, it is unbelievably awkward -- but it turns out that if you don't count, you think you're giving people a ton of time to answer, but you're actually giving them, like, a second and a half, so if they're shy, or if they have complex questions that take a while to formulate, they won't get a chance to respond before you move on.

I also found that a simple shift in phrasing, from something like "What's the accusative singular of puella?" to "Who knows the accusative singular of puella?" got me a lot more raised hands. I think with the first phrasing everyone wants someone else to be the one person who puts themselves out there, whereas for the second you're asking them to make binary judgments about themselves.

I also found that giving practice tests dramatically increased both the number of questions I got, and students' comfort with taking the exam (stress was a big problem in my student population). Often people don't realize that they have questions until they try to do some sample problems -- they look at their notes or they hear you talk and it all sounds familiar, so it feels known, but that doesn't mean they can actually replicate it independently -- something they do not realize until they try. Also, while I did have to devote a week at the end of every quarter to doing, then going over, the practice test, I found the time well worth it pedagogically; it was a good reminder to review, and things that may not have made sense the first time around started to for many kids. Also maybe it let them see how the material for the whole quarter was connected (which maybe I should've been doing a better job with all along? ;)

Anyway, practice-test-as-basis-for-whatever-review-you-needed-to-do-anyway; I recommend it. OH AND. It means that you basically stop getting questions like "what's on the test?" or "what will the format of the test be?" And I for one hated answering those, so, win.

hee hee, you probably weren't asking for an info dump there. sorry, hard to resist ;). Hope your students are as totally physics-awesome as they perhaps think they are!

[nemene.livejournal.com]

I don't know about Steuard, but I found this incredibly interesting.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[steuard.livejournal.com]

Please tell me you were actually singing the linked song.

Oh yes. But I didn't get all that far through it before someone asked a question.

To address your next bit, I'm actually quite fond of trying to out-wait the students when I want them to participate. I don't generally count a specific time, but I'm very happy to wait well into the "uncomfortable silence" range. That's especially important when I ask for an answer from "somebody who hasn't talked yet today": over the course of the class, I get deeper and deeper into the shy portion of the population.

a simple shift in phrasing, from something like "What's the accusative singular of puella?" to "Who knows the accusative singular of puella?"

That sounds like it could be surprisingly effective. Thanks for the idea!

practice-test-as-basis-for-whatever-review-you-needed-to-do-anyway; I recommend it.

Yeah, that probably is a good idea. I've avoided practice tests thus far here, but mostly (I'll admit) because I'd rather just re-use questions from previous years' exams for that rather than writing entirely new ones. It takes me far too long to write a test as is.

Info dump appreciated!

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I admit the practice test is time-consuming to write. But then you can reuse it next year ;). And you get some of the time back in lesson-planning -- the review session plans itself once the students have taken the test, because you go over it and they ask lots of questions. Also you may be able to get applicable questions, or ones you can readily modify to be applicable, from other physics professors (ah, teaching: where you tell your students to do work themselves and attribute scrupulously, and then steal lesson plans from your friends ;).

[stereotype441.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of something that used to happen in Linear Algebra class my freshman year. When I was bored I would sometimes make little histograms of how many seconds the professor would wait between posing a question to the class and just giving up and answering it himself. It was amazingly bad--his average was about a second.

IIRC, steuard was the only person in that class who was quick enough to get an answer in edgewise.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

a) Histograms: awesome.

b) Man, linear was so boring. (My one math class before the Moody revolution.)

c) I bet he would've sworn that second was at least 10, if not 30.

I loved your parody!!!

[dmyersta.livejournal.com]

When my sister was in Les Mis and I saw the original for the first time, I couldn't help but singing the parody quietly to myself and later I dug through the boxes of my college papers stored in Andrew's closet to find the complete set of lyrics from when we all sang it!

Re: I loved your parody!!!

[steuard.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'm proud(?) to have warped your perception of the original. :) (Mind you, the complete lack of preparation or practice before we recorded it meant that our performance was, well, imperfect. But it was still a lot of fun.)

This reminds me of my experience with the Dragon Half end credits song (a rather surreal song that's either about sushi or an omelette). The show credits Beethoven for the music, but I didn't recognize the main theme (I did recognize lots of Beethoven references in the transitions). Years later, I went to an LA Philharmonic concert where they performed Beethoven's 7th symphony, and I nearly laughed out loud when they launched into the final movement.

as I recall...

[dmyersta.livejournal.com]

We sang it through at least twice before recording it and you're right - it was a lot of fun.

Re: I loved your parody!!!

[beth_leonard]

That was an awesome song. It was a little after my time, I think I was a jaded senior by the time it was recorded, but I loved it and it remains a fond memory of my time at Mudd.

--Beth