{"id":12,"date":"2012-04-03T11:18:41","date_gmt":"2012-04-03T11:18:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/ctl\/?p=12"},"modified":"2012-09-04T08:48:27","modified_gmt":"2012-09-04T12:48:27","slug":"academic-rigor-comments-by-jim-trostle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/ctl\/2012\/04\/03\/academic-rigor-comments-by-jim-trostle\/","title":{"rendered":"Academic Rigor — Comments by Jim Trostle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Below is a written version of comments offered in the general discussion by Jim Trostle of the Anthropology Department at the CTL roundtable on academic rigor on Thursday, March 15, 2012. We’re grateful to Jim for attending the roundtable and giving us permission to reproduce his remarks here.<\/em><\/p>\n

I am growing increasingly tired of conversations about how we can increase the \u201crigor\u201d of our teaching, and am increasingly eager to talk instead about how we can increase the impact and creativity and engagement and excitement of our teaching.\u00a0 It seems to me that we don\u2019t usually spend a lot of time defining what \u201crigor\u201d is, or what exactly it is supposed to produce among our students, but we nonetheless tend to measure it with easily obtained information (how many hours studied, how many non-A grades given, how many courses offered at 8 a.m. or on Friday).\u00a0 These measures tend to equate rigor with concepts like \u201cgood hard work\u201d or \u201cbeing a serious student.\u201d\u00a0 And then we turn around and compare our measures to those of other schools, never really knowing what the measures mean.\u00a0 Is a student who puts in 6 hours of study time per week more or less rigorous than one who puts in 15? And what about the student who takes Adderall and does the 15 hours it would usually take to do work in 3 hours instead.\u00a0 Is that rigorous or not?\u00a0 Is a course at 8 a.m. more rigorous than a course at 10? How about at 8 p.m. as opposed to 8 a.m.?\u00a0 And then how do we account for innate ability? For those who work best at midnight instead of eight in the morning?<\/p>\n

Are we equating studying with exercise for the mind?\u00a0 Well, exercise therapists used to think that the more their clients exercised the better.\u00a0 Then they decided that one could get adequate cardiovascular training in 25 minutes a day, and now some are suggesting that 30 seconds of exercise at peak heart rate per day is enough.\u00a0 Do we really know what the best study habits are for our students?\u00a0 (And if we know, do we also know how much variability there is in student study needs?) And what about that approach to learning which says we learn better not when we are deeply stressed but rather when we are relaxed and rested?\u00a0 If this is the case, a relaxed course might yield better academic outcomes than a rigorous one.<\/p>\n

Lastly, I asked about the difference between an absolutist approach to learning that says \u201cthis is the ideal of what constitutes knowledge, acquire it and you get an A, else you get a lower grade,\u201d and an incrementalist approach to learning that says \u201chere\u2019s how close you come to this ideal knowledge at the beginning of this course \u2013 progress this much more toward it and you get an A, and if you progress less relative to your own baseline score you get a lower grade.\u201d\u00a0 The absolutist approach would suggest that only a few students attain the ideal, and thus the A.\u00a0 The incrementalist approach would suggest that anyone can get an A, assuming they make significant and documented progress.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we award<\/span> As,\u201d you might say, we are gatekeepers, and our evaluations have value only if we assign top scores to a few.\u00a0 This is one philosophy of teaching.\u00a0 Another philosophy says we are coaches, and our job is to improve the performance of all.\u00a0 In this sense we create value that can be shared among many rather than limited to a few.\u00a0 I\u2019m aware of the danger of replicating Lake Wobegone\u2019s children, or of awarding A\u2019s for effort, so please don\u2019t misinterpret my remarks to mean that everyone deserves an A.\u00a0 The point here is that one can grade in (at least) two ways:\u00a0 on a scale where all are compared to one another, and only a few get the top score; and on a scale where each person\u2019s learning is compared at the beginning and the end, and excellence of performance is based partly on approximation to the ideal and partly on progress toward that ideal.\u00a0 It might be fun to think more about whether we could practice this latter kind of grading as well as the former.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile let\u2019s move on beyond rigor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Below is a written version of comments offered in the general discussion by Jim Trostle of the Anthropology Department at the CTL roundtable on academic rigor on Thursday, March 15, 2012. We’re grateful to Jim for attending the roundtable and giving us permission to reproduce his remarks here. I am growing increasingly tired of conversations […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":287,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/ctl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/ctl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/ctl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/ctl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/287"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/ctl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/ctl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/ctl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions\/64"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/ctl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/ctl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/ctl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}