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And those same TAs are in the workshops right so they get to meet
so thirty-six or forty students actually get to know one group of TAs pretty
well
over the course of the semester. You mention the workshops for the first
time.
How do you think that's going?
It has its ups and its downs. It depends on the groups that are forming
in the workshop, I think. And the problems, the workshop problems are not meant to be
rote
problems you can work on your own.
They're supposed to be problems that require
several people together to
figure it out and i think
that bothers some of the students. Well, but the workshops provide a uh...
a great opportunity to work as part of a team and basically this is what you're
going to do when you graduate. Is work
as it is as part of a team solving problems in the workshop. So it's
excellence at something we just can't do at lecture as well and also we
can attack problems that you just can't do. We can attack complicated problems
in the in the workshops and uh... uh... there's a certain sense of
satisfaction, I think, in solving a very very difficult complicated problem
part of a team. Right, so there are two things that
frustrate people that
students have to realize. One there
is no answer key handed out of because it's like real life.
There's not answer key to life. You have to work the problem and come up with an
answer that
you as a team are happy with.
Another thing is
often students don't do Part One of the workshop which is the preparation
and so then these more complicated problems are really tough for the
unprepared.
But the workshop is a very
good scene. You know, I've been really impressed. I mean, it's much smaller.
It's just like a regular classroom so
there's students sitting at tables. Four students at each
and they're
in these little groups. They really are engaged.
A lot of them form study groups
made up from their workshop bunch.
They work outside of class and they make very good friends, I think, sitting at
the tables. The
students very rapidly know who the good students are and who the little more
challenged ones are.
It's a very nice atmosphere and one of things that
really impressed me is that uh...
how the better students really go out of their way to really help out the
other students.
It's
good that we try to have a very non-competitive atmosphere
where everybody could succeed. Right, and one of the important things in this large
course is that students aren't just learning from the three of us. They are learning
from each other and
and from everybody. Oh thank goodness, yeah.
So there's a lot of learning going on in multiple different dimensions.
So you said something about competition. Why don't you say something about how we actually grade the course?
One of the things that students always ask is "Is there a curve for this course?"
and our rhetorical question, of course, is "What's a curve?"
The students know what it is. But what we do the first day of class is basically tell
the students our grading scheme and, of course, points is points but
really say what you need to pass this course you need to get fifty
percent of all points
and that's
that's the scheme. And of course the nice thing about this is that
the students aren't competing with each other. We have no set percentage of A's or B's.
We are not going to flunk a particular number.
It really depends upon how how the class does.
So it's an absolute grading scale so one year, eighty percent can get A's and
the next year eighty percent can get C's .
Well I'm waiting for that 80% A's.
Haha well some years they do really well. I was so impressed this last
year. I mean
I gave...you know, it was a pretty hard final exam
but we had a lot of people doing really really well on it. You know there some
other ones that didn't do very well but, you know, they also didn't do any work so
it's not a bad scheme. So another piece of it in a
large format course.
the anxiety is that all the emphasis for the grade is on the exams
but because we have clickers, because we have workshops,
and what else do we have?
The Learning Center.
We have lots of ways for students to get those points. It's not
all done three midterms
and the final. So by coming to class and doing the quizzes and doing the
workshops,
what we see is that the students who do all that pass. It's part of this
success. There are other ways to show how good you are then just taking
an exam. The only people who really
don't succeed for the ones who don't participate.
Our participation is good. I mean, lecture attendance is amazingly high.
I had seventy five percent every day.
Some days much higher than that and that's really good
particularly when it's so godawful early in the morning at 9:30.
How are students supposed to get out of bed by nine thirty!
This is ridiculous!
Another thing we should say is about exams, right. They're not just multiple-choice exams
even though we have a thousand students..
What, maybe a third of the exam--
I brought an exam. I mean these things are
booklets. I mean look at this. It looks really intimidating
and there's a lot of stuff in here. We have our scantron
forms but
we also have a place on the scantron form
to put down written answers. Right, so students have to actually draw
structures and write structures and they have an opportunity to show us what they
know without the constraints of multiple choice.
It's good to have good handwriting. It's good to be
able to draw.
And then of course we get together with the graduate teaching
assistants and grade this thing
which of course is is quite a job. It's over
twenty TAs, a thousand papers. It's quite a scene. And then Joe has set up
this very nice web based
method to
give the grades back to the students so that they can see everything that
they answered and how they got it right or wrong.
and that's just as faculty is that we never turned back the scantrons so
there's no cheating
on the regrading of the exams. Ah! Our students wouldn't cheat! Hahaha
We should also mention that organic chemistry has this
myth of being a course of memorization.
and uh...
it's
It goes back many many years but one of things we do--well why don't you show...
Oh yes, I'll show..these aren't prepared..One of the things about
this business is, I don't why we didn't think about this decades ago but,
is that
organic chemistry is a huge amount of information.
I don't remember it all.
Well you remember more than me.
I don't remember any of it.
But it's a huge amount of information.
We don't expect students to sit there and then memorize this stuff.
So for exams we have we have a basic open book system
Well not completely open. We limit it. You get one piece of paper.
ticket one card
But look at these cards.
They are the most filled cards you've seen.
Well some of these cards are beautiful.
Multi colors.
The students work on these things like crazy. Now you see,
what's on this card.
This is fine print. Everything's on this card.
How do you use it on the exam?
This is the trick.
The good students don't use the card at all.
Why? Because by the time they've made up the card
they know what's on the card!
They don't need the card.
And so it's a wonderful system. It makes everybody feel secure
It actually gives us the advantage because we can ask more
complicated questions actually. That's a secret, don't tell the students.
uh... but
it's a good system and it makes everyone more comfortable.
And it really
helps dispel myths.