Am I Just Being Cynical?

What was the most surprising aspect of this book, and why did it surprise you?

The most surprising thing to me was the chapter on international students and how they view us/undergraduate students in the United States. I am quite aware of cultural differences, as it was part of my undergraduate studies, but I was not that aware of how the “American” students were viewed. It may be because of a) the activities I was involved in as an undergraduate student, b) the fact that I never lived in the dorms, and/or c) my academic mindset as an undergrad. In hindsight, after reading the chapter, I am actually not that surprised.
I should rephrase that, I am not surprised that “American” (I hate using that term) students are ethnocentric. It is, however, surprising how apparent it is. I thought that when I was an undergrad, I was the only one that noticed the other students’ ethnocentrism. I also thought that the only reason I saw it was because I was heavily involved in diversity and human rights and social, cultural, and political affairs. Because of these activities and interests I was surrounded by diversity and took opportunities to interact with others.
However, as I now think about it, I was, and still am, ignorant of international affairs. I think that it is definitely a result of the ethnocentric education I have received throughout my life. Although, the small amount of education and socialization with international affairs I have sought out and received has benefited me greatly in my understanding of the world (i.e. Middle East conflicts, cross-cultural sensitivity etc.). I wish all students could get some of this exposure. It needs to be done differently than just forcing it, however. That is, it seems when it is forced on them, they look at it the way they look at “liberal arts” courses and do not take it seriously.
As a side note, when Nathan was referring to how the international students were confused on what a “friend” is. It really hit home. We really do not have the types of friends that the other students talk about, at least I don’t. That is weird.

What advice would you give a new college student?

I think the biggest thing I can tell as student is to make friends they can count on. Specifically, I would encourage them to make friends with international students. Getting a wider world view is priceless when it comes to being a citizen. Aside from that, I think that a student should have a friend or group of friends they can count on to help them along the way, and hopefully they can reciprocate the help. Nathan talked a lot about the failure to create community within universities. So, I would encourage it, perhaps by telling then to get involved in campus organizations. Here, they can find like-minded individuals that probably take their education seriously. Perhaps if the student isn’t taking their education seriously, the other students may rub off on them.

What advice would you give a new instructor?

I would encourage interactions with diverse students. The chapter on international students really hit home for me. I feel like the insight I gained from that chapter has changed my outlook on teaching. As noted in the response to the first question, I am not surprised by the ethnocentrism of the “American” students, but I feel like I can now see the repercussions of such a worldview. I feel like instructors should be aware of their own ethnocentrism as well. A second piece of advice I would give is no matter what you do, the students will not be what you want. Don’t take it personal. That is, for the most part, no matter what type of instructor you are and what you teach, the priority of the students is not your specific class. So, when things in the classroom go awry don’t blame yourself, just keep working on it.

Has my view of undergraduates changed?

It hasn’t changed. They have their priorities and it is largely a reflection of our culture. The education system in the United States is much like a corporate entity that does not value intellect. Therefore, the students do not value intellect (for the most part). I should note that I do not blame the students for this like I used to. I blame the culture. I believe we touched on this a bit when we were talking about learner-centered teaching.
I feel like even if I do focus on learner-centered teaching the students will still see my class as an annoyance. In fact, I was talking to a professor the other day and I was giving him/her advice about how to change things up in the classroom based on the things we have discussed. S/He liked the ideas and felt like incorporating them into the class. However, a couple students overheard us and said “oh god no. Just lecture. Nobody wants to deal with your activities every class time.” This might be an isolated incident, but it got me thinking “who are these activities helping?” Perhaps it is just making the instructor feel less bored and the students are responding positively because the instructor is noticeably less bored. Either way, I think they are probably a good idea, but I think it might benefit me more than the students, or at least only benefiting the students in a secondary way. It could also be that the weather is making me cynical.

Excuses are like [fill in the blank], everyone's got one.

I think one of the most surprising things from this week’s readings was how it made me feel about myself as a future instructor and a former (undergrad) student. This mostly comes in response to the Lang chapter. I have noticed my strict attitude towards handling excuses for many issues, in regards to grades, deadlines, etc. I haven’t even taught yet and I feel like I’m strict. This mostly comes from the fact that I was very resentful and bitter towards other students when I was an undergrad. I was a non-traditional student with a daughter and 3 jobs and I still managed to get my sh** done on time. Why can’t they? With this attitude I formed an impression of how I would treat such issues when I was the instructor. However, reading Lang’s examples of what students were going through really made me take a step back and look at my attitude.

This brings me to my next point, which leads to the discussion surrounding “learner-centered” teaching. Those experiences that I described above formed an attitude in me. This attitude was that undergraduates are lazy and cannot be trusted to take charge of their own education. Before I am chastised for claiming to have this attitude, I should note that I hold this attitude to a much much lesser extent than I hear from a lot of faculty, not only at this school, but others as well. That said, after reading all the readings for today I feel even less strongly about this. In fact, while I was reading, I took some ideas that I will put into place into my classes. However, there are some downfalls to some of the learner-centered approach, particularly for larger intro courses like the one I have to teach. I can definitely see the benefit of the exchange of power for upper division courses and graduate courses. The lower level introductory ones would scare me a bit, though. I do not think it is because the students are stupid, but more so that they are not invested in the course if it is just a general education requirement. Furthermore, NDSU seems to have a reputation of non-involvement. I may be wrong about this and I am curious how others view the school.

I have a couple questions regarding the readings and hopefully can get some answers or opinions. First of all, I had some trouble when reading the learner-centered chapter as it seemed a bit cluttered. Particularly, where does one draw the line? The author offers a clear example of the line being crossed, but there have to be less clear areas. One of my professors as undergrad did one of the author’s suggestions and I, as a student, felt s/he allowed it to go too far. I have to be honest I lost some respect and confidence in her/his ability to teach me. A second question is in regards to excuses. Where is the line there? Lang suggests being uniform in your decisions. This seems okay, but what about those students that have real excuses? Personally, a person that just lost their mother has a better excuse than a person that wants to go hunting. Also, at what point do we just stop believing excuses? We’ve all heard the “my grandmother died”, even though she also died last year examples. Any thoughts?

Ho hum psychology

• Have knowledge of, and be able to discuss, the social psychological theories, and evidence for the theories, that attempt to explain social interaction
• Have an appreciation for the many factors that affect human behavior
• Understand the ways in which the scientific method is used to investigate human behavior
• Be able to recognize how the content of the course relates to the real world

I think the biggest problem that will occur in my class will be doldrums. I don’t think that it will be my fault as much as an instructor, but more so the size of the class and the content. The size of the class causes an issue for obvious reasons, but the content creates a different set of boredom inducing qualities. Most of social psychology is quite interesting and can be made very fascinating. However, some areas are quite a bit more fascinating than others. Therefore, combining with the natural doldrums that occur, certain necessary topics will create a double whammy of doldrums. In order to take care of this problem, I think that there is one excellent option. Lang points out different experimental projects and activities. The key here is to utilize these ideas during topics that lack a certain fascination. With the foresight (knowing as a student and researcher) of somewhat boring topics, it would be smart to create those experimental activities and projects for those specific topics ahead of time.

Another problem that can tend to happen in psychology, and particularly social psychology, is problem students. Students tend to get rude during lectures surrounding human behavior. They will shout out things like “well that doesn’t apply to me” or will just plain not “buy” any of the theories. This tends to happen when the theory implies something uncontrollable or negative about things that they can relate about. It happens in social psychology courses all the time, because social psychological theory basically takes the rational human away from human behavior. This is usually met with some resistance. While it is okay to not buy all theories, most of these theories are how the majority of a scientific field understands human behavior, so there would be no class without them. I really do not know how to deal with this issue. If anyone has a solution, I’d be happy to hear it.

Aside from the last example, most of the problems that I predict are quite manageable. I liked the one part in the Davis book regarding teaching in times of crisis. Social psychology has a unique position when crises, such as school shootings, happen. There are theories to explain the behaviors or reasons why they happen. My question is do you dive into that topic? Or do you just acknowledge the event and move on? I have opinions for both, but I’d like to hear other ideas, which I will bring up in the in-class discussion on Thursday.

The grades are in!

I did not realize how anxiety provoking the grading process can be. There are numerous issues I had not taken into consideration. I always assumed I would just assign a point value to the assignments and overall grade and then grade them. Perhaps this is because I had been a TA so many times before and it was never my problem if the grading scheme was off. Now that I have read the issues regarding grading, I think I will be a bit more equipped when those issues come up. For example, there are different types of grading styles that are useful. However, I think that a lot of the suggestions both books point out would not work out well for a large class. I am specifically referring to assigning grades here and not strategies reduce arguments etc. I think for a larger class the only way to go about assigning grades is the basic absolute standards approach. However, if one was to be teaching a smaller upper division class, then things like achievement of objectives would be preferable.

The first thing that I have to admit is that I was considering grading on a curve. Not a traditional curve in the sense of a certain amount of students receive an A and so on, but one in which the highest grade for each test, paper, and assignment sets what the 100% mark means (or something along these lines). However, after reading Lang’s scathing review of grading on a curve, I’ve pretty much dropped this thought. I know he wasn’t specifically talking about what I was thinking of doing, but he makes a good point about the students being graded off of my standard, instead of what the other students are doing.

The second thing I plan on doing is giving extra credit. Before reading these chapters I was not going to do so. I am still not going to give the extra credit in terms of a set of extra points for completing a task, but as both authors suggest, I’m going to give them opportunities to prove effort. Basically, I will have a question every class and if they respond, I will then give them attendance (or effort) “points”. At the end of the semester these points will be put toward bumping up a letter grade if they are teetering on the edge.

Finally, I may actually allow them a chance to appeal a grade on a test or paper. There was a brief part in the Davis book that mentions some teachers have students to come up with a short appeal that provides evidence from the material to back up their claim. I think this is a neat idea. While I don’t think many students would do it, it provides them a chance to back up their claims. This is what we are supposed to be teaching them to do, right? If they are correct and may grading was faulty, then I can change it without further issue. If they are wrong, I think that doing so may get them to stop and think where they may have gone wrong, and then stop pursuing the issue.

"Let's Get Into Groups!"

For an informal, nongraded group activity, I always liked games or contests. What I would do was lecture for the first 1/3rd of the class time. I would then break them up into groups of four. Then they would get into their groups and pick team names, as Davis suggests. For the actual contest, I would have premade, somewhat hard, open-ended questions. They would then have three minutes to come up with an answer and hand them in. We would then spend some time discussing the merits and failures of each group’s response, allowing the group to defend their answer or argue against another group’s response. A winning group would be awarded a certain amount of points and at the end of the class time the group with the most points would win a prize.

For a formal group project, I would want to have the groups solve a controversy. That is, in groups of four, each group would be assigned a chapter, within which there may be some debate in the field. I am thinking of a Social Psychology course here. The group would then have to split into two, two presenting one side and the other two presenting the other side. Each subgroup of two would have to write and present their side and then together as a full group come to a consensus which they have to write and present at the end of their paper and presentation. They would also have to create a short answer question for the final exam.

One of the main ways in which I am utilized information in the readings is in regard to group sizes. First, I kept them small enough that it does not really allow for an individual to just sit back and watch. More to the point, in the formal group project, the groups are subdivided so that they are working in pairs and as an entire group. I would think this would further circumvent slackers.

In the informal group activity, I think that creating a game is always a fun way to test the knowledge. Then by adding in the ability to decide which group had the best answer by letting them debate their answers makes sure they invest the effort to come up with something important.

In the formal group project, I would also have the group members grade each other’s participation. As an overachiever, I always felt like I took on the brunt of the work and always appreciated the chance to evaluate my group members. I particularly liked the idea presented by Lang about giving both a group and individual grade. I think that is something that I would incorporate as well. Finally, Lang also mentioned having the groups create an essay question for the final. I think this is another idea I would use as well. That way, the other students pay attention to the presentations.

On lectures

I have been in many lectures over the years and I have seen my fair share of good ones and bad ones. The ones that I enjoyed most stood above the others because of the enthusiasm of the lecturer. Along with this enthusiasm comes a majority of the ideas laid forth in Lang’s On Course text and Davis’ Tools for Teaching text. It seems that when the instructor appears excited about what they are teaching, they incorporate a variety of ways in which to grab the audience. However, when the instructor had seemed bored, I felt bored along with them. In fact, I have had instructors that would cut their lectures short because they was bored by topics outside their specialty. I actually got a lower grades in courses with instructors that apparently did not enjoy the material.


Had the ineffective lectures incorporated ideas presented by Lang and Davis, the lectures could have been salvaged. For example, if the lecturers would have created a sense of community, as Davis suggests, the class may have contributed more to the conversation and she/he might have had a re-invigorated appreciation for the material. Furthermore, as both authors suggest, had these lecturers used relatable examples, aside from just using the ones from the textbook, the students may have related to the material more. That is something that Lang touched on quite nicely. There is no need to regurgitate the entire book, since the students have the ability to read. Another issue, based on the last, that could have been fixed, would be for them to know the audience. Numerous times I have had lecturers teaching introductory courses during summer sessions that typically teach advanced undergraduate or graduate courses and did not change the way they presented the information. Had they used a less jargon and scientific conversational style, the material would have been more understandable and thus more engaging.


My advisor has told me a number of times that I have a good speaking style and that I am relatable, but that I tend to go too fast, cover too much material, and assume that everyone already knows what I know. Therefore, while I have my speaking skills handled, I can apply some of the things the authors suggest, to strengthen my weak points. Both authors mention covering 3-5 major points during a lecture. I think keeping this in mind will help me with the issue of covering too much material and also being too fast. During past talks, I have typically had to rush through my topics because I tried to fit too much in and the main points get lost in the material. Finally, understanding that I know more about my topic than most students will make me take time explaining the basics. This should help me from going over the audiences' head and losing them altogether. When an audience is lost, the lecture will lose all effectiveness.