Obviously, I’ve been away from the blog. (Thanks Mosher for keeping things alive!)
So what have I been doing? As many know, I’ve been enjoying tutoring. With the upcoming semester, I wanted to get some stuff ready for when students are really motivated to do things. In that regard, I have a “moodle” site. Last year, I acquired several AP Physics C students one month before the test, and helped them with problems. Two of those students had found some ‘not officially disclosed’ Multiple Choice sections of AP Physics C. (I had not known these exist.) To answer their questions, I am coding alternate versions of questions now. It seems to me that kids who work the multiple choice practice early on identify their specific weak points more easily than those who bang their heads on the free-response before they are really ready to cope with those, so I’d like to have a supply of useful MC questions for students to practice them.
Of course copyright prevents me from distributing the actual versions. But I don’t see anything wrong with figuring out the proportion of kinematic questions that have equations vs. numbers for answers, nor noticing that the AP picks values for constants and time that would never require a student to use a calculator. Now that I know the ‘flavor’ of the questions, I wanted to code up versions that test the same notions but in a slightly different way. Once coded these can be used year after year likely even after the AP decides to somehow change their test in some way.
It always helps to do this quite a while before they are needed, to create them in one fell swoop and organize them in categories. I’ve been doing that. I’ve also been coding conceptual physics questions and organizing that dovetail a particular schools curriculum and doing a similar things for a UIC Phys 105 class. All of this is enjoyable, not at all difficult and so on. But it is a time sink.
But now for conversation! I’d like to hear people’s opinions on a very old scandal related to university students at University of Central Florida. It happened in 2010. The scandal is discussed here: here.
If I understand correctly:
- When preparing for their midterm, approximately 1/3rd students in a lecture class of 600 students studied for their midterm by using a questions from a test bank which turned out to be the one the professor also used. Reports indicate the test bank contained approximately 300 questions; the midterm contained 50. (I assume it was the textbook assigned for the course, but I’m not certain of that.)
- The professor detected the fact that students had done so in part by noticing statistical anomalies in the distribution of the test and in part because a student sent him a copy of the test bank the students had used.
- Different students have slightly different things to say about their use of the test bank. However, one of the main points students seem to make is the professor gave the the impression he wrote questions himself. That is: they did not come from a test bank and so thought they had merely found a good study aid.
I want to hear what others think, so I’m not going to share my opinion at length. (I can state that Jim and I were in violent agreement on our views. 🙂 But I’m not at all sure our views are in the majority. ) I’m going to hold off saying more until I hear what others interested in sharing their views think. (For what it’s worth, I suspect people will have a view and must will be unlikely to change it with conversation. It’s clear from discussions back in the day that lots of people have very strong views on this. I’m just curious to learn what people think about the incident.)
Naturally, there are videos. This one is a very upset professor accusing his students of cheating.
This is posted by students to explain why they believed he did not use questions from the test bank and so thought they were just studying.
Anyway: If you find this engaging, let me know what you think. Off topic allowed. (And yes, you may also discuss the fact that a large trove of questions for the new SAT leaked this summer. The home of a former employee of the College Board was raided by the FBI last week. If your kid is a junior in high school, they might be interested in this tidbit. )
If the question are publicly available, than I don’t see the problem.
That is no different than reading a different textbook, with answers to the odd questions at the end of each chapter answered in the back of the book.
How can that be cheating?
Unless the Prof. told the students not to use a particular test bank, I cannot see how he could call this cheating.
I did not read anything other than this post – so I may not be grasping all the essential facts – but that never stopped me from offering my opinion before (grin).
RickA,
The issue with the AP multiple choice questions is that the only ones the AP released are the 1998 ones. The others (2009, 2008, 2004, 1993, 1988, 1984) have been obtained by someone at sometime. Test from those years are periodically posted in various locations (Dropbox, Google Docs and so on). The college board issues take downs and since the materials are under copyright, they come down. But enough students all over the world (and I do mean all over the world) have them that they will end up posted somewhere and then taken down again.
Needless to say, paper copies also circulate– so these will always end posted somewhere by someone (but not by me.)
So: at any given time, even setting aside any issue of copyright, as a practical matter you can’t advise a student to go find those multiple choice questions. The questions might temporarily not be online anywhere. But at the same time, I know they will pop-up and lots of high school students do find them. The questions are good for studying. And one hopes the College Board is smart enough to know they can’t reuse many of the circulating questions in their exact form on the actual test.
If they do reuse those exact questions, then students who have spent their final week cramming from those tests will at least a slight advantage relative to other students who didn’t know they exist. (And not all students are aware these MC questions are ‘out there’. Not all teachers are aware they are out there.)
If a professor uses anything that can be accessed on line to create test questions, it’s his fault that students found it, not theirs. It’s like email. It’s NOT private. Any expectation that it is private is wishful thinking. I’m reminded of the flap about the ‘private’ web site pages that weren’t even password protected.
It seems a case of a very lazy professor to me. He should at a minimum change the numbers and wording to reduce the advantage people with acess to old tests have. When I was in college, many fraternity houses kept extensive records of previous tests, and made them available only to frat brothers. After a test was taken, frat members would actually sit and try to ‘reconstruct’ the test questions, and that would be added to the files associated with each professor. The more conscientious professors would make enough changes that this kind of test preparation didn’t help much. Of course this scheme worked better for lower level ‘gut’ courses that lots of people had to take than for more specialized courses. Did this amount to cheating? Maybe not, but I found it unprincipled…. a lot like Hillary is unprincipled… the question was not if you should act in good faith, but instead what advatage you could gain without suffering any negative consequences. They were, in reality, mostly cheating themselves. Hillary, on the other hand, mostly cheats the public.
DeWitt,
We don’t know if the student found the testbank online. Only that they found it. Would it change your mind if they accessed it from a fraternaty file? Found it in the remainder bin at the Goodwill? Etc.
Since at least one person (you) gave theirs my view is: The fault lies primarily — and in fact overwhelmingly– with the faculty member in this instance. So I agree with you. But I would think it was his fault even if getting test banks was hard, and they bank was obtained in many old fashioned “pre-internet” ways.
And more over, in nearly all hypotheticals I can dream up about how the students got the testbank, I think the fault lies overwhelmingly with the faculty member.
But I can think of an awful lot where I don’t think it is. And even when it’s cheating by the students, I think the professor was a serious dolt. People teaching classes have a heavy responsibility to at least try to write tests that create an even field for students and to be aware of what might prevent that. Taking more than 1/2 of your questions from any single text-book test bank without changing them will always make it possible for some students who happen to have picked that test bank and cram it the night before the test to get stuff into short term memory will to outperform relative to how much they learned. And that’s not something a teacher should want.
What want kids to learn the material.
But calling studying from a suitable test bank cheating is absolutely insane from a learning point of view.
Testing yourself is one of the few known ways of to improve learning (see testing effect and retrieval practice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testing_effect ). It’s better than reviewing lists, it’s better than reviewing notes. It’s better than reading, highlighting and so on.
And one of the most efficient ways to test yourself is to find a test bank that matches the curriculum and assign yourself tests created from it. If merely finding any test bank and using it to study is cheating then faculty have actually forbidden one of the activities that best fosters learning. And that’s nutso. Totally nutso.
(BTW: one outcome of this incident seemed to be that U Central Florida — or at least the business department– evidently decreed that faculty would not use test banks in future. I don’t know if their faculty will really stick with that because I doubt if anyone at UCF is going to monitor the faculty on that point. But if the faculty do stop using test banks the way this prof did, that’s a correct outcome.)
I’m with RickA on this, no point in letting ignorance of the facts dissuade me from offering my opinion. 🙂
The facts as presented indicate the prof is at fault, although I don’t doubt that some of the students knew they were working actual test questions, not just a study guide.
SteveF,
Many professors at IIT and U of I provided practice exams which were often just last years tests. Nearly all handed back exams. This made the Frat. files considerably less valuable because everyone had access to enough material to self test. If someone in a Frat used their deep files to try to “memorize” how to do something, they would generally do worse on the test than others who used the test in the way that helps learning.
Earl
Yep. I can’t see any way in which the prof. comes out not sharing most of the blame here. But I do think if a student knows the problems they are cramming from are those on the test, they are cheating and at fault. I haven’t found information that indicates any students knew the professor created the test from this test bank.
I would be surprised if some didn’t suspect he might get at least some from this test bank. But heck, when I was a student, I always knew a prof might pick one of the unassigned problems from the back of the chapter as a test problem. And some did and often we knew which professors were likely to do that. (Heck, some professors said they were going to do it!)
Working extra problems from the chapter isn’t cheating.
lucia,
I would draw a bright line on breaking into a professor’s office or hacking into his computer and stealing the test. That’s cheating. You would expect to get expelled, not just fail the test, if you did that and got caught. Almost anything short of that might be morally questionable, but not outright cheating.
DeWitt,
Yes. Breaking into a prof’s office would definitely be pass the line!
Earl,
Yes. I agree with RickA. For some reason, when I read that I was thinking he meant he thought there wasn’t any problem with posting AP Phys MC questions. Why I thought that…. I do not know…
But if he meant there isn’t much problem with students studying from test banks if they are “publicly” available I agree. And I go further: I don’t think there’s much problem even if the publisher considers them “restricted” in some odd sense of “I’ve published them and placed them on sale, but only ‘intend’ them to be seem by people teaching while knowing darn well that printed paper doesn’t prevent itself from being read by who ever comes across the paper “
Lucia,
My agreement with RickA was in the realm of mouthing off with my opinion without bothering to inform myself of the facts. *smile*
I was pretty terse in my earlier comment, but I don’t have anything to add now that hasn’t already been said by you and the other commenters.
I don’t understand how there was disagreement over this. If you copy questions from some other source, people familiar with that source can get an advantage. Anyone who copies questions when making tests should know this. Claiming it’s cheating to study questions because a person might be lazy and copy those questions to make a test is just silly.
Brandon,
It’s interesting to find so many agree with Jim and me. Because when I learned of the story and I read around, a large number of sites seemed to take it for granted that if the prof called it cheating, then it was. When I told Jim the story, his reaction was “What a lazy idiot!” — and he definitely meant the professor.
Also, at UIUC, one year, TA’s had specific training about cheating. And the very clear message was the #1 responsibility was for those creating and administering tests to both (a) become aware of how cheating is done and (b) do things to prevent it.
So from my view, if a prof thought using the class test bank was cheating in the part of students, then the prof would need to not use the test bank. That would be the only way to “prevent” that sort of cheating. (Of course, if he doesn’t use the textbook text bank, using that test bank would then likely automatically become “not cheating” and revert to just “studying”– which is what it may have been on the part of the students all along!)
UCentralFlorida also seems to have deemed using the test bank cheating. But all I can think is that means that they cared more about the opinion of a faculty member who was pissed off he couldn’t continue to spare himself effort of writing questions than they cared about thinking about the whether using a test bank which turned out to be used by the prof really was cheating.
Moral dilemma
-whether to study past year exam answers MC that some other students had obtained, quoted chance of up to 20% overall would be used in current exam. Most people seemed to have them so no qualms in looking at them.
80% of questions were new so if you did not study anatomy properly you would be lost.
Best use of questions was purely directional in helping to understand the way MC questions were framed and used.
My main problem was my study method, Cranial nerves first, head and neck etc down.
Never quite reached the feet but learned enough to pass well anyway.
Two tips.
a. is never the answer to the first question
Don’t play poker at Uni if you wish to assure graduation.
Poker players are not very ethical.
So the students, who did not know which 50 questions the professor might select, learned enough of the full 300 questions to get many of the selected 50 answers right.
Isn’t that what they are supposed to do?
The lazy prof from this post immediately reminded me of this classic BSer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4gVkprDej0
I got a giggle that he also reminded Google’s “relateds” ML algorithm of him too, as the UCF vid is 2nd in the list of related videos. 🙂
TerryMN,
If that professor had been telling the truth about all that data etc. he too would have been in hot water himself. Among other things, if one has extremely sensitive stuff on a laptop which you bring to class (as it seems based on what the prof says in the video–so sensitive that various federal agencies would care enough to appear on the scene when the data has been stolen– you ought to encrypt those files. Which according to the prof story, he had not done– if he had, the thief likely would not be able to access the data. If extremely valuable proprietary info was on a portable laptop which is brought to lectures and he didn’t keep encrypt it there’s a pretty good chance the companies who owned that data and who hired the faculty member as a consultant would not be very happy with the prof.
Having to encrypt your laptop is a PITA. But really…. if you have tons of extremely valuable information (even if the value is purely commercial), you kinda-sorta have to do it. Not just carry the unencrypted material around lecture halls filled with lots of students, plop it on desks while you go about doing stuff.
There is also so much BS there. You would also think a thief who had grown up while computers existed would know Microsoft can’t detect that a machine has windows on it unless that computer has been hooked into the network of some sort. Microsoft may have word report back to Microsoft to check whether someone is reusing a particular license excessively, but that info isn’t obtained through psychic emanations. If the motive for stealing the machine was to get a test, presumably he would not need to hook the machine into a network, likely would not do so.
Anyway, it does seem this lecture did not cause the laptop thief to step forward. And I’m really not surprised because (a) he probably sensed the prof was bullshitting in some regard and (b) he probably didn’t trust that the prof wouldn’t subsequently report him to the police and so on.
Also… if all those agencies were already after him, and they already pretty much had the goods on him the thief would wonder why they hadn’t already pounded on his door.
Lucia,
Agree w/all of that – it strikes me as hilarious that anyone with a passing knowledge of hardware, software, networking, or laws/practices governing sensitive data would believe any of the BS he spewed. Which is why the “the questions I write… wait, no, you cheated!” prof reminded me of him.
MInd you, stealing a laptop is theft. If the motive was to get the test and the used it to study, that is cheating. But something briefer could be:
1) I have reported my laptop is stolen to the authorities. If you are caught, you will have a criminal record.
2) Using the test would be cheating and if caught you will be charged with academic dishonesty through the proper administrative means.
3) A new test is being written (possibly adding that the test will be pushed back a day as required to provide time to write it.)
If he really did have video and so on, the thief would likely be caught. There was no need for the whole song and dance about the FBI, federal marshals, SEC and so on. (Why didn’t he throw in Interpol? Or the local police for that matter?)
Of course stealing a laptop (or anything/anything of value, whatever the bar is) is theft. It was just blindingly obvious that he was fishing and had absolutely no clue what happened to his laptop so was trying to scare it out of someone. The fact that he did it so poorly and had so little a) knowledge about what it could/couldn’t do, and b) lack of respect for the tech knowledge of his students just makes me giggle every time I think about it 🙂
/I’m professor, hear me roar
//what a maroon
No comment or opinion on whether the motive was grabbing a test (though I’d doubt that) – I think he just wanted his laptop back.
TerryMN,
Obviously, the motive for stealing a laptop may very well have been to acquire a laptop. Or if it really did contain all the sensitive data the prof claimed it held, the motive could have been to obtain the sensitive data. Until and unless the found the thief, it would be very difficult to establish motive.
Lucia – agree, and good to see you back blogging
Hadn’t hurt about the SAT thing. Used to do some work for them. Not surprised.
UCF: The students didn’t cheat. Clearly the professor is at fault for not writing his own questions.
I tend to agree with the general opinion that the lazy professor is responsible for most of the problem. I’ll further note that if I had studied and understood the answer to 300 questions (not merely memorized), for many courses I’d probably have a decent understanding of the material on the test and deserve to do well.
OTOH, some of us attended institutions where honor codes might characterize this type behavior as “cheating” even if a lazy professor were to blame.
Unfortunately, there is another possibility. Perhaps the students had googled questions asked in a previous test (midterm, last year’s final). Having identified the professor’s source of questions for a previous test, some or many students would have an unfair advantage on the next test. Not too many college students are going to study/memorize answers to 300 questions randomly found on the internet unless they had good reason to believe it would be worth the effort.
Boris,
Are you not surprised because you know their set up lacks security? Or because their people are disgruntled? I have no idea how their system is run.
Evidently, some internal review had previously warned them their security was poor. The leak was known in early august. The raid of the former employee was last week. The college board describes that employee as “disgruntled” and he had certainly criticized them publicly recently.
The articles I read didn’t say if anything was found during the raid.
The articles around the time of the leak said the didn’t know if the fall SAT might not be cancelled– presumably if enough questions were leaked they would have trouble assembling a test that wasn’t compromised.
For what it’s worth, I always thought the ACT is the better test. But the SAT seemed to be used by a larger number of the more “prestige” colleges.
Security was more or less handled by the employee, so someone unscrupulous could have gotten away with something–at least after an administration.
Frank
Yes. This is why I don’t see students using testbanks they manage to get a hold of as generally a bad thing.
Sure. But the schools need to be careful to avoid defining effective study activities as ‘cheating’. Since use of testbanks– if available (which they might not) is actually an effective study method that fosters learning, I think there needs to be some additional factor present to turn the activity into something that amounts to cheating. For example: swiping the test bank from the professors office would do it.
I suspect this was the testbank the publisher created for the text book used in the class. So whoever found this probably did think it might dovetail better than average.
Just to be sure people know what test banks are:
Publishers create textbooks. They often also create a “test bank” which is — in principle– sold only to those teaching the class. In practice, they are more widely sold — but in theory only those teaching the class have them. Then the professor can– if he wishes– select question from these test banks.
Now adays (and honestly, even way back when) a student can find nearly any test bank and buy it. For example: Students at Naperville north use “Fishbane et al” for their AP Physics C class.
You can get the test bank here: http://www.testbanksales.com/shop/page/888/ Faculty are frequently given these banks for free. The publishers are writing them to induce faculty to assign the text books, and making it easier for faculty to write tests is something publishers find can help sell a book.
But the internet has made these easy to get for everyone– and likely cheaper too. The pages selling them may be violating copyright for all I know but these things are not difficult to get. I also knew a few people in college who bought solution manuals and test banks. Their grade tended to be no better than anyone elses. These resources only help if either (a) you actually use them as convenient sources of appropriate practice problems to supplement a professor who doesn’t believe in providing honest practice exams or (b) the professor is lazy enough to actually use the test bank raw in which case you might memorize answer. Most prof aren’t (b).
I agree with most of the commenters here that the professor is largely at fault. In an analogous situation, I was able to help my son with his math homework, by Googling it. In the 5th or 6th grade, he would sometimes get problems where I didn’t understand the point of the exercise. Also, sometimes, I just didn’t get the math. When I would use Google and employ the exact wording of the problem, it would come up on Google about 95% of the time.
JD
Actually I didn’t. Thanks Lucia.
You can assume all test banks are out in the open today. Best you can do is use algorithmic questions. On multiple choice you can move the answers around, etc. One colleague simply gives the students a huge number of questions frrom which he draws the test.
A tactic eli uses is to give partial credit on mc if the students write out how they get their answers. Speeds up marking and helps figure out what did not get thru and needs to be retaught. A test is quality control on teaching as well as learning
Lucia:
Actually they are given away for “free” if the instructor adopts the textbook. In case anybunny wants to know cost is a relatively minor issue in the choice of books by instructors but rather ancillary services offered by the publishers such as test banks dominates. This, of course, is why textbooks are so expensive. The people who select them do not pay for them.
eli
The partial credit on MC is a good strategy. I haven’t often seen it used– likely because MC is done to save time and once chosen, people really don’t want to also look at work.
Yes. A test is quality control on teaching– which is also why a teacher shouldn’t do something that disconnects the test outcome from learning — pulling all the answers from a test bank invariably does (because kids do study from those.)
Eli-
I should add: Yep. And you can get used ones practically for free if you (a) have no time pressure, (b) are not required to get some sort of online homework passcode and (c) can adopt an the previous version (which is rarely much different from the current one.)
I’m tutoring a students taking PHYS 105 at UIC. I made sure to get “College Physics” by Knight. You can see prices for different versions range from $289 to $15. But the “access cards” — often required to do the homework– always cost over $100. So kids can’t just buy the $15 version of the book for the info and go to the library if required to see the current homework. That old fashioned strategy used by many with little money is no longer possible.
The professor and students are focusing on the wrong thing. The objective is to learn the subject. Arguing over assessment procedure is incredibly pointless. The professor needs to work with that particular office at his institution that helps instructors improve their pedagogical methods. The best professors I had in college taught me things (or rather drew out things I hadn’t quite realized) through their thoughtfully composed examinations. Canned exam questions do a disservice to students. And FWIW, the only persons in the whole American K-20 educational system not specifically trained to teach are college professors. Coincidentally, they also cost the most.
JD Ohio,
Yes. The same thing happens with nearly all questions.
Even in the pre-internet 70s and 80s, one of the “reasons” for new editions of textbooks seemed to be that they came with new homework problems to make it slightly harder for kids to just pull out old solutions from friends old homework. We used “Halliday and Resnick” which had just transitioned volumes. Some students bought the old one– it wasn’t much different. Newton’s law, laws for friction etc. just don’t change very fast. 🙂
With regard to kids finding homework– I’m of two minds about that. On the one hand, kids need to learn to at least try the homework before resorting to googling. But on the other hand, kids report that many teachers won’t explain how to solve it. And…. I can confirm this is true!
The reason I can confirm it is that to get a better handle on “how” high school teachers teach physics I enrolled in a “Modeling Physics” class here:
http://eddata.fnal.gov/lasso/program_search/show_programID_new.lasso?program_id=64
And yes, some (not all) of the teachers held the “philosophy” that you don’t explain how to do the homework. Evah. Evah. Not even after the kid has struggled with it. (Mind you, that doesn’t mean the homework is never explained at all. Just never by the teacher. Some– not all– teachers seem to want to be 100% Socrates. My feeling is it would be better to be 50% Socrates.)
Gary,
I entirely agree with you with respect to the professor. And he clearly is not a professor who falls in the “best professor” category.
But I think it’s unfair to students to accuse them of “focusing” on the wrong thing by trying to get a good grade on their tests. Faculty from kindergarden through grad school decide the “focus”. If a faculty member decides on a particular method of assessment, the student is going to need to pass those assessments or they won’t graduate. And they do need good grades to convince potential future employers or future universities that they are good bets for either hiring or admitting. No matter what someone older or more mature might say about the unimportance of grades in the long run, they are quite important in the short run and the short run does make a difference to where you are in the long run.
Now, you might say: But the student could just explain that the reason they did poorly on assessements was that they knew that doing well on those tests was focusing on the “wrong thing”. But generally, the response those students who say something like that to potential employers or graduate admissions departments is “Uh… huh…..” .Then the employer or admission department moves on to the next candidate.
Whether one likes it or not, one feature employers do like in employees is a willingness to carry out tasks the employers sees as useful even if the employees does not yet recognize the importance. (Yes…. being able to deviate is also useful. But often, deferring to the judgement of the person in the “boss/teacher” position is a required personality trait.)
So: no, the students aren’t focusing on the “wrong thing”. All may be quite focused on learning. And they will still also want to pass the dang test even if the test is badly written, pointless, focuses on the “wrong” thing and so on. And well they should want to pass it.
So: Professor is focusing on the wrong things. Students are forced to expend energy on things he focusses on. They must do that even if his choice is “wrong”.
Gary
Of course… need to comment:
And for all the lack of training, I’m not sure they are worse than they would be if they were trained. Some highschool teachers are good; some are bad. All where “trained” to “teach” in the formal sense.
In the workshop I took…. if memory serves me correctly one of the teachers was to be freshly assigned to teach physics this upcoming semester. She was being transferrred from some other course. She had never taught physics. We were given a pretest. All she could say was “I don’t know any physics”. And I can confirm having sat at a table with her that she certainly did not know kinematics. That’s usually the first topic.
Sorry, but no amount of training to ‘teach’ is going to overcome the deficiency of a teacher who doesn’t know the difference between distance and displacement. And a two week session on how to use the “modeling method” isn’t going to get her up to speed to teach 2 semesters of high school physics.
I shudder to think….
Lucia,
Yes, of course the students are concerned with grades. My point, perhaps not clear in a short comment, is that the inadequate assessment procedure (tests and grades) diverted attention away from the purpose of the course. The instructor bears the burden of assessing in a meaningful, accurate, and effective way. It takes effort which many do not expend — sometimes from laziness, sometimes because they were not taught how to do it.
Being a capable teacher depends on innate skills, training, and a desire to teach well. Training really only has bearing on technique, but technique is important. Recall your professor (everybody has had one) who never looked at the class, only wrote on the chalkboard, and spoke so softly nobody beyond the second row could hear him. The guy was brilliant, wanted to reveal the wonders of his subject, but just couldn’t see how he failed to communicate. He and his students would benefit immensely from an evaluation and coaching. That’s what I meant by training. Sitting in “Education” classes? Never.
At my university and at many others much effort is being spent on improving learning and assessment. See, for example, http://www.learningoutcomesassessment.org/
Gary, Lucia,
Knowing the subject matter well is the minimum requirement to teach. Formal training in teaching technique is worthless without knowing the subject well. In high school, I encountered a few teachers who had not a clue about the subject matter they were ‘teaching’ (mostly in science subjects), and were hopeless. That didn’t happen in college, though of course some professors were more effective at teaching than others. I suspect it’s a lot easier to ‘upgrade’ the teaching skills of professors than to ‘upgrade’ the subject knowledge of high school teachers who don’t know the subject.
SteveF,
Of course. I start with the premise the knowledge base is adequate. Even the miserably poor teachers I’ve encountered were subject-grounded, although in two cases from high school, I strongly suspect dementia was present. Both were gone the following year.
Gary,
I agree many university faculty members could benefit from training. Of course, that will only happen and be effective if the school does value teaching enough.
Your school looks suspiciously like UIUC. Oskeewowow!
SteveF
I suspect so as well. There are all sorts of impediments to doing things to upgrade the subject knowledge of high school teachers who are employed full time. Taking the 2week ‘modeling workshop’ class only made me aware of some that hadn’t previously occurred to me. (And many had already occurred to me– being the daughter of a high school teacher.)
lucia and SteveF,
I’m reminded of management. IIRC, they teach people in business school that you can manage employees doing stuff you know nothing about. I have my doubts.
DeWitt,
I suspect if you have a very small class, the students are very motivated, the topic is very short, and an appropriate packet of curricular materials exist, a teacher can ‘lead’ a group of students into teaching themselves something about a subject.
For example: in high school, Miss Curry “taught” a 3 week ‘mini-course’ in “computer science”. No more than 4 of us took the class. We did some pseudo code, wrote a code in Basic that did… something (add number sequentially?) walked over to Barat College, entered the code and waited about 1 -2 minutes for each answer to come back from the actual computer which was over at Lake Forest college. We did learn something, but it certainly wasn’t a full blown CS class. It was fun. All of us, (including Miss Curry) laughed waiting for the numbers to arrive.
Miss Curry readily admitted she didn’t know much CS, but she thought this would be a nice mini-course. And honestly, it was.
But really, this isn’t remotely like having a teacher who to all appearances knows no kinematics in June be slated to teach a year of introductory high school physics starting in August– and without even being forced to take a full college level class during the summer. All I can hope is that it was really just a fall back plan and that school system hired a physics teacher during the summer. Because…well.. omg!
Oh… sheesh… I keep thinking about an issue even with a teacher who did mostly know physics….
Oh– some of you with degrees in technical fields will get a kick out of this….(in a bad way).
I have a student taking PHYS 105 at UIC. They asked me why it is that universities have people whose English is nearly impossible to understand teaching introductory physics. (And she noted the TA’s were just as bad or worse.)
I gave her three reasons. And told her it’s been this way a LONG time.
Since we are getting into teacher competence today, a couple of interesting things pertinent to my 15-year-old son came up today that show the importance of teacher competence.
…
Last year my son got all “As” in English, but felt he wasn’t learning anything. (In fact, on his own he asked for a tutor last winter) His State test scores dropped precipitously to only being in the top 49% for the writing and grammar portion. (My evaluation is that he is a klutzy writer who meanders too much in getting to his point, in addition to needing to understand grammar better) About a month ago, I hired an English tutor for him, and his new 10th grade teacher, who appears to be much more organized than his 9th grade teacher, told Mark that he had written the best essay in his class. Mark wants to learn, and he needs direction in this area, which he is now getting.
…
On the other side of the coin, it appears that his young math teacher (who appears to be exceptionally nice and does appear to have a mastery of her subject) is somewhat afraid to push her students in her Algebra II class. Mark said that he isn’t doing well on the quizzes, partially because the class isn’t being pushed hard enough and asked for a math tutor. (Last year he got all “As” in math and scored in the top 6% in math on the State tests — up from the top 8% in our old school district) If I can find a math tutor for him, I will get him one.
JD
It took me a while to figure out why my physics prof was always talking about Russian Ships.
Lucia,
Yes, been that way for a very long time. I had a couple of TA’s who were nearly impossible to understand. As to why this is the case: ummm….. because science is hard for most students, and lots of other courses are much easier for them. I remember attending a pre-freshman orientation with my daughter at the University of Miami. Each department had set up a few tables staffed to answer parents’ and incoming students’ questions about that department. The science and engineering tables were basically abandoned… a handful of students and parents at most… some of the technical departments seemed to have not a single student or parent interested in talking. The social ‘sciences’, journalism, teaching, and (OMG!) business administration were swamped…. some people were simply not able to get close enough to talk with a staffer….. a total commotion.
.
I would have been shocked had it been any other way. Surprising was that I had a chance to chat with Donna Shalela (sp?), who was president at UM. I asked her what she and the other cabinet members thought when slick Willy lied to them about Monica’s accusations. Her reply: ‘We wanted to kill him.’ Chalk up at least one honest answer from a political insider.
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The only way to keep departments in the physical sciences going is to ‘import’ talent, most often from places were rigorous study and dedication to learning are given a higher priority than in the States. People who don’t want to apply themselves to study have been running away from science and engineering since at least the 1960’s.
SteveF,
That’s a reason. It’s not the only one.
But another one is that when US citizens or green card holders do graduate with degrees in science and engineering, can get jobs outside academia. Once a person leaves that path, they are not all that likely to come back. But students who need green cards often find it very difficult to get hired by companies or national labs (or at least once did). It’s not impossible, but many foreign grad students I knew expressed frustration — and they seemed to facing something quite real.
I suspect there is still some differential.
In the past (and likely even now) the prospects for jobs in industry are sufficiently low relative to those for other students and their prospects at home also not so bright that these students will stay in the US means nearly endless post doc and so on. And they will keep interviewing for a very long time until they do eventually get a job in academia. Since they don’t get offers in industry, while others do, academia ends up with an even larger proportion of those people teaching.
Another reason is that many schools will hire people who can’t speak English while industry often seems not speaking English as a bar to hiring. If not speaking English were seen as an absolute disqualification by universities, they would end up hiring someone else who might have fewer publications and who might not be as interested in beavering away at research. But that person would still be a person who speaks English. The fact is: Not speaking English is not seen as a reason to not hire someone at many schools.
Mind you: I never had to sit through a class taught by someone who literally could not be understood. I only dealt with accents– and always ones I could manage to understand. But I went to an ASME meeting and someone who as teaching at a university in DC came up to me and tried to engage me in a conversation. I absolutely, positively could not understand word one. I’d chaired his session– where I could not understand a word. But I thought that would just be some issue with presenting. But nope, he siddled up and tried to talk to me as we walked several blocks to a lunch destimation. I could not understand _a_ _word_.
And this guy did have a job teaching– so it can be very bad.
I once took an algorithms class from a well known person in the field. One of the questions on one of his exams had you developing an algorithm to minimize the number of stairs traversed while labeling the endpoints of wires.
Another class, the professor used the exact same test from just 2 years ago, which I had in my possession but never bothered to study.
MikeN,
I will admit to not having a clue what this even means!
lucia, when I first read your comment I shared your mystification because I couldn’t figure out what “enveloping an algorithm” would mean. Then I realized that’s not what it said, and it was supposed to say “developing.”
If I’m not mistaken, what MikeN is referring to is if a person has to label the ends of wires to mark what they’re for/should be attached to, it can involve a lot of walking to get to the ends of all the wires (still not as bad as actually running the cabling, I’ll have you know). Figuring out how to do the task most efficiently in order to reduce the amount of walking (specifically up and down stairs) could be an interesting problem that produces useful results.
I’m not certain that’s what he meant, but I know it’s a problem I’ve thought about myself when dealing with computer networks. I never tried to truly solve the problem though. There always seemed to be too many oddities I couldn’t predict to come up with a good solution.
I mean, seriously, it isn’t hard to cut a cable and put a new endpiece on. You just cut it, attach the new connector and krimp it on. Why would you loop a hundred foot drop six times so it fits in a single room span? Why?!
Sorry for the rhetorical question in that last comment. I can’t offer an answer of my own. I just remember trying to sort through the mess of cabling in that crawlspace and not being able to comprehend anything I saw.
There was even one cable mixed in with the rest that clearly had never been plugged into anything. It was bundled up nice and tight with a dozen other cables though, so it was sure to stay in place doing… god knows what.
Brandon,
If the cost of the extra cable is minimal compared to the cost of doing another cable pull, installing the extra cable before it’s needed isn’t a bad idea, provided there’s some expectation of needing it down the road. From your description though it doesn’t sound like that was necessarily the case.
Ahh… Now I get it. I just didn’t recognize the overall task! Installing the wiring.
Lucia,
Yes, it is more difficult for a foreign national to get hired in industry. But it does happen. The biggest problem is not necessarily language skills. Companies (especially small to mid size) are unwilling to jump the hoops required to sponsor someone for a green card. I think businesses are also more reluctant to hire someone who’s English is non-native if they will be expected to interact with people outside the company, unless their English is very, very good. I sell instruments regularly to industry, universities, and sometimes government labs. I am certain there are lots of foreign nationals everywhere, though you are right about the greatest relative number being in academia. There are far more foreign born people from Eastern Europe and Russia working in science and engineering than I would ever expect based on the overall population of those folks. The collapse of the Soviet block probably has something to do with it.
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Outside the States the situation can be even more extreme. I spent a few days at an Australian national lab a while ago, and it was sometimes hard to even find an Aussie; department heads were Aussies, but for sure way over 50% of the scientists working there were born elsewhere.
SteveF,
Yes, it’s both the hoops; the English and a preference for good conversational English in people who represent the company to outsiders. There are probably also some other factors. (Cultural match with clients can be helpful in sales and so on.)
Indian and Pakistani students had trouble; that was mostly the hoops.
Yep. Lots of them.
In the US, most people at most national labs remain American. The more closely connected to weapons or anything highly sensitive the more so. But some departments have a sizeable foreign national contingent.
So for example: At PNNL, I was in a department where a fair number of projects were connected to things happening on the Handford site. These departments had virtually zero foreign nationals. The reason was that even though many did nothing on the site, most periodically did need to visit the site, or d things involving the site. Getting a foreign national cleared to go could be dicey– not impossible though it was impossible with some countries. Generally, foreign nationals could get on site– provided they were escorted. Needing an escort constantly is obviously a problem if you are expected to actually work somewhere, so the number of foreign nationals tended to be small.
In my department, permanent hires a visitor might have suspect were not Americans were generally naturalized; they weren’t green card holders.
In contrast, Jim worked in a department that did more weather/climate related stuff. They had virtually no involvement with the site. I don’t think Jim ever visited it at all. Jim’s department did have some foreign nationals employed.
PNNL would have been somewhat intermediate relative to weapons labs or labs where everyone needed to have at least an L or Q clearance so as to even work on the site. (Those employed on the Hanford site itself were, I suspect all Americans.)
Earle:
If you expect to need to extend the current run, it might make sense. That wasn’t the case here. One end of the cable terminated in a corner of the building, and the other end ended in a router. There was nowhere for it to be expanded to.
There are tools for that
https://customtoolsupply.com/catalog/Locating-and-Measurment/Wire-Mapping/Multi-line-Identifier-8-cap-57-808
Eli,
I suspect using those to do your homework would be cheating. 🙂
Yes, Brandon has it right. I thought it was a fairly common puzzle, along the line of finding the different weighted coin among 12.
So say 200 wire ends on each side, and all you have is a tool to detect a closed circuit, and you can tie together endpoints.
Order n solution is pretty trivial.
So label 1&2, and tie them together. Go to other end, you can find 1&2 together, then you tie one of them to another line, label it 3, then go back to other side, determine which one is 3, and which of 1&2 on other side is which, etc.
JD
Hmm.. that’s quite a drop. Had the previous year been a dramatic rise. (There is some evidence some teachers … uhmm…. “interfere” with tests.)
But either way, a tutor to remedy a weakness is wise.
I’ve read some writing by highschool kids. Meandering is not atypical. Among other things, they don’t know that short is better than long. They do know it when reading. But they often experienced longer stuff got better grades when younger. And honestly, when very young, assignments are often “write ‘n’ pages”. So they get the impression that length is a positive feature.
Guidance definitely will help.
Good luck!
Lucia “(There is some evidence some teachers … uhmm…. “interfere” with tests.)”
…
Don’t think so in this case. In the 7th grade, Mark had an old-school English teacher who pushed him. His scores went up. (She had very nice things to say about him at the end of the year.) In the 8th & 9th grade, both teachers were fairly easy, and his scores went down although he got straight “As.” One thing, I am learning is that when a student is motivated to learn, tutors are very helpful and effective. Mark’s English tutor is helping him a lot.
Re: Math Tutor Just remembered that our Chinese tutor who is helping all of us learn or in daughter’s case, not forget Chinese is a civil engineer working on her dissertation. She can also tutor Mark in math. Once he gets started, I know he will be fine. He has always been good in Math.
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Lucia: “Meandering is not atypical.” I understand that. My ultimate goal is for Mark to get a merit based scholarship both for financial reasons and because I don’t like the manner in which colleges are run these days. He has scored highly in Math & Science, and the one area he needs to work on is English and Writing.
JD
JD
Yep. It works provided the kid wants to learn and improve. If the kid only wants a tutor to make homework go faster… not so much.
Actually, it is not clear that Eli’s tool would help. If it is limited at 32 wires at a time, then you would still be at order N, the same as the trivial answer. If you can repeat the connectors, so that the tool will classify each wire into one of 32 sets, then it would be helpful.
Surely someone makes a device that can apply different voltages or different tones or something that can distinguish individual wires that aren’t color coded to start with, color coding being the obvious solution.
How many Newtons
Could Sir Newton force
If Sir Newton
Could force Newtons?