Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department
October 11, 2015 9:30 PM Subscribe
Given the success I am having with students, one might think that the Mathematics Department leadership would be expressing curiosity about how I am achieving that success. Instead, Craig Evans in early 2014 asked me "If you had a job at McDonalds and came along with all these new ideas, how long do you think you'd carry on working there?" The fact that the now Interim Chair of the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department should compare undergraduate education to fast food reveals everything you need to know about how students are regarded by the leading clique of men at the helm of the Mathematics Department of the number one public university in the world.
In 2013, Professor Coward also wrote an e-mail to his students that went viral, wherein he discussed the value of their education, and why he chose not participate in the upcoming graduate student instructor (GSI) strike.
In 2013, Professor Coward also wrote an e-mail to his students that went viral, wherein he discussed the value of their education, and why he chose not participate in the upcoming graduate student instructor (GSI) strike.
The last third of his letter is the juicy and excellent part. This kind of drama sheds some light on my own experiences taking having taken Math 1B and 1C many years ago.
These "service" courses are generally miserable for the students, because the class sizes are impersonally large. When choosing classes, there's even a standard secret advice, "either skip these courses (using your AP credit) or be patient and you'll eventually get to the more interesting classes from your own department". Even the language of this advice devalues what are supposedly important, foundational curricula.
This author touches upon the criticism that reliance on commercial texts thwarts the goals of mathematics education. Near the end of one of these types of service classes, my professor dropped his typical charming lecturer persona and for a minute lamented on this issue, exhorting us to go to the library ourselves and have a look at the innovative materials they used in the past, such as the Purcell Volumes for electricity & magnetism. He heavily implied that it was certain powers-that-be that did not allow such texts to be used any more.
There's also a more critical view that the university lecture format itself needs reform. However stellar or popular a superhero instructor you are, with your team of competent graduate students (and in the lower division courses the GSIs are excellent), maybe there's a pedagogical limit to the usefulness of the 3-/4-hour weekly lecture format in this modern world.
The author thinks he demolishes the Math department's view that more money would help. My only issue with this is I don't think you want to inadvertently argue for greater exploitation of GSIs, for example. So, I think there's a more complex argument: While technically true that generally more resources (labor, money) would improve the undergraduate program, in this case more money used without structural change would only move the existing department further away from the academic spirit and ideals of liberal education.
posted by polymodus at 10:45 PM on October 11, 2015 [24 favorites]
These "service" courses are generally miserable for the students, because the class sizes are impersonally large. When choosing classes, there's even a standard secret advice, "either skip these courses (using your AP credit) or be patient and you'll eventually get to the more interesting classes from your own department". Even the language of this advice devalues what are supposedly important, foundational curricula.
This author touches upon the criticism that reliance on commercial texts thwarts the goals of mathematics education. Near the end of one of these types of service classes, my professor dropped his typical charming lecturer persona and for a minute lamented on this issue, exhorting us to go to the library ourselves and have a look at the innovative materials they used in the past, such as the Purcell Volumes for electricity & magnetism. He heavily implied that it was certain powers-that-be that did not allow such texts to be used any more.
There's also a more critical view that the university lecture format itself needs reform. However stellar or popular a superhero instructor you are, with your team of competent graduate students (and in the lower division courses the GSIs are excellent), maybe there's a pedagogical limit to the usefulness of the 3-/4-hour weekly lecture format in this modern world.
The author thinks he demolishes the Math department's view that more money would help. My only issue with this is I don't think you want to inadvertently argue for greater exploitation of GSIs, for example. So, I think there's a more complex argument: While technically true that generally more resources (labor, money) would improve the undergraduate program, in this case more money used without structural change would only move the existing department further away from the academic spirit and ideals of liberal education.
posted by polymodus at 10:45 PM on October 11, 2015 [24 favorites]
Tough to evaluate this situation. It seems the chair might be a dick. I do know that the best math teacher I had in college was probably a social outcast. Hair was a mess, shirt was stained everywhere, would foam in the corners of his mouth. But, he fucking loved math, and this translated to me.
posted by breadbox at 10:53 PM on October 11, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by breadbox at 10:53 PM on October 11, 2015 [3 favorites]
I think that once there's a perceived threat to the status-quo, real or not, people will be people and do irrational things for illogical reasons more often than not.
And when there's funding on the line, people get all sorts of paranoid.
Given the trainwreck I've experienced in Higher Education, I'm not surprised to hear this is going on. "Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup"
posted by mikelieman at 11:03 PM on October 11, 2015 [6 favorites]
And when there's funding on the line, people get all sorts of paranoid.
Given the trainwreck I've experienced in Higher Education, I'm not surprised to hear this is going on. "Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup"
posted by mikelieman at 11:03 PM on October 11, 2015 [6 favorites]
This is very interesting. Berkeley's math department is arguably the best research department of the world, and you get there by making research capabilities the only issue when hiring people and making tenure decisions, so it's kind of an open secret that teaching (especially undergraduate teaching) carries essentially no weight. That said, there is a lot of spin in this "whistle blowing" report. If you go through the documents from the teaching evaluation process, you see that that was done pretty carefully, and there were a number of legitimate issues raised. Apparently, Coward didn't collect written homework (despite being told to do so multiple times) and graduate students complained he gave them very little guidance. His lectures weren't a total slam dunk either, despite good participation some issues about clarity of presentation were raised.
Good student evaluations are certainly a very good sign and not to be taken lightly, but it's certainly not everything. This case is a tough one.
posted by tecg at 11:12 PM on October 11, 2015 [12 favorites]
Good student evaluations are certainly a very good sign and not to be taken lightly, but it's certainly not everything. This case is a tough one.
posted by tecg at 11:12 PM on October 11, 2015 [12 favorites]
This might sound petty, but the fact that the letterhead from the UC Berkeley Statistics Department in 2013 contained the line "Cable: UNIVCALB" (second to last page here) causes me to seriously question the judgement and relevancy of Cal's entire faculty. I mean maybe they cracked open a box of ancient letterhead for some reason, but it hardly makes you look like you're concerned with a modern approach to education when you're still standing by waiting for an important telegram.
posted by zachlipton at 11:41 PM on October 11, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by zachlipton at 11:41 PM on October 11, 2015 [5 favorites]
I just left Berkeley last semester (though not in Math or any closely related field), so I only know Coward by reputation, but I've seen some of this from less distance, I guess. It's certainly true that he's extremely popular with students, but that legend seems to be based more on being considered easy, e.g. not collecting homework (as has been mentioned before) and for stunts like posting on YikYak during class to jokily reprimand students for posting on YikYak (why, he's just like us!)
That second linked email justifying his crossing a picket line (and scabbing for his GSIs) was controversial in my circles. Keen readers will have inferred my stance on the issue, but regardless of which side of the thing you were on, his argument amounts to this: "take my side on it ('you should all turn up to class and discussion tomorrow as normal.') because I say so, and don't bother educating yourself about the issue, because it's really complicated and hard and who wants to figure out complicated and hard stuff?" Again, don't know the guy personally, but he doesn't impress one from afar as a stellar instructor or a stellar guy. There's more than one way to get good evals.
posted by Krawczak at 11:44 PM on October 11, 2015 [16 favorites]
That second linked email justifying his crossing a picket line (and scabbing for his GSIs) was controversial in my circles. Keen readers will have inferred my stance on the issue, but regardless of which side of the thing you were on, his argument amounts to this: "take my side on it ('you should all turn up to class and discussion tomorrow as normal.') because I say so, and don't bother educating yourself about the issue, because it's really complicated and hard and who wants to figure out complicated and hard stuff?" Again, don't know the guy personally, but he doesn't impress one from afar as a stellar instructor or a stellar guy. There's more than one way to get good evals.
posted by Krawczak at 11:44 PM on October 11, 2015 [16 favorites]
We just have one side of the story here. Having been a student in the UC Berkeley math department, I can say that in my experience the professors there (with few exceptions) were very passionate about their their teaching, even if the students didn't always like their styles. So the suggestion that the department's administration is involved in a conspiracy to suppress good teaching just seems ludicrous.
Also, speaking as a math professor (at a different university), let me point out that in such departments there is typically agreement about how lower-level courses should be taught, so as to ensure that there are not huge differences between sections. Calculus I, for example, is a prerequisite for many other courses, and some uniformity of experience is considered desirable, and not just by the math department, but by the other departments that rely on it (say, physics and chemistry). A faculty member is typically free to suggest improvements and try to change minds, but just ignoring everyone else (as Coward seems to have done) is going to get one branded a difficult coworker, to put it politically.
posted by epimorph at 11:44 PM on October 11, 2015 [15 favorites]
Also, speaking as a math professor (at a different university), let me point out that in such departments there is typically agreement about how lower-level courses should be taught, so as to ensure that there are not huge differences between sections. Calculus I, for example, is a prerequisite for many other courses, and some uniformity of experience is considered desirable, and not just by the math department, but by the other departments that rely on it (say, physics and chemistry). A faculty member is typically free to suggest improvements and try to change minds, but just ignoring everyone else (as Coward seems to have done) is going to get one branded a difficult coworker, to put it politically.
posted by epimorph at 11:44 PM on October 11, 2015 [15 favorites]
Oof. Yeah, it's weird because a lot of these arguments resonate well today; but the whole effect, one of self-aggrandizement and self-promotion, makes one feel as though there are other things going on. Yes, you should manage your GAs. If they complain that they don't know what to do, that's not because you're not "micromanaging" them - and it's not a point in your favor; it's because you are not doing your job.
And again, even aside from the facts on the ground, this sort of stunt - the grandiose open letter, with very few links to substantiate a tale of woe that clearly edits out any whisper of a contrary viewpoint and carefully avoids even responding to opposing arguments in order to give the impression that they hardly exist - is an annoying one to me on its face, and unfortunately seems to be more and more common. The complicating fact is the reason why it's more common: because labor in education is in very dire straits. So I guess we need to be ready for more of this kind of thing, even though I'm wary of such stuff and think it's a dubious tactic.
posted by koeselitz at 11:51 PM on October 11, 2015 [9 favorites]
And again, even aside from the facts on the ground, this sort of stunt - the grandiose open letter, with very few links to substantiate a tale of woe that clearly edits out any whisper of a contrary viewpoint and carefully avoids even responding to opposing arguments in order to give the impression that they hardly exist - is an annoying one to me on its face, and unfortunately seems to be more and more common. The complicating fact is the reason why it's more common: because labor in education is in very dire straits. So I guess we need to be ready for more of this kind of thing, even though I'm wary of such stuff and think it's a dubious tactic.
posted by koeselitz at 11:51 PM on October 11, 2015 [9 favorites]
Here's to more universities running their management like McDonalds.
I recognize this guy is showing evidence favorable to his position, but that particular quote makes little sense. Faculty are closer to managers. If a franchise owner hires a manager, some amount of initiative is expected. When sales triples at the stores managed, you'd be a goddamn idiot to fire the manager.
So in case we actually needed more evidence, university administrators posses a strong intuition of business.
posted by pwnguin at 11:58 PM on October 11, 2015
I recognize this guy is showing evidence favorable to his position, but that particular quote makes little sense. Faculty are closer to managers. If a franchise owner hires a manager, some amount of initiative is expected. When sales triples at the stores managed, you'd be a goddamn idiot to fire the manager.
So in case we actually needed more evidence, university administrators posses a strong intuition of business.
posted by pwnguin at 11:58 PM on October 11, 2015
And, good goddamn, that 'email that went viral' is an execrable thing, just stupendously stupid. He suggests that he's not taking a side, but then admits he is in saying that maybe the GSIs are right and he is wrong; and he suggests that education is important (of course it is!) while being remarkably confused about the entire purpose of education.
polymodus: "The author thinks he demolishes the Math department's view that more money would help. My only issue with this is I don't think you want to inadvertently argue for greater exploitation of GSIs, for example."
When someone is both (a) dramatically undercutting the labor rights of GSIs by crossing picket lines and sending rousing emails telling students they should do the same thing, and (b) apparently refusing to give GSIs any guidance, leaving them to complain that they have a hard time knowing how to do the jobs they are supposed to be paid to do, then - I start to feel as though there's nothing "inadvertent" about their exploitation of GSIs. The only thing that makes this situation hilarious is that the exploiter in this situation is a non-tenured drone who was taken advantage of, too, and who has no compunction about turning to the union system when it suits him, as much as he may be against it when it's supposed to help those lowlier drones a few millimeters below him in the hive.
posted by koeselitz at 12:03 AM on October 12, 2015 [24 favorites]
polymodus: "The author thinks he demolishes the Math department's view that more money would help. My only issue with this is I don't think you want to inadvertently argue for greater exploitation of GSIs, for example."
When someone is both (a) dramatically undercutting the labor rights of GSIs by crossing picket lines and sending rousing emails telling students they should do the same thing, and (b) apparently refusing to give GSIs any guidance, leaving them to complain that they have a hard time knowing how to do the jobs they are supposed to be paid to do, then - I start to feel as though there's nothing "inadvertent" about their exploitation of GSIs. The only thing that makes this situation hilarious is that the exploiter in this situation is a non-tenured drone who was taken advantage of, too, and who has no compunction about turning to the union system when it suits him, as much as he may be against it when it's supposed to help those lowlier drones a few millimeters below him in the hive.
posted by koeselitz at 12:03 AM on October 12, 2015 [24 favorites]
One of my professors at Berkeley avoided crossing picket lines, and avoided canceling class, by holding one session at a sorority. I think it's still the only time I've stepped inside a sorority.
posted by Standard Orange at 12:38 AM on October 12, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by Standard Orange at 12:38 AM on October 12, 2015 [5 favorites]
When sales triples at the stores managed, you'd be a goddamn idiot to fire the manager. So in case we actually needed more evidence, university administrators posses a strong intuition of business.
There's plenty of evidence that university administrators have a strong business sense. College costs (i.e., university sales) have gone up on average seven percent per year for decades. Total revenues (i.e., college costs) have increased 12 fold since 1980. Even the former communist China struggles to maintain that rate of growth.
posted by three blind mice at 12:46 AM on October 12, 2015 [4 favorites]
There's plenty of evidence that university administrators have a strong business sense. College costs (i.e., university sales) have gone up on average seven percent per year for decades. Total revenues (i.e., college costs) have increased 12 fold since 1980. Even the former communist China struggles to maintain that rate of growth.
posted by three blind mice at 12:46 AM on October 12, 2015 [4 favorites]
It really does sound to me as if he's doing a significantly better job than anybody else -- and that's the problem.
He's raising expectations in the students that other lecturers cannot meet, and worse, the greater understanding his students typically gain threatens to make the other departments that send their students to the math department for prerequisites restive and unsatisfied with the poor student preparation they've been putting up with time out of mind.
And since the math department can't raise everyone else (or themselves) to his level, the easiest thing, and perhaps even the most rational thing, is to get rid of him and restore the status quo ante.
So it surprises me you don't have a bit more sympathy for him, koeselitz, because I'd find it hard to believe you don't make other teachers at your school as uncomfortable as you would have made most of the teachers at my high school, and for very similar reasons.
posted by jamjam at 12:53 AM on October 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
He's raising expectations in the students that other lecturers cannot meet, and worse, the greater understanding his students typically gain threatens to make the other departments that send their students to the math department for prerequisites restive and unsatisfied with the poor student preparation they've been putting up with time out of mind.
And since the math department can't raise everyone else (or themselves) to his level, the easiest thing, and perhaps even the most rational thing, is to get rid of him and restore the status quo ante.
So it surprises me you don't have a bit more sympathy for him, koeselitz, because I'd find it hard to believe you don't make other teachers at your school as uncomfortable as you would have made most of the teachers at my high school, and for very similar reasons.
posted by jamjam at 12:53 AM on October 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
So the suggestion that the department's administration is involved in a conspiracy to suppress good teaching just seems ludicrous.
But it doesn't matter if he's crying conspiracy or not. If you simply take the letter as a critique that there are some structural and political issues going on, his rhetoric may make a lot more sense. The burden is on the department to do some self examination.
In contrast, Craig Evan's McDonald's statement is execrable, intellectually. Just put yourself in the shoes of an undergrad who happened to overhear this. This is simply not how passion works, why the very opposite of it.
posted by polymodus at 1:46 AM on October 12, 2015
But it doesn't matter if he's crying conspiracy or not. If you simply take the letter as a critique that there are some structural and political issues going on, his rhetoric may make a lot more sense. The burden is on the department to do some self examination.
In contrast, Craig Evan's McDonald's statement is execrable, intellectually. Just put yourself in the shoes of an undergrad who happened to overhear this. This is simply not how passion works, why the very opposite of it.
posted by polymodus at 1:46 AM on October 12, 2015
jamjam: "It really does sound to me as if he's doing a significantly better job than anybody else -- and that's the problem."
Everybody sounds like they're "doing a significantly better job than anyone else" if you just read their side of it.
polymodus: "In contrast, Craig Evan's McDonald's statement is execrable, intellectually."
Indeed - it even seems difficult to believe that someone involved in higher education actually said such a thing. Speaking of which: do we?
posted by koeselitz at 1:54 AM on October 12, 2015 [5 favorites]
Everybody sounds like they're "doing a significantly better job than anyone else" if you just read their side of it.
polymodus: "In contrast, Craig Evan's McDonald's statement is execrable, intellectually."
Indeed - it even seems difficult to believe that someone involved in higher education actually said such a thing. Speaking of which: do we?
posted by koeselitz at 1:54 AM on October 12, 2015 [5 favorites]
Having read his union letter and the supporting documents, it seems like the the department asked him to do 3 things: (a) set homework; (b) give his GSIs more guidance; and (c) (perhaps) offer more organised teaching, by stating learning objectives at the start of his classes. It doesn't seem like they're asking him to change anything else about his teaching method. Is it really the case that the student experience will become radically worse if he does these things while continuing to send students encouraging notes and experiment with teaching methods in the classroom? I wasn't sure from the letter if he was saying that the department also wants him to abandon other features of his teaching or whether he is saying that the homework requirement alone would destroy his teaching success.
In any case, I don't know if you can call this whistleblowing. He is complaining about his own firing and the bulk of his argument is to do with the university handling of his individual case, especially in the procedures followed and the data used to make the decision; his complaints about systematic wrongdoing/incompetence are incidental to that argument. I would call it whistleblowing only if he had independently decided to attack systemic wrongdoing/incompetence in the department and had been fired for that reason. That doesn't seem to be what's happened here - if they hadn't decided to fire him, he wouldn't have commented critically on his colleagues' teaching.
posted by Aravis76 at 1:59 AM on October 12, 2015 [11 favorites]
In any case, I don't know if you can call this whistleblowing. He is complaining about his own firing and the bulk of his argument is to do with the university handling of his individual case, especially in the procedures followed and the data used to make the decision; his complaints about systematic wrongdoing/incompetence are incidental to that argument. I would call it whistleblowing only if he had independently decided to attack systemic wrongdoing/incompetence in the department and had been fired for that reason. That doesn't seem to be what's happened here - if they hadn't decided to fire him, he wouldn't have commented critically on his colleagues' teaching.
posted by Aravis76 at 1:59 AM on October 12, 2015 [11 favorites]
Yeah, that's the funny thing. The McDonald's comment is bad because it likens education to fast food, which is unfortunate and inapt; but as an expression of labor necessities, it's absolutely true. If you have a job, you have to do your job. If you're a professor and you refuse to do any grading or give your teaching assistants any help or guidance, then you're not doing your job.
And if you have already written an email to students spitting in the faces of your overexploited and underpaid assistants (whom you refuse to help) by suggesting publicly that they're on strike because they don't really care about education, I'm going to come to the conclusion that you don't even really care about the job of education at all.
posted by koeselitz at 2:11 AM on October 12, 2015 [17 favorites]
And if you have already written an email to students spitting in the faces of your overexploited and underpaid assistants (whom you refuse to help) by suggesting publicly that they're on strike because they don't really care about education, I'm going to come to the conclusion that you don't even really care about the job of education at all.
posted by koeselitz at 2:11 AM on October 12, 2015 [17 favorites]
There are some things that rub me the wrong way about the guy but he does make a few specific allegations that data that made him look good was suppressed or misrepresented. Are these legit?
posted by atoxyl at 2:35 AM on October 12, 2015
posted by atoxyl at 2:35 AM on October 12, 2015
It's hard to know if his complaints are legit, because he's publicising them halfway through the internal grievance procedure that is supposed to assess his claims against the evidence and any counter-arguments that the department may wish to offer. The department is probably constrained from publicly responding to his arguments by confidentiality requirements.
posted by Aravis76 at 3:18 AM on October 12, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by Aravis76 at 3:18 AM on October 12, 2015 [4 favorites]
I do know that the best math teacher I had in college was probably a social outcast. Hair was a mess, shirt was stained everywhere, would foam in the corners of his mouth.
Did we take the same math class?
posted by Dip Flash at 3:24 AM on October 12, 2015
Did we take the same math class?
posted by Dip Flash at 3:24 AM on October 12, 2015
Its interesting that he has a very instrumentalist view of the role of education:
Society is investing in you so that you can help solve the many challenges we are going to face in the coming decades, from profound technological challenges to helping people with the age old search for human happiness and meaning.
The only reason to get an education is to "solve problems". i.e. That's why "society invests" in its students - it expects a "return on its investment" measurable by the problems solved.
A stark contrast to the more antique, and classic notions of eduction as a good in it self.
posted by mary8nne at 3:36 AM on October 12, 2015 [4 favorites]
Society is investing in you so that you can help solve the many challenges we are going to face in the coming decades, from profound technological challenges to helping people with the age old search for human happiness and meaning.
The only reason to get an education is to "solve problems". i.e. That's why "society invests" in its students - it expects a "return on its investment" measurable by the problems solved.
A stark contrast to the more antique, and classic notions of eduction as a good in it self.
posted by mary8nne at 3:36 AM on October 12, 2015 [4 favorites]
We just have one side of the story here. Having been a student in the UC Berkeley math department, I can say that in my experience the professors there (with few exceptions) were very passionate about their their teaching, even if the students didn't always like their styles. So the suggestion that the department's administration is involved in a conspiracy to suppress good teaching just seems ludicrous.
I don't think I had a single class as an undergrad where the instructor was not invested in teaching. I had a Math 115 (the undergrad number theory) that wasn't very good, which the professor openly acknowledged and felt bad about. This was someone I had had for a previous class and that they were teaching 115 was part of why I took it. (115 is a hard class to teach because it doesn't require abstract algebra and the people who've had abstract algebra will usually be bored and the ones who haven't will be lost. That coupled with a book that turned out to be not nearly as good as you'd expect when looking at it in the library trying to pick a textbook made for a long semester.) I had another class that sometimes featured far-to-difficult homework problems. The professor was coming up with the exercises themselves and was prone to thinking "Ooh, that'll be interesting for them" and then realising when we showed up in office hours that we weren't going to solve it because we hadn't seen semi-direct products. I don't think you can call that disinterest in teaching.
In the interests of full disclosure, I didn't take a class once because it was apparent on the first day that the very affable professor clearly thought undergrads were idiots and it was going to turn into a repeat of multivariable calculus. Two months later, my friends who stayed had reached the same conclusion only too late. I'm sure that professor gets mostly good reviews--there were something like 600 math majors who graduated when I did and a good chunk of them will consider affable professor + stupidly easy assignments a good price to pay for an A. (I'm cynical and would assume Coward's reviews reflect the same phenomenon. There are a hell of a lot of pre-meds in Math 1A who would thank their lucky stars.)
posted by hoyland at 4:47 AM on October 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
I don't think I had a single class as an undergrad where the instructor was not invested in teaching. I had a Math 115 (the undergrad number theory) that wasn't very good, which the professor openly acknowledged and felt bad about. This was someone I had had for a previous class and that they were teaching 115 was part of why I took it. (115 is a hard class to teach because it doesn't require abstract algebra and the people who've had abstract algebra will usually be bored and the ones who haven't will be lost. That coupled with a book that turned out to be not nearly as good as you'd expect when looking at it in the library trying to pick a textbook made for a long semester.) I had another class that sometimes featured far-to-difficult homework problems. The professor was coming up with the exercises themselves and was prone to thinking "Ooh, that'll be interesting for them" and then realising when we showed up in office hours that we weren't going to solve it because we hadn't seen semi-direct products. I don't think you can call that disinterest in teaching.
In the interests of full disclosure, I didn't take a class once because it was apparent on the first day that the very affable professor clearly thought undergrads were idiots and it was going to turn into a repeat of multivariable calculus. Two months later, my friends who stayed had reached the same conclusion only too late. I'm sure that professor gets mostly good reviews--there were something like 600 math majors who graduated when I did and a good chunk of them will consider affable professor + stupidly easy assignments a good price to pay for an A. (I'm cynical and would assume Coward's reviews reflect the same phenomenon. There are a hell of a lot of pre-meds in Math 1A who would thank their lucky stars.)
posted by hoyland at 4:47 AM on October 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
As a Humanities type I don't know much about math department politics, but I do know that the best damn undergrad Shakespeare professor I ever had was bullied out by the other professors in the English department because he made them look bad in comparison.
posted by Faint of Butt at 4:55 AM on October 12, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by Faint of Butt at 4:55 AM on October 12, 2015 [3 favorites]
This guy's horn seems well-worn from a lot of self tooting.
posted by nom de poop at 5:08 AM on October 12, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by nom de poop at 5:08 AM on October 12, 2015 [2 favorites]
Be interesting to see some actual student results over time, rather than student evaluations; was he a demonstrably better teacher, or just a flashy one?
posted by fatfrank at 5:21 AM on October 12, 2015
posted by fatfrank at 5:21 AM on October 12, 2015
Without commenting on his self-promotion.
I think he's misunderstanding the heart of the issue. It's really not about maintaining the status quo. He clearly states that student evaluations and the other data he's claiming were suppressed are a significant part of the teacher evaluation process.
This means that he's out competing the other professors and therefore threatening their livelihood.
And rather than taking an active stance, they are taking a defensive stance.
posted by jefflowrey at 5:27 AM on October 12, 2015
I think he's misunderstanding the heart of the issue. It's really not about maintaining the status quo. He clearly states that student evaluations and the other data he's claiming were suppressed are a significant part of the teacher evaluation process.
This means that he's out competing the other professors and therefore threatening their livelihood.
And rather than taking an active stance, they are taking a defensive stance.
posted by jefflowrey at 5:27 AM on October 12, 2015
Crossing a picket line is an action which has come near to shutting down entire facilities in my workplace. The striking union refused to even negotiate while the individual was allowed on the property by management. It's a very bright line in some places, and alone would be grounds for firing.
posted by bonehead at 5:30 AM on October 12, 2015 [7 favorites]
posted by bonehead at 5:30 AM on October 12, 2015 [7 favorites]
LOL at the idea that professors at a top research university who are primary concerned with doing research are jealous and intimidated by... a professors's student evals.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 5:37 AM on October 12, 2015 [21 favorites]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 5:37 AM on October 12, 2015 [21 favorites]
If you buy into "making the rest of them look bad" you're already kind of buying into the self-promotion side of his claim. It could easily be that the faculty only uses the metrics to look out for problems, but overall doesn't really give a shit if numbers are decent or better. I think if we're to believe that McDonalds quote was indicative, indifference would be more likely than the idea that they don't care AND somehow they are ashamed and jealous of his undergraduate teaching prowess.
The fact that he doesn't collect homework in an undergrad class really undercuts his evaluation scores and enrollment popularity, and it's kind of worrying he doesn't see that.
Are the arguments against him kind of weird, inconsistent, bogus? Probably. That's what it looks like when a bureaucracy ejects a problem person, and it can be hard to know the full depth of the real reasons. That part is shit.
This guy might be a very good instructor. If he got a job at Berkeley he can probably get a job a lot of places and demonstrate his chops there. Who knows maybe he has more to learn about teaching than he realizes and he can return to Berkeley a triumphant god of undergraduate instruction.
(I generally kind of hate articles like this, or say when someone gets kicked out of Yale because they were sick for a semester, where it's like, this person's life is surely okay, their life will go on and they will succeed. You're not entitled to the dream that can only be fulfilled at the best universities in the world without any kind of setback. The way it obscures discrimination at the margins that matters more just bugs me. Elites, you ain't that fucking aggrieved.)
posted by nom de poop at 5:39 AM on October 12, 2015 [2 favorites]
The fact that he doesn't collect homework in an undergrad class really undercuts his evaluation scores and enrollment popularity, and it's kind of worrying he doesn't see that.
Are the arguments against him kind of weird, inconsistent, bogus? Probably. That's what it looks like when a bureaucracy ejects a problem person, and it can be hard to know the full depth of the real reasons. That part is shit.
This guy might be a very good instructor. If he got a job at Berkeley he can probably get a job a lot of places and demonstrate his chops there. Who knows maybe he has more to learn about teaching than he realizes and he can return to Berkeley a triumphant god of undergraduate instruction.
(I generally kind of hate articles like this, or say when someone gets kicked out of Yale because they were sick for a semester, where it's like, this person's life is surely okay, their life will go on and they will succeed. You're not entitled to the dream that can only be fulfilled at the best universities in the world without any kind of setback. The way it obscures discrimination at the margins that matters more just bugs me. Elites, you ain't that fucking aggrieved.)
posted by nom de poop at 5:39 AM on October 12, 2015 [2 favorites]
Just because someone is at an Ivy League institution doesn't mean they are elites.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 5:42 AM on October 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 5:42 AM on October 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
I can't clarify this myself, but there's a little sentence in there about department nervousness at hiring a lecturer. Was Coward the first person in the Berkeley math department hired as a lecturer (rather than as a tenure-track faculty, or as a postdoc, who often teach classes in math departments?)?
If so then there's a larger politics here of adjunct vs. tenure track, of senior profs who see themselves as real faculty and can't view adjuncts the same way. There's probably fear among the postdocs too, because math postdocs are often funded by teaching duties (as are graduate students).
On the other hand even if he was the first one hired, it appears there's a few more now (I saw 4 on a quick perusal of the dept. webpage). I wonder what any of the others would say about the department as a working environment.
And if this is connected to the adjunct/tenure track problem- well, it isn't surprising to see that showing up in a math dept. In many ways they're funding-wise much more like humanities depts than other STEM fields are.
posted by nat at 5:54 AM on October 12, 2015
If so then there's a larger politics here of adjunct vs. tenure track, of senior profs who see themselves as real faculty and can't view adjuncts the same way. There's probably fear among the postdocs too, because math postdocs are often funded by teaching duties (as are graduate students).
On the other hand even if he was the first one hired, it appears there's a few more now (I saw 4 on a quick perusal of the dept. webpage). I wonder what any of the others would say about the department as a working environment.
And if this is connected to the adjunct/tenure track problem- well, it isn't surprising to see that showing up in a math dept. In many ways they're funding-wise much more like humanities depts than other STEM fields are.
posted by nat at 5:54 AM on October 12, 2015
MisantropicPainforest
Ditto, and!
LOL at the idea that tenured professors at a top research university who are primary concerned with doing research are jealous and intimidated by... a professors's student evals.
posted by lalochezia at 6:09 AM on October 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
Ditto, and!
LOL at the idea that tenured professors at a top research university who are primary concerned with doing research are jealous and intimidated by... a professors's student evals.
posted by lalochezia at 6:09 AM on October 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
Be interesting to see some actual student results over time, rather than student evaluations; was he a demonstrably better teacher, or just a flashy one?--fatfrank
That's his claim:
students performing statistically significantly better in subsequent courses
posted by eye of newt at 6:12 AM on October 12, 2015 [2 favorites]
That's his claim:
students performing statistically significantly better in subsequent courses
posted by eye of newt at 6:12 AM on October 12, 2015 [2 favorites]
Even further:
LOL at the idea that tenured professors at a top research university who are primary concerned with doing research are jealous and intimidated by... a non tenure-track lecturer's student evals.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:13 AM on October 12, 2015 [3 favorites]
LOL at the idea that tenured professors at a top research university who are primary concerned with doing research are jealous and intimidated by... a non tenure-track lecturer's student evals.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:13 AM on October 12, 2015 [3 favorites]
I do know that the best math teacher I had in college was probably a social outcast. Hair was a mess, shirt was stained everywhere, would foam in the corners of his mouth.
Did we take the same math class?
I think everyone took that math class once . . .
posted by chainsofreedom at 6:24 AM on October 12, 2015 [5 favorites]
Did we take the same math class?
I think everyone took that math class once . . .
posted by chainsofreedom at 6:24 AM on October 12, 2015 [5 favorites]
Good student evaluations are certainly a very good sign and not to be taken lightly, but it's certainly not everything.
Eh, they are neither necessary nor sufficient for a course to be good. Want to get good evals? Here is a recipe based on studies I've seen (obviously you can get good evals without doing all of these things, some of which are things not everyone can do, but they are all factors): be white, male, not too old, don't have an accent unless it is british, be moderately attractive, act self-confident, dress reasonably well (this interacts with gender: students judge women much more harshly for attire), don't assign too heavy a workload (but probably not also too light), grade easily and not too seldom, promptly make sure students are aware of their good grades*, don't be rude to students, and maybe have engaging or entertaining lectures. If you're cynical (or inexperienced/clueless), set things up so that TAs take the brunt of the blame for anything that is off about the course, especially if they have a separate eval, which they do at the UCs. This guy is checking an awful lot of these boxes.
* this is probably the most important factor, honestly: the best predictor of evals on studies I've seen are students' perception of their own grades.
posted by advil at 6:24 AM on October 12, 2015 [21 favorites]
Eh, they are neither necessary nor sufficient for a course to be good. Want to get good evals? Here is a recipe based on studies I've seen (obviously you can get good evals without doing all of these things, some of which are things not everyone can do, but they are all factors): be white, male, not too old, don't have an accent unless it is british, be moderately attractive, act self-confident, dress reasonably well (this interacts with gender: students judge women much more harshly for attire), don't assign too heavy a workload (but probably not also too light), grade easily and not too seldom, promptly make sure students are aware of their good grades*, don't be rude to students, and maybe have engaging or entertaining lectures. If you're cynical (or inexperienced/clueless), set things up so that TAs take the brunt of the blame for anything that is off about the course, especially if they have a separate eval, which they do at the UCs. This guy is checking an awful lot of these boxes.
* this is probably the most important factor, honestly: the best predictor of evals on studies I've seen are students' perception of their own grades.
posted by advil at 6:24 AM on October 12, 2015 [21 favorites]
I think that there is a genuine crisis about math teaching at research universities, which has to do with the fact that brilliant mathematicians are not always (or even usually) good lower-level math teachers. When you think about it, it's kind of weird that we have mathematicians teaching remedial algebra and/or the calc sequence for non-math majors. There is no reason to think that they would be good at explaining math concepts that they probably picked up by osmosis when they were in elementary school. If I ran the world, there would be a math department, where math professors would teach math majors and other students who were really interested in math, and there would be something like a math pedagogy department, where people interested in math teaching would teach the students who just needed to know some basic math for their majors. But I'm not sure how much that has to do with this rather convoluted story, about which I don't know enough to make a judgment.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:26 AM on October 12, 2015 [7 favorites]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:26 AM on October 12, 2015 [7 favorites]
If someone has been unfairly treated (eg sex or race or disability discrimination, or procedural unfairness in firing them or whatever), I don't think it matters if they are a member of an elite or not. They're personally entitled to just treatment and society has a responsibility to provide them with an opportunity to seek redress if their treatment has been unjust. The problem is that we don't provide the same kind of robust mechanism for challenging employer decisions in every context - we absolutely should. I don't think it would be a better world if Ivy League universities could fire staff or kick out students without having to give reasons and follow a fair process; it would be a better world if every employer at every level had to comply with the same standard. (And if the kind of union support Dr Coward has here was routinely available to people in low-income and precarious jobs.)
posted by Aravis76 at 6:27 AM on October 12, 2015
posted by Aravis76 at 6:27 AM on October 12, 2015
And if you have already written an email to students spitting in the faces of your overexploited and underpaid assistants (whom you refuse to help) by suggesting publicly that they're on strike because they don't really care about education,
His email was long, rambling and not particularly logical or insightful - but it did not suggest that the striking GSIs didn't care about the undergrads' education. What it did say was that in their absence, he would pick up the slack, because otherwise the undergraduates were fucked. And he was right.
Undergraduate students are not customers. When there is a strike on a campus, they cannot go to another university to finish their courses. And they not part of the union - nor are their non-TA instructors. It is not crossing picket lines if you are not part of the union.
I've been on both sides: I've been a TA. I've also been an undergrad at the university which holds the national record for length of TA or faculty strikes. I have seen undergrads fail courses and/or have their GPAs fall disastrously and had my own mental health frankly shattered by the fallout from strikes. The TA union, faculty and administration alike swore there would be repercussions to the undergraduates, and then all three completely ignore the very real repercussions -- including the same faculty who didn't teach in support of their TAs.
I support the unionisation of TAs; I especially support the unionisation of contract faculty, who are in a far worse position than graduate student instructors. But no one any either side can pretend that strikes at universities - just like strikes and schools or in hospitals or in public transit or any public sector - are disastrous for the students/children/patients/passengers who are not customers, cannot leave and certainly have less power in the whole situation than either negotiating party.
posted by jb at 6:29 AM on October 12, 2015 [9 favorites]
His email was long, rambling and not particularly logical or insightful - but it did not suggest that the striking GSIs didn't care about the undergrads' education. What it did say was that in their absence, he would pick up the slack, because otherwise the undergraduates were fucked. And he was right.
Undergraduate students are not customers. When there is a strike on a campus, they cannot go to another university to finish their courses. And they not part of the union - nor are their non-TA instructors. It is not crossing picket lines if you are not part of the union.
I've been on both sides: I've been a TA. I've also been an undergrad at the university which holds the national record for length of TA or faculty strikes. I have seen undergrads fail courses and/or have their GPAs fall disastrously and had my own mental health frankly shattered by the fallout from strikes. The TA union, faculty and administration alike swore there would be repercussions to the undergraduates, and then all three completely ignore the very real repercussions -- including the same faculty who didn't teach in support of their TAs.
I support the unionisation of TAs; I especially support the unionisation of contract faculty, who are in a far worse position than graduate student instructors. But no one any either side can pretend that strikes at universities - just like strikes and schools or in hospitals or in public transit or any public sector - are disastrous for the students/children/patients/passengers who are not customers, cannot leave and certainly have less power in the whole situation than either negotiating party.
posted by jb at 6:29 AM on October 12, 2015 [9 favorites]
Student evaluations mean jack shit. The professor who taught the vast majority of classes in my major at university still to this day gets glowing evals from students because the survey class and low level major-related class he teaches are known as easy A's. He's also a misogynistic pig and stopped trying years ago when he didn't receive a full professorship. Alumni of the program have been complaining about him to anyone who will listen yet he's not going anywhere until retirement because he's tenured. He is a terrible professor who has done great harm to graduates of the program because they are so woefully unprepared for the working world that only a handful are able to make any money as a working professional in their degree field when they graduate.
Oh, and because his salary is public record we all know he makes $150k/ year. Boggles the fucking mind.
posted by photoslob at 6:32 AM on October 12, 2015 [2 favorites]
Oh, and because his salary is public record we all know he makes $150k/ year. Boggles the fucking mind.
posted by photoslob at 6:32 AM on October 12, 2015 [2 favorites]
They don't mean jack shit. They have some utility. If they are bad, that signals something. They become more important at liberal arts colleges.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:37 AM on October 12, 2015
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:37 AM on October 12, 2015
This means that he's out competing the other professors and therefore threatening their livelihood.
Speaking as a professor: that's not how it works. He might be threatening the employment of the non-TT lecturers who are also teaching the lower-division intro courses, but if their courses still hit their minimum enrollment targets, then they aren't necessarily going anywhere, either. Courses miss their minimums all the time, even when faculty are relatively popular; the chair just assigns you to teach something else. Having low enrollment can be hard on the ego (although sometimes it leads to amazing courses, so it's actually a bit of a wash), but it doesn't affect your employment status, and certainly not at a university like UCB, where teaching is going to have much less impact on your tenure and promotion than your research. Unless UCB publishes course evaluations, as some schools do, his colleagues aren't going to see them in the normal order of things unless they're on a appointments/promotion/tenure committee. However, I have no problem believing that a department chair would stack things to get rid of a lecturer they didn't like.
There are politics involved in having non-TT faculty teach general education/intro courses. My department makes a point of putting everyone in the freshman comp rota, for example, to make it clear that we're committed to the education of the campus as a whole, not just our majors. But that's also a justification for hiring additional TT faculty, as opposed to endlessly multiplying underpaid lecturers and adjuncts (we don't have TAs). From that POV, it completely makes sense that hiring non-TT lecturers to do the big introductory courses would worry people, even at a research university.
The peril of relying on course evals as proof of an instructor's capacity is, in fact, that there are real questions about using course evals as proof of an instructor's capacity (biases from gender, race, "easiness," type of course [required/non-required], etc.) As MisantropicPainforest says, they tell you something, but not everything. He's on much better ground with his statistics about student outcomes--and, if his department actually messed with his file, that's an entirely different chalkboard of equations. (For all intents and purposes, one's file does shrink as it goes up the multiple layers of administration during a contract renewal process; it's how it shrinks that is key here.)
He is, however, supposed to supervise his GSIs, who may not appreciate being left to float alone in a sea of their own "creativity."
posted by thomas j wise at 6:42 AM on October 12, 2015 [7 favorites]
Speaking as a professor: that's not how it works. He might be threatening the employment of the non-TT lecturers who are also teaching the lower-division intro courses, but if their courses still hit their minimum enrollment targets, then they aren't necessarily going anywhere, either. Courses miss their minimums all the time, even when faculty are relatively popular; the chair just assigns you to teach something else. Having low enrollment can be hard on the ego (although sometimes it leads to amazing courses, so it's actually a bit of a wash), but it doesn't affect your employment status, and certainly not at a university like UCB, where teaching is going to have much less impact on your tenure and promotion than your research. Unless UCB publishes course evaluations, as some schools do, his colleagues aren't going to see them in the normal order of things unless they're on a appointments/promotion/tenure committee. However, I have no problem believing that a department chair would stack things to get rid of a lecturer they didn't like.
There are politics involved in having non-TT faculty teach general education/intro courses. My department makes a point of putting everyone in the freshman comp rota, for example, to make it clear that we're committed to the education of the campus as a whole, not just our majors. But that's also a justification for hiring additional TT faculty, as opposed to endlessly multiplying underpaid lecturers and adjuncts (we don't have TAs). From that POV, it completely makes sense that hiring non-TT lecturers to do the big introductory courses would worry people, even at a research university.
The peril of relying on course evals as proof of an instructor's capacity is, in fact, that there are real questions about using course evals as proof of an instructor's capacity (biases from gender, race, "easiness," type of course [required/non-required], etc.) As MisantropicPainforest says, they tell you something, but not everything. He's on much better ground with his statistics about student outcomes--and, if his department actually messed with his file, that's an entirely different chalkboard of equations. (For all intents and purposes, one's file does shrink as it goes up the multiple layers of administration during a contract renewal process; it's how it shrinks that is key here.)
He is, however, supposed to supervise his GSIs, who may not appreciate being left to float alone in a sea of their own "creativity."
posted by thomas j wise at 6:42 AM on October 12, 2015 [7 favorites]
Collecting homework isn't necessary. My best math teacher never collected homework. We were expected to work on it until we understood it.
YMMV. I know mine has; I've taught at universities for 15 years - in excess of 1500 students in lectures and labs, 8 years as a TT professor. Depending on the cohort - their culture study habits, motivation and previous schooling experience - independence where they should just "study to get it" works great; in other cases, anything not graded or having direct correlation with student grade gets ignored or short shrift.
Some students learn better when there are tiny (or significant!) extrinsic motivators to study.
I'd love to claim that we can get intrinsic motivation for the subject to work at all times, but it has eluded me and a lot of very talented peers who also get excellent student evaluations - and excellent outcomes.
posted by lalochezia at 7:14 AM on October 12, 2015 [3 favorites]
YMMV. I know mine has; I've taught at universities for 15 years - in excess of 1500 students in lectures and labs, 8 years as a TT professor. Depending on the cohort - their culture study habits, motivation and previous schooling experience - independence where they should just "study to get it" works great; in other cases, anything not graded or having direct correlation with student grade gets ignored or short shrift.
Some students learn better when there are tiny (or significant!) extrinsic motivators to study.
I'd love to claim that we can get intrinsic motivation for the subject to work at all times, but it has eluded me and a lot of very talented peers who also get excellent student evaluations - and excellent outcomes.
posted by lalochezia at 7:14 AM on October 12, 2015 [3 favorites]
Oh, and because his salary is public record we all know he makes $150k/ year.
Wait... where are you getting that? From the Sac Bee website I'm showing that he made ~68K/yr last year plus benefits. $150K/yr seems like an unlikely amount for a non-TT lecturer, even at Cal (not that I object in principle or anything, of course).
posted by en forme de poire at 7:21 AM on October 12, 2015
Wait... where are you getting that? From the Sac Bee website I'm showing that he made ~68K/yr last year plus benefits. $150K/yr seems like an unlikely amount for a non-TT lecturer, even at Cal (not that I object in principle or anything, of course).
posted by en forme de poire at 7:21 AM on October 12, 2015
Some students learn better when there are tiny (or significant!) extrinsic motivators to study.
And some students don't. I hate homework. HATE IT. I'm paying for this class, I'm going to get something out of it. The problem is, in classes of almost 400(!) students, you're going to have a huge range of learning styles. But there is just one professor. While he might have time to go over a math concept more than one way in class, he can really only teach under one method. So he should pick the one that works best for him.
It sounds like he's already garnered a reputation for his teaching style at the college, so undergrads can pick accordingly.
I often email professors the semester before I take a class for a sample syllabus to see if how they assign work matches my work style.
I understand that 18-20 year olds probably don't think about these sort of issues objectively, but it's almost impossible to know how a department is run before you get into the thick of it. Options on professor teaching style to choose from can only be good. If department leadership can't handle this variance, it is not good leadership.
posted by sharp pointy objects at 7:28 AM on October 12, 2015
In my experience, people are fucking vicious towards you if you make them "uncomfortable." Which can also translate into "weird" or "does their own thing" or "makes me look bad." It's not that Mr. "Uncomfortable" is even creating a hostile work environment, but he just bugs me, so he has to go.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:30 AM on October 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:30 AM on October 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
Wait... where are you getting that?
I took that to refer to "The professor who taught the vast majority of classes in my major at university still to this day" from the comment, not to the mathmatics instructor who is the topic of the post.
posted by thelonius at 7:31 AM on October 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
I took that to refer to "The professor who taught the vast majority of classes in my major at university still to this day" from the comment, not to the mathmatics instructor who is the topic of the post.
posted by thelonius at 7:31 AM on October 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
This guy's complaints resonate with my own experience a few decades back. I was an engineering student at a university at the time rated the number one mathematics university in the country, perhaps the world. The quality of instruction of the "service courses," levels 100 and 200 math, fell far below the quality of instruction in just about every other area of the university. The engineering department in particular was not pleased and had started to put together their own courses in these subjects. If you were a math major, as opposed to a science, econ or engineering major, you received the most amazing quality of instruction, at least according to my friends in the math departments and others who partook of upper level math courses. Given how fundamental a proper grasp of these mathematics concepts can be to other subject areas, it always surprised me how our world class mathematics department failed the rest of the university. At a university like Berkeley with universally bright and talented students this type of system can be tolerated as the students are generally capable of learning sufficient math pretty much on their own, as we did at my university. That doesn't make it right.
posted by caddis at 7:33 AM on October 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by caddis at 7:33 AM on October 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
He doesn't collect homework because he evaluates his students in class. (And I'm sure with final exams). It's a legitimate pedagogical approach and not about laziness. Collecting homework isn't necessary. My best math teacher never collected homework. We were expected to work on it until we understood it. Guess how many of us passed the AP Calc exams without having turned in math homework for 3+ years?
I think this comment is probably going to trigger a lot of responses, but in short: teaching at the university level is a whole different game than teaching high school, for all sorts of reasons. A technique that may be effective for an optional (in whatever sense AP calc is optional) high school course of small to moderate size will by no means transfer to a large lecture (holy crap: Coward alone is teaching two distinct math 1A ~400 person lectures each with 16 TA-led discussion sections, and someone else is teaching another 100 person lecture!), required, prerequisite course at a state school. This isn't to say that inverted classroom type ideas can't work (in fact they are quite popular right now) but making them work in a very large required class is a complex art, and I really can't imagine it would get anywhere without greatly involving and working closely with the TAs.
Wait... where are you getting that? From the Sac Bee website I'm showing that he made ~68K/yr last year plus benefits. $150K/yr seems like an unlikely amount for a non-TT lecturer, even at Cal (not that I object in principle or anything, of course).
I think this number was about someone else, tenured, and not identified by name.
posted by advil at 7:37 AM on October 12, 2015 [4 favorites]
I think this comment is probably going to trigger a lot of responses, but in short: teaching at the university level is a whole different game than teaching high school, for all sorts of reasons. A technique that may be effective for an optional (in whatever sense AP calc is optional) high school course of small to moderate size will by no means transfer to a large lecture (holy crap: Coward alone is teaching two distinct math 1A ~400 person lectures each with 16 TA-led discussion sections, and someone else is teaching another 100 person lecture!), required, prerequisite course at a state school. This isn't to say that inverted classroom type ideas can't work (in fact they are quite popular right now) but making them work in a very large required class is a complex art, and I really can't imagine it would get anywhere without greatly involving and working closely with the TAs.
Wait... where are you getting that? From the Sac Bee website I'm showing that he made ~68K/yr last year plus benefits. $150K/yr seems like an unlikely amount for a non-TT lecturer, even at Cal (not that I object in principle or anything, of course).
I think this number was about someone else, tenured, and not identified by name.
posted by advil at 7:37 AM on October 12, 2015 [4 favorites]
I took that to refer to "The professor who taught the vast majority of classes in my major at university still to this day" from the comment, not to the mathmatics instructor who is the topic of the post.
I think this number was about someone else, tenured, and not identified by name.
lol, that makes a lot more sense! Haven't finished my coffee yet, sorry.
posted by en forme de poire at 7:38 AM on October 12, 2015
I think this number was about someone else, tenured, and not identified by name.
lol, that makes a lot more sense! Haven't finished my coffee yet, sorry.
posted by en forme de poire at 7:38 AM on October 12, 2015
800 students is impossible. This is student as product-on-assembly-line model. That's Cal. There is a history there. What happened was WWII, Hiroshima, Sputnik, and the United States Department of Death decided they needed to start cranking out young scientists right quick. They poured a fortune into the University of California to do it.
posted by bukvich at 7:40 AM on October 12, 2015
posted by bukvich at 7:40 AM on October 12, 2015
He's awfully pleased with himself, which is annoying to read, probably extremely annoying to colleagues, all of whom also have a high degree of education and accomplishment. He's pretty facile about the issue of crossing a picket line, and has pissed people off. His disdain for the standards and norms in his department probably communicates itself in many ways. Does he not assign quizzes & homework? Most of his colleagues are not at all threatened by his success with students.
He wrote an Open Letter, which is a pretty aggressive move. He pushes Formative Assessment. If his department chooses to use a different means of assessment, and he declines to follow the department's policy, the outcome is predictable. In his Open Letter, he states that he experienced suicidal depression an dwas hospitalized, and he believes he was bullied.
The energy it would take to be individually involved with 400 students is prodigious, and I'm impressed by his effort. But his arrogance and lack of understanding of the hierarchical nature of academic departments made his continued employment unlikely. I hope he finds a place where his effort will be rewarded.
posted by theora55 at 7:50 AM on October 12, 2015 [5 favorites]
He wrote an Open Letter, which is a pretty aggressive move. He pushes Formative Assessment. If his department chooses to use a different means of assessment, and he declines to follow the department's policy, the outcome is predictable. In his Open Letter, he states that he experienced suicidal depression an dwas hospitalized, and he believes he was bullied.
The energy it would take to be individually involved with 400 students is prodigious, and I'm impressed by his effort. But his arrogance and lack of understanding of the hierarchical nature of academic departments made his continued employment unlikely. I hope he finds a place where his effort will be rewarded.
posted by theora55 at 7:50 AM on October 12, 2015 [5 favorites]
If he's just leaving TAs to find their creativity sections for enormous classes, where sections are incredibly important for making sure that you can see if students are understanding what you're teaching, he's not a good teacher. He's essentially writing off a chunk of the course in favour of his lecturing. It's also really unfair to graduate students to toss them in at the deep end this way and it takes up huge amounts of their time if you're not helping them with lesson plans, strategies, grading workshops, etc. It's not just about your facetime with students in large classes: it's about ensuring that you've taken responsibility for all the areas, not just the ones where you are centre stage.
Additionally, if you are teaching one section - no matter how big - of a multi section course, you're supposed usually to agree with the other professors on curricular things like whether you will all collect homework or not. You usually use the same textbook as well, because otherwise it's really unfair on everyone involved and means students can never freaking share anything or work together if they're in different sections. Generally most courses across various faculties are now trying to allow students to gain marks in different areas of work and not leaving everything down to timed exams where not all students do well. Collecting and marking homework is important not just to make students do the work, but to make sure that you allow students who might not be good in exams to acquire marks via other means. Most of all, if you really want to see where students are struggling before an exam, it's homework you look at. They will frequently assure you that they understand everything when they really are having issues with something that will appear in a big way later.
These two issues are why I'm struggling to believe that he is always the amazing teacher he thinks he is and this is entirely down to the Math department running scared of his pedagogical talents. Maybe they are, and secretly hate having his amazingly prepared students in their upper level courses, or maybe they think that graduate students are students too, who also deserve some guidance and that there's some pedagogical point to the elements of teaching he doesn't believe in.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 8:11 AM on October 12, 2015 [21 favorites]
Additionally, if you are teaching one section - no matter how big - of a multi section course, you're supposed usually to agree with the other professors on curricular things like whether you will all collect homework or not. You usually use the same textbook as well, because otherwise it's really unfair on everyone involved and means students can never freaking share anything or work together if they're in different sections. Generally most courses across various faculties are now trying to allow students to gain marks in different areas of work and not leaving everything down to timed exams where not all students do well. Collecting and marking homework is important not just to make students do the work, but to make sure that you allow students who might not be good in exams to acquire marks via other means. Most of all, if you really want to see where students are struggling before an exam, it's homework you look at. They will frequently assure you that they understand everything when they really are having issues with something that will appear in a big way later.
These two issues are why I'm struggling to believe that he is always the amazing teacher he thinks he is and this is entirely down to the Math department running scared of his pedagogical talents. Maybe they are, and secretly hate having his amazingly prepared students in their upper level courses, or maybe they think that graduate students are students too, who also deserve some guidance and that there's some pedagogical point to the elements of teaching he doesn't believe in.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 8:11 AM on October 12, 2015 [21 favorites]
If he's just leaving TAs to find their creativity sections for enormous classes, where sections are incredibly important for making sure that you can see if students are understanding what you're teaching, he's not a good teacher. He's essentially writing off a chunk of the course in favour of his lecturing.
Yeah, managing 16 TAs spread over 32 discussions and 800 students can't be easy; it's not part of the core competencies of most academics (I'm not sure I could do it), not anything that getting a Ph.D. prepares you for, and I'd bet a huge amount of time on top of lecture preparation and other administrative things. But that is the whole point of this kind of structure (for better or worse): it's why they hire teaching track faculty, basically to turn these courses into a little sub-unit within a department.
posted by advil at 8:27 AM on October 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
Yeah, managing 16 TAs spread over 32 discussions and 800 students can't be easy; it's not part of the core competencies of most academics (I'm not sure I could do it), not anything that getting a Ph.D. prepares you for, and I'd bet a huge amount of time on top of lecture preparation and other administrative things. But that is the whole point of this kind of structure (for better or worse): it's why they hire teaching track faculty, basically to turn these courses into a little sub-unit within a department.
posted by advil at 8:27 AM on October 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
internet fraud detective squad, station number 9: “He doesn't collect homework because he evaluates his students in class. (And I'm sure with final exams). It's a legitimate pedagogical approach and not about laziness. Collecting homework isn't necessary. My best math teacher never collected homework. We were expected to work on it until we understood it. Guess how many of us passed the AP Calc exams without having turned in math homework for 3+ years?”
It seems extraordinarily unlikely that this professor was personally evaluating "437 and 405" students in class. If he's doing that effectively, then he's one of those crazy mind-reading scanners from the David Cronenberg film.
lalochezia: “Some students learn better when there are tiny (or significant!) extrinsic motivators to study.”
sharp pointy objects: “And some students don't. I hate homework. HATE IT. I'm paying for this class, I'm going to get something out of it. The problem is, in classes of almost 400(!) students, you're going to have a huge range of learning styles. But there is just one professor. While he might have time to go over a math concept more than one way in class, he can really only teach under one method. So he should pick the one that works best for him.”
But it's not about not assigning homework. This professor clearly assigned homework. He says so in his "blowing the whistle" letter – he even says he often assigned extra, personalized homework problems for individual students via email.
The issue is that, somewhere in the process after giving students homework that they are required to do, this particular professor apparently is the sort of professor who refuses to grade and return said homework. And this, may I say, is a problem that is depressingly common among overworked professors. I totally understand that it's a difficult thing when you're talking about hundreds of students; but that's part of why you have, and ought to utilize, the help of graduate assistants.
It comes down to this: classes work in various different ways. I've had a lot of different kinds of classes. I've had classes where the professor announced up-front that the only thing that you'd really be evaluated on is the final exam, and that everything else was just window-dressing and practice. Even those professors seemed to know that, if they assigned practice questions or problems, then even if that wasn't something going into your final grade, they, as teachers, were expected to look over what you handed in and give you a little rundown of how well you were doing. It's just common courtesy. And, yes, on the other hand, I've had professors who said only the final exam counted, and then strictly adhered to a policy of never assigning any practice questions at all, just referring vaguely to the stuff in the book if you wanted some exercise on the concepts. I didn't like this as much, but at least I understood what was going on, and the expectation was set.
But this professor seems to be one of those hybrids who assigns homework, expects you to do it, and then refuses to give you feedback or evaluation on your progress according to how well you did that homework. And – it's hard to read that as anything other than a kind of laziness. As anyone involved in higher education for any length of time knows, grading is difficult. It takes up the lion's share of the workload of a typical college professor, to a very great degree. It's difficult because it's hard to offer thoughtful, personal, constructive criticism about an individual's academic progress – but, yes, that is the job of a college professor.
theora55: “He pushes Formative Assessment.”
Yeah, that's a funny thing. The only reason I've heard of "formative assessment" is because I know some people who teach k-12, and they talk about it a bit. I've never heard of it being used in college classrooms. It's easy to see why; it's supposed to be (in my understanding – I'd appreciate correction if I'm wrong) basically a method whereby the teacher carefully monitors the progress of each individual student, and only moves forward when she or he can be sure that all students are ready for the next step, responding to difficulties as they arise by taking detours through whatever material it is necessary to go over.
I'm super curious about how you'd do that with almost a thousand students in your classes. Certainly I'd think it would require enlisting graduate assistants in a very rigorous educational paradigm! Unfortunately his example of his style of formative assessment, if we can call it an example of that, is just a single-page "before and after" of one student, apparently intended to illustrate that the technique is effective rather than show anything about how it's done.
I don't know. I don't want to be too pushy, and the fact is, as I said, I really am intrigued by his suggestion that he's made formative assessment work on a broad scale with huge numbers of students. He says several times that, since he is (in his estimation) very successful, he thinks the rest of the department should be begging to know how he does it so they can copy him. I guess I follow that as far as I goes. The trick is that, if they went ahead and fired him, I have a suspicion they know how he does what he does, and they just don't think it's as effective as he does.
posted by koeselitz at 8:40 AM on October 12, 2015 [6 favorites]
It seems extraordinarily unlikely that this professor was personally evaluating "437 and 405" students in class. If he's doing that effectively, then he's one of those crazy mind-reading scanners from the David Cronenberg film.
lalochezia: “Some students learn better when there are tiny (or significant!) extrinsic motivators to study.”
sharp pointy objects: “And some students don't. I hate homework. HATE IT. I'm paying for this class, I'm going to get something out of it. The problem is, in classes of almost 400(!) students, you're going to have a huge range of learning styles. But there is just one professor. While he might have time to go over a math concept more than one way in class, he can really only teach under one method. So he should pick the one that works best for him.”
But it's not about not assigning homework. This professor clearly assigned homework. He says so in his "blowing the whistle" letter – he even says he often assigned extra, personalized homework problems for individual students via email.
The issue is that, somewhere in the process after giving students homework that they are required to do, this particular professor apparently is the sort of professor who refuses to grade and return said homework. And this, may I say, is a problem that is depressingly common among overworked professors. I totally understand that it's a difficult thing when you're talking about hundreds of students; but that's part of why you have, and ought to utilize, the help of graduate assistants.
It comes down to this: classes work in various different ways. I've had a lot of different kinds of classes. I've had classes where the professor announced up-front that the only thing that you'd really be evaluated on is the final exam, and that everything else was just window-dressing and practice. Even those professors seemed to know that, if they assigned practice questions or problems, then even if that wasn't something going into your final grade, they, as teachers, were expected to look over what you handed in and give you a little rundown of how well you were doing. It's just common courtesy. And, yes, on the other hand, I've had professors who said only the final exam counted, and then strictly adhered to a policy of never assigning any practice questions at all, just referring vaguely to the stuff in the book if you wanted some exercise on the concepts. I didn't like this as much, but at least I understood what was going on, and the expectation was set.
But this professor seems to be one of those hybrids who assigns homework, expects you to do it, and then refuses to give you feedback or evaluation on your progress according to how well you did that homework. And – it's hard to read that as anything other than a kind of laziness. As anyone involved in higher education for any length of time knows, grading is difficult. It takes up the lion's share of the workload of a typical college professor, to a very great degree. It's difficult because it's hard to offer thoughtful, personal, constructive criticism about an individual's academic progress – but, yes, that is the job of a college professor.
theora55: “He pushes Formative Assessment.”
Yeah, that's a funny thing. The only reason I've heard of "formative assessment" is because I know some people who teach k-12, and they talk about it a bit. I've never heard of it being used in college classrooms. It's easy to see why; it's supposed to be (in my understanding – I'd appreciate correction if I'm wrong) basically a method whereby the teacher carefully monitors the progress of each individual student, and only moves forward when she or he can be sure that all students are ready for the next step, responding to difficulties as they arise by taking detours through whatever material it is necessary to go over.
I'm super curious about how you'd do that with almost a thousand students in your classes. Certainly I'd think it would require enlisting graduate assistants in a very rigorous educational paradigm! Unfortunately his example of his style of formative assessment, if we can call it an example of that, is just a single-page "before and after" of one student, apparently intended to illustrate that the technique is effective rather than show anything about how it's done.
I don't know. I don't want to be too pushy, and the fact is, as I said, I really am intrigued by his suggestion that he's made formative assessment work on a broad scale with huge numbers of students. He says several times that, since he is (in his estimation) very successful, he thinks the rest of the department should be begging to know how he does it so they can copy him. I guess I follow that as far as I goes. The trick is that, if they went ahead and fired him, I have a suspicion they know how he does what he does, and they just don't think it's as effective as he does.
posted by koeselitz at 8:40 AM on October 12, 2015 [6 favorites]
Coward probably does have a really good point on the Math department surviving through the necessity of its intro courses, the lack of will for departments to run their own intro courses, and a process of "managed mediocrity" in which everybody on campus keeps their expectations low and the Math department can quietly continue to be truly excellent in research while shifting the blame for students not learning calculus to those dumb students who can't learn anything.
However, I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this guy's ... start-up / consulting company ? It's linked on his website.
Higher Teaching
Looks like he has a (possibly money-oriented) axe to grind with respect to the way things are in teaching. I could see this as being 1) incredibly annoying to deal with as a math faculty, where a lecturer comes in and tells you are doing it wrong, and hire my company to train you to do it right, and 2) conflicts of interest on Coward's part, depending on how he is trying to plug this.
posted by permiechickie at 8:42 AM on October 12, 2015 [4 favorites]
However, I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this guy's ... start-up / consulting company ? It's linked on his website.
Higher Teaching
Looks like he has a (possibly money-oriented) axe to grind with respect to the way things are in teaching. I could see this as being 1) incredibly annoying to deal with as a math faculty, where a lecturer comes in and tells you are doing it wrong, and hire my company to train you to do it right, and 2) conflicts of interest on Coward's part, depending on how he is trying to plug this.
posted by permiechickie at 8:42 AM on October 12, 2015 [4 favorites]
If he's just leaving TAs to find their creativity sections for enormous classes, where sections are incredibly important for making sure that you can see if students are understanding what you're teaching, he's not a good teacher. He's essentially writing off a chunk of the course in favour of his lecturing. It's also really unfair to graduate students to toss them in at the deep end this way and it takes up huge amounts of their time if you're not helping them with lesson plans, strategies, grading workshops, etc. It's not just about your facetime with students in large classes: it's about ensuring that you've taken responsibility for all the areas, not just the ones where you are centre stage.
Yes yes yes yes yes yes. My first year as a TA, I taught with a gentleman who did this to me--handed me four discussion sections, told me to do whatever I wanted with them, and gave me absolutely no suggestion for what they should be. There was no graded incentive for students to attend, either. I had myself graduated from undergrad just nine months before, so I was completely fucking adrift. It was miserable, and perhaps the single worst teaching experience of my life yet. I'm good at teaching and I like it, but that semester made me seriously question whether any of it was worth it.
Just that bit alone makes me *incredibly* unsympathetic to this professor. It sounds like he's really neglecting huge swathes of this class in favor of trying to establish a cult of personality in his classroom, and having been on the other side of that... well, let me just say that I'd rather gnaw my hands off than work with someone who thinks like that ever again.
posted by sciatrix at 8:47 AM on October 12, 2015 [12 favorites]
Yes yes yes yes yes yes. My first year as a TA, I taught with a gentleman who did this to me--handed me four discussion sections, told me to do whatever I wanted with them, and gave me absolutely no suggestion for what they should be. There was no graded incentive for students to attend, either. I had myself graduated from undergrad just nine months before, so I was completely fucking adrift. It was miserable, and perhaps the single worst teaching experience of my life yet. I'm good at teaching and I like it, but that semester made me seriously question whether any of it was worth it.
Just that bit alone makes me *incredibly* unsympathetic to this professor. It sounds like he's really neglecting huge swathes of this class in favor of trying to establish a cult of personality in his classroom, and having been on the other side of that... well, let me just say that I'd rather gnaw my hands off than work with someone who thinks like that ever again.
posted by sciatrix at 8:47 AM on October 12, 2015 [12 favorites]
Worth taking a moment here to appreciate the timeworn but still significant irony of the scab who runs straight to the union rep when he gets fired.
posted by RogerB at 9:24 AM on October 12, 2015 [13 favorites]
posted by RogerB at 9:24 AM on October 12, 2015 [13 favorites]
I think formative assessment is pretty standard in UK higher education - if Coward taught at Oxford during his PhD, he would undoubtedly have been asked to use it in teaching. I think this is a cultural difference between UK and US higher education.
posted by Aravis76 at 9:30 AM on October 12, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Aravis76 at 9:30 AM on October 12, 2015 [2 favorites]
Mod note: Comment removed; please find a way to make your argument without calling everybody you disagree with whiners etc.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:50 AM on October 12, 2015
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:50 AM on October 12, 2015
Indeed - it even seems difficult to believe that someone involved in higher education actually said such a thing. Speaking of which: do we?
Hmm, do I believe that the interim chair of an academic department that is fine with shoving 437 undergrads, mostly freshmen presumably, into a single lecture for an intro math course would liken the operation to fast food? I'm just surprised he didn't compare the class to the poultry farms where they raise the future McNuggets.
posted by zachlipton at 9:59 AM on October 12, 2015 [2 favorites]
Hmm, do I believe that the interim chair of an academic department that is fine with shoving 437 undergrads, mostly freshmen presumably, into a single lecture for an intro math course would liken the operation to fast food? I'm just surprised he didn't compare the class to the poultry farms where they raise the future McNuggets.
posted by zachlipton at 9:59 AM on October 12, 2015 [2 favorites]
A bit of (impartial) context here: Coward refers several times to Senate faculty members. The UC system's faculty is composed of Academic Senate members -- i.e., tenured and tenure-track faculty members with "professor" titles -- and other faculty members who are not a part of the Academic Senate (e.g., lecturers, whether adjunct, part-time, or full-time). The entire university system is run on the idea of shared governance: The (Senate) faculty theoretically has as much of a say in university policy as the administration does.
Tenured Senate positions are, as you might imagine, expensive. The number of Senate faculty a department can employ is also somewhat finite at any given time. There is a long, drawn-out recruitment process, and approval for hiring a new Senate faculty member must come from the Provost. It's not done at the department's discretion.
So, departments often hire lecturers to cover basic instructional needs. Part of this is because Senate faculty always express that they already have a full teaching/research load when they're approached about teaching large undergraduate classes, and part of it is because employing lectures is both less-expensive and easier to do when you have an immediate instructional need.
Here's the thing, though: A lecturer may be hired full-time, may teach as much as every other Senate faculty member in the department, and may be considered a member of the faculty just like everyone else. But, lecturers are not part of the Academic Senate. A fundamental precept of the Academic Senate is that it, and it alone, controls, develops, and determines the curriculum that the university offers.
So, it may sound petty that Coward's department and colleagues keep insisting that he stick to the department's norms. The flip side of that, though, is that by the very academic bylaws of the university, the Senate determines the curriculum, period, and a lecturer has absolutely zero right to change it. I'm not saying he might not be better at designing the class and I'm not saying he's not a great lecturer, but he does not have the right, under the UC academic bylaws, to change the department's curriculum, and it sounds like that's what the department says he's doing.
That was the impartial bit. The not impartial bit is that I see this tension between Senate and non-Senate faculty members on a daily basis. There's a kind of big-brother/little-brother antagonism that comes out of it, and it can get ugly. I think the non-Senate faculty are often justified in feeling like they have very little say and very little influence in their departments and in their own courses. That's kind of the breaks, though. They're people with PhDs (usually) who either chose not to go the tenure-track route, or were unable to get tenured positions. There is animosity from non-Senate faculty members because they often feel like they're treated as lesser persons. The sucky thing is that the bylaws of the UC system basically codify that. The system may be unfair, but that is the system.
The really not-impartial bit: Anyone who thinks that the university's first priority is students, and the teaching of them, is conveniently naive. R1 universities -- my employer, UC, included -- are as for-profit as any corporation. Their goal is the money that comes from large research grants. Professors are reviewed based on their research productivity, with teaching coming in as a distant second. (Actually less distant at my UC -- they're trying to make teaching performance equivalent to research performance when it comes to faculty reviews, but there is an incredibly amount of resistance among research faculty.)
The Senate faculty members I work with will buy out of an undergraduate class (with money that comes from their research grants) at every available opportunity. They're dedicated to their students, yes, but they're more dedicated to their research. Teaching is kind of an inconvenience that takes them away from their real goals. It's not any different at the university administration level. In the university's eyes, the students are there to provide the tuition that pays for the faculty who bring in the research money.
Yes, cynical. Also true.
posted by mudpuppie at 10:06 AM on October 12, 2015 [11 favorites]
Tenured Senate positions are, as you might imagine, expensive. The number of Senate faculty a department can employ is also somewhat finite at any given time. There is a long, drawn-out recruitment process, and approval for hiring a new Senate faculty member must come from the Provost. It's not done at the department's discretion.
So, departments often hire lecturers to cover basic instructional needs. Part of this is because Senate faculty always express that they already have a full teaching/research load when they're approached about teaching large undergraduate classes, and part of it is because employing lectures is both less-expensive and easier to do when you have an immediate instructional need.
Here's the thing, though: A lecturer may be hired full-time, may teach as much as every other Senate faculty member in the department, and may be considered a member of the faculty just like everyone else. But, lecturers are not part of the Academic Senate. A fundamental precept of the Academic Senate is that it, and it alone, controls, develops, and determines the curriculum that the university offers.
So, it may sound petty that Coward's department and colleagues keep insisting that he stick to the department's norms. The flip side of that, though, is that by the very academic bylaws of the university, the Senate determines the curriculum, period, and a lecturer has absolutely zero right to change it. I'm not saying he might not be better at designing the class and I'm not saying he's not a great lecturer, but he does not have the right, under the UC academic bylaws, to change the department's curriculum, and it sounds like that's what the department says he's doing.
That was the impartial bit. The not impartial bit is that I see this tension between Senate and non-Senate faculty members on a daily basis. There's a kind of big-brother/little-brother antagonism that comes out of it, and it can get ugly. I think the non-Senate faculty are often justified in feeling like they have very little say and very little influence in their departments and in their own courses. That's kind of the breaks, though. They're people with PhDs (usually) who either chose not to go the tenure-track route, or were unable to get tenured positions. There is animosity from non-Senate faculty members because they often feel like they're treated as lesser persons. The sucky thing is that the bylaws of the UC system basically codify that. The system may be unfair, but that is the system.
The really not-impartial bit: Anyone who thinks that the university's first priority is students, and the teaching of them, is conveniently naive. R1 universities -- my employer, UC, included -- are as for-profit as any corporation. Their goal is the money that comes from large research grants. Professors are reviewed based on their research productivity, with teaching coming in as a distant second. (Actually less distant at my UC -- they're trying to make teaching performance equivalent to research performance when it comes to faculty reviews, but there is an incredibly amount of resistance among research faculty.)
The Senate faculty members I work with will buy out of an undergraduate class (with money that comes from their research grants) at every available opportunity. They're dedicated to their students, yes, but they're more dedicated to their research. Teaching is kind of an inconvenience that takes them away from their real goals. It's not any different at the university administration level. In the university's eyes, the students are there to provide the tuition that pays for the faculty who bring in the research money.
Yes, cynical. Also true.
posted by mudpuppie at 10:06 AM on October 12, 2015 [11 favorites]
Re: mudpuppie's comment:
The really not-impartial bit: Anyone who thinks that the university's first priority is students, and the teaching of them, is conveniently naive. R1 universities -- my employer, UC, included -- are as for-profit as any corporation. Their goal is the money that comes from large research grants. Professors are reviewed based on their research productivity, with teaching coming in as a distant second. (Actually less distant at my UC -- they're trying to make teaching performance equivalent to research performance when it comes to faculty reviews, but there is an incredibly amount of resistance among research faculty.)
From his statement, the Math department is in a unique position, being a large, research focused department that doesn't bring in big grants. In fact their paychecks and office space are justified by their teaching load of basic math classes that benefit other departments:
In the April 18th, 2014 memo to me then Chair Ogus wrote: "We explained to you before you accepted the position that the idea of employing a full-time lecturer is controversial in our department." This raises the question of why it was controversial. It was controversial because the way the Mathematics Department justifies its size on campus is through the teaching of large service courses for other majors. I have been told by Craig Evans that around 15,000 students take classes with the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department each year. On the other hand, mathematicians typically do not bring in giant grants like experimental scientists, and compared to most other departments that do not bring in super-grants the Mathematics Department is large. The Mathematics Department uses its privileged role in providing service teaching for undergraduates in all the sciences and social sciences to justify its size and all the trappings that go with that like funding and office space. The problem is that their reliance on teaching to justify size and resources is not commensurate with a commitment to doing a good job.
posted by permiechickie at 10:37 AM on October 12, 2015
The really not-impartial bit: Anyone who thinks that the university's first priority is students, and the teaching of them, is conveniently naive. R1 universities -- my employer, UC, included -- are as for-profit as any corporation. Their goal is the money that comes from large research grants. Professors are reviewed based on their research productivity, with teaching coming in as a distant second. (Actually less distant at my UC -- they're trying to make teaching performance equivalent to research performance when it comes to faculty reviews, but there is an incredibly amount of resistance among research faculty.)
From his statement, the Math department is in a unique position, being a large, research focused department that doesn't bring in big grants. In fact their paychecks and office space are justified by their teaching load of basic math classes that benefit other departments:
In the April 18th, 2014 memo to me then Chair Ogus wrote: "We explained to you before you accepted the position that the idea of employing a full-time lecturer is controversial in our department." This raises the question of why it was controversial. It was controversial because the way the Mathematics Department justifies its size on campus is through the teaching of large service courses for other majors. I have been told by Craig Evans that around 15,000 students take classes with the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department each year. On the other hand, mathematicians typically do not bring in giant grants like experimental scientists, and compared to most other departments that do not bring in super-grants the Mathematics Department is large. The Mathematics Department uses its privileged role in providing service teaching for undergraduates in all the sciences and social sciences to justify its size and all the trappings that go with that like funding and office space. The problem is that their reliance on teaching to justify size and resources is not commensurate with a commitment to doing a good job.
posted by permiechickie at 10:37 AM on October 12, 2015
Collecting and marking homework is important not just to make students do the work, but to make sure that you allow students who might not be good in exams to acquire marks via other means.
I think someone else alluded to this setup but in a couple of my calculus classes (at his university) homework was not actually required or marked for a grade - but it was marked for feedback if you turned it in.
posted by atoxyl at 12:17 PM on October 12, 2015
I think someone else alluded to this setup but in a couple of my calculus classes (at his university) homework was not actually required or marked for a grade - but it was marked for feedback if you turned it in.
posted by atoxyl at 12:17 PM on October 12, 2015
As permiechickie very astutely points out, Coward claims -- and by his very success tends to demonstrate -- that the math department now devotes a small and insufficient proportion of its resources to the aspect of its mission that brings in all the money.
For all its by now hoary duration, this is a paradoxical and inherently unstable situation, yet resolving it by making more effort to teach these basic courses well would threaten the department's status as a world leader in research in higher mathematics.
This makes Coward something of an existential threat to the department as it now stands.
No wonder they want to get rid of him -- it's only surprising that they hired him in the first place.
posted by jamjam at 12:30 PM on October 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
For all its by now hoary duration, this is a paradoxical and inherently unstable situation, yet resolving it by making more effort to teach these basic courses well would threaten the department's status as a world leader in research in higher mathematics.
This makes Coward something of an existential threat to the department as it now stands.
No wonder they want to get rid of him -- it's only surprising that they hired him in the first place.
posted by jamjam at 12:30 PM on October 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
I'd be interested in the conditions around his hiring, too. And what the stated conditions/expectations for contract renewal are (similar to: are expectations for tenure clear, ever?).
Here at Small Pond U, there is a trend towards hiring perma-teachers -- who offer more consistency from year to year in teaching the Basic 101 stuff than adjuncts, and free up the Real Faculty (TM) to focus on upper-level courses and, of course, research.
The hiring process for these perma-teachers here has focused on all the new, flashy innovative disruptive inverted formative active learning techniques. The candidates have accordingly spent much time training in these new techniques. There is much excitement for bringing in this shiny fresh new set of ideas. I'm a fan, personally.
Yet there's an inherent discord when that person comes in and teaches the New Way. Students at Small Pond have tended to revolt against this New Way, and teaching evals have varied accordingly (I think there's even some literature showing that this is a trend). There's also clearly an opportunity for discord between the Old Way that the Real Faculty have always done things and this New Way. Further, the Old Way is the basis for how the Real Faculty assess their new perma-teacher colleague.
posted by Dashy at 1:05 PM on October 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
Here at Small Pond U, there is a trend towards hiring perma-teachers -- who offer more consistency from year to year in teaching the Basic 101 stuff than adjuncts, and free up the Real Faculty (TM) to focus on upper-level courses and, of course, research.
The hiring process for these perma-teachers here has focused on all the new, flashy innovative disruptive inverted formative active learning techniques. The candidates have accordingly spent much time training in these new techniques. There is much excitement for bringing in this shiny fresh new set of ideas. I'm a fan, personally.
Yet there's an inherent discord when that person comes in and teaches the New Way. Students at Small Pond have tended to revolt against this New Way, and teaching evals have varied accordingly (I think there's even some literature showing that this is a trend). There's also clearly an opportunity for discord between the Old Way that the Real Faculty have always done things and this New Way. Further, the Old Way is the basis for how the Real Faculty assess their new perma-teacher colleague.
posted by Dashy at 1:05 PM on October 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
So how is not collecting homework (which you would then give to your TAs) lazy again?
To me, turning in homework assignments that can be graded and then returned to the student with feedback is a pretty important part of the classes I've been involved in, both as a student and now as a TA. In a lot of intro STEM classes it will be the only graded assignments students have before they take the test (although sometimes there are quizzes as well). Students should still be doing practice on their own, but I definitely think homework is an important part of an intro STEM class.
Of course, it's also useful in that it can help motivate students to get practice, but I think the feedback is the most crucial part of it. Not to mention it often can help students' final grade, since otherwise you often end up with a breakdown where like 40% of a grade is the final exam, and then the other 60% comes from mid term exams.
I don't think it's lazy per se, but there's a reason why this is the standard approach in a lot of (most?) intro STEM classes.
Have people never had a class that had things like clicker questions, in-class quizzes,
I have had classes that did this and TA'd for classes that do this. I still don't think these things adequately stand in for homework, though I do think they're good pedagogical tools. Clicker questions are most often used when material is first introduced, at least as far as I've seen. That's not necessarily true with in class quizzes, but the advantage of homework is that students have a chance to work on it on their own, outside of the classroom. There's also an opportunity to give more complicated questions that you wouldn't have time to do if you did them in class.
I disagree that they should be provided with even more extrinsic motivation than a final grade lest they completely fail to try. I mean, come on
I agree with this definitely for more upper level classes. At the same time, a lot of these intro classes are taken by college freshman, who are just transitioning from high school to college. I don't think there's anything wrong with providing some extrinsic motivation to help them when they're still in the midst of developing college level study skills.
I think for all these classes the goal should be to help the students learn the material. I personally believe, based on my experience as a STEM student and a STEM TA, that homework is one very useful tool in trying to accomplish this goal.
posted by litera scripta manet at 1:34 PM on October 12, 2015 [7 favorites]
To me, turning in homework assignments that can be graded and then returned to the student with feedback is a pretty important part of the classes I've been involved in, both as a student and now as a TA. In a lot of intro STEM classes it will be the only graded assignments students have before they take the test (although sometimes there are quizzes as well). Students should still be doing practice on their own, but I definitely think homework is an important part of an intro STEM class.
Of course, it's also useful in that it can help motivate students to get practice, but I think the feedback is the most crucial part of it. Not to mention it often can help students' final grade, since otherwise you often end up with a breakdown where like 40% of a grade is the final exam, and then the other 60% comes from mid term exams.
I don't think it's lazy per se, but there's a reason why this is the standard approach in a lot of (most?) intro STEM classes.
Have people never had a class that had things like clicker questions, in-class quizzes,
I have had classes that did this and TA'd for classes that do this. I still don't think these things adequately stand in for homework, though I do think they're good pedagogical tools. Clicker questions are most often used when material is first introduced, at least as far as I've seen. That's not necessarily true with in class quizzes, but the advantage of homework is that students have a chance to work on it on their own, outside of the classroom. There's also an opportunity to give more complicated questions that you wouldn't have time to do if you did them in class.
I disagree that they should be provided with even more extrinsic motivation than a final grade lest they completely fail to try. I mean, come on
I agree with this definitely for more upper level classes. At the same time, a lot of these intro classes are taken by college freshman, who are just transitioning from high school to college. I don't think there's anything wrong with providing some extrinsic motivation to help them when they're still in the midst of developing college level study skills.
I think for all these classes the goal should be to help the students learn the material. I personally believe, based on my experience as a STEM student and a STEM TA, that homework is one very useful tool in trying to accomplish this goal.
posted by litera scripta manet at 1:34 PM on October 12, 2015 [7 favorites]
Be interesting to see some actual student results over time, rather than student evaluations; was he a demonstrably better teacher, or just a flashy one?
There are results though. His grievance mentions his students tracking into the Math 1B, the next course in sequence, were roughly 0.17 grade points better. That's roughly 5 percent better on a 4.0 scale. And assuming no curving is applied, means raw percentages are also 1.7 percent higher.
The faculty out that this different is small enough relative to the variance and sample size to have been by chance. Stark states that the statistical tests show only weakly positive difference in outcomes attributable to Math 1A instruction, largely indifferent to chance. But this also suggests the instruction was not measurably harming student progression. Coward notes that the methodology compares sections rather than instructors, which likely reduces any measurable impact. I don't know how I passed my statistics class, and I still haven't read the textbook AskMefi recommended on the subject, so I don't know exactly how big of a sample set you would need to determine if a small effect is due to chance or not.
But it seems clear from the surrounding text in the grievance and additional pdfs that his reappointment is up to a faculty vote on the concept of even having non-TT lecturers. Honestly, I don't think it matters whether the test could have measured any effect or not, his contrarian approach was likely to lose him far more votes than any outcome could have hoped to gain.
posted by pwnguin at 1:43 PM on October 12, 2015
There are results though. His grievance mentions his students tracking into the Math 1B, the next course in sequence, were roughly 0.17 grade points better. That's roughly 5 percent better on a 4.0 scale. And assuming no curving is applied, means raw percentages are also 1.7 percent higher.
The faculty out that this different is small enough relative to the variance and sample size to have been by chance. Stark states that the statistical tests show only weakly positive difference in outcomes attributable to Math 1A instruction, largely indifferent to chance. But this also suggests the instruction was not measurably harming student progression. Coward notes that the methodology compares sections rather than instructors, which likely reduces any measurable impact. I don't know how I passed my statistics class, and I still haven't read the textbook AskMefi recommended on the subject, so I don't know exactly how big of a sample set you would need to determine if a small effect is due to chance or not.
But it seems clear from the surrounding text in the grievance and additional pdfs that his reappointment is up to a faculty vote on the concept of even having non-TT lecturers. Honestly, I don't think it matters whether the test could have measured any effect or not, his contrarian approach was likely to lose him far more votes than any outcome could have hoped to gain.
posted by pwnguin at 1:43 PM on October 12, 2015
The faculty out that this different is small enough relative to the variance and sample size to have been by chance. Stark states that the statistical tests show only weakly positive difference in outcomes attributable to Math 1A instruction, largely indifferent to chance.
Stark used an odd choice of test statistic, though, as opposed to something more standard like the difference in the means, so they actually didn't test the difference, only the variation:
Stark used an odd choice of test statistic, though, as opposed to something more standard like the difference in the means, so they actually didn't test the difference, only the variation:
The test statistic was the following:posted by un petit cadeau at 2:04 PM on October 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
For each section of 1B, calculate the three average grades corresponding to each of the three 1A sections. Take the standard deviation of those three numbers. Add those numbers for the three sections of 1B.
Hmm, do I believe that the interim chair of an academic department that is fine with shoving 437 undergrads, mostly freshmen presumably, into a single lecture for an intro math course would liken the operation to fast food?
That's called not being able to afford smaller classes. They're teaching Math 54 as two 700-person lectures this semester. I took it as a 350-400 person lecture. At the time, the only classes that got to 700 people were ludicrously popular--Astro 10 and that was about it. Math 110 is/was traditionally taught in ~30 person sections. The year I took it, it was a 100+-person lecture (taught in a room that was built to fit the biggest calculus lecture anyone could envision) . A year or two later, there was money and it was back to 30 people. It's 280 this semester. There's a difference between 30 and 100 people, but there's not a lot of difference between 100 and 400. (I know that's hard to believe for people who went to small liberal arts colleges where 50 people in a class would be sacrilege. I'll grant you there's a difference between 350 and 700. I have no idea how you see the board from the back of Wheeler Auditorium, which is the only room that big.)
Yeah, I'm feeling a little defensive. Ogus was one of the better instructors I had as an undergrad, so it's a bit frustrating that half of Metafilter is convinced he's part of a conspiracy to be disinterested in teaching.
posted by hoyland at 3:03 PM on October 12, 2015 [2 favorites]
That's called not being able to afford smaller classes. They're teaching Math 54 as two 700-person lectures this semester. I took it as a 350-400 person lecture. At the time, the only classes that got to 700 people were ludicrously popular--Astro 10 and that was about it. Math 110 is/was traditionally taught in ~30 person sections. The year I took it, it was a 100+-person lecture (taught in a room that was built to fit the biggest calculus lecture anyone could envision) . A year or two later, there was money and it was back to 30 people. It's 280 this semester. There's a difference between 30 and 100 people, but there's not a lot of difference between 100 and 400. (I know that's hard to believe for people who went to small liberal arts colleges where 50 people in a class would be sacrilege. I'll grant you there's a difference between 350 and 700. I have no idea how you see the board from the back of Wheeler Auditorium, which is the only room that big.)
Yeah, I'm feeling a little defensive. Ogus was one of the better instructors I had as an undergrad, so it's a bit frustrating that half of Metafilter is convinced he's part of a conspiracy to be disinterested in teaching.
posted by hoyland at 3:03 PM on October 12, 2015 [2 favorites]
No wonder they want to get rid of him -- it's only surprising that they hired him in the first place.
The thought, "Did anyone here actually *read* my resume?" has occurred to me more than once during my experience in Higher Ed as my Inner-Auditor conflicted with the dysfunctional Information Security Policy.
posted by mikelieman at 3:04 PM on October 12, 2015
The thought, "Did anyone here actually *read* my resume?" has occurred to me more than once during my experience in Higher Ed as my Inner-Auditor conflicted with the dysfunctional Information Security Policy.
posted by mikelieman at 3:04 PM on October 12, 2015
If this reddit commenter is telling the truth
"He's also a bit of a dick to his GSIs: everyone at Berkeley, from fields medalists to lecturers, help grade the midterms for your large lecture but he REFUSES. Just goes home and lets the grad students figure all that out."
at least some of the department norms he's violating are good norms that I endorse.
posted by escabeche at 5:10 PM on October 12, 2015 [4 favorites]
"He's also a bit of a dick to his GSIs: everyone at Berkeley, from fields medalists to lecturers, help grade the midterms for your large lecture but he REFUSES. Just goes home and lets the grad students figure all that out."
at least some of the department norms he's violating are good norms that I endorse.
posted by escabeche at 5:10 PM on October 12, 2015 [4 favorites]
I have a lot of negative thoughts about Coward, but the most hilarious part is the big deal made over the maybe-maybe not statistically significant 0.17 grade points higher than a professor with a sort of crappy teaching reputation. After all that going on and on about what a teaching wonder he is, making everyone else look bad, what he actually means is maybe barely more effective than someone who's not that great at teaching.
My experience with him is primarily second hand (working with his students), but from that I gathered that his 1B (second semester calc) class was a hot mess. Terribly disorganized, extremely frequent rambling tangents in lecture, jumping all over the material in an illogical order, no specific recommended problems until midsemester (beyond "try all the problems in the book"), and no clear expectations for the students. Pretty much the only good commentary I heard was that he was nice.
Basically, he's either unqualified or unwilling to do a large part of his job (and it should have been clear from the beginning that planning assignments and managing/mentoring GSIs was definitely part of the job), and I'm only surprised the department kept him this long.
posted by ktkt at 5:27 PM on October 12, 2015 [3 favorites]
My experience with him is primarily second hand (working with his students), but from that I gathered that his 1B (second semester calc) class was a hot mess. Terribly disorganized, extremely frequent rambling tangents in lecture, jumping all over the material in an illogical order, no specific recommended problems until midsemester (beyond "try all the problems in the book"), and no clear expectations for the students. Pretty much the only good commentary I heard was that he was nice.
Basically, he's either unqualified or unwilling to do a large part of his job (and it should have been clear from the beginning that planning assignments and managing/mentoring GSIs was definitely part of the job), and I'm only surprised the department kept him this long.
posted by ktkt at 5:27 PM on October 12, 2015 [3 favorites]
I know that's hard to believe for people who went to small liberal arts colleges where 50 people in a class would be sacrilege
Taking huge lecture classes when in-state tuition was peanuts seems like a totally acceptable compromise. Accepting class sizes like that today when costs at prestige state school skirt close to private college costs makes very little sense to me.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:05 PM on October 12, 2015 [2 favorites]
Taking huge lecture classes when in-state tuition was peanuts seems like a totally acceptable compromise. Accepting class sizes like that today when costs at prestige state school skirt close to private college costs makes very little sense to me.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:05 PM on October 12, 2015 [2 favorites]
On a technical note, formative assessment, though apparently having been codified into much narrower and more specific practices some places, just means any feedback during the learning process that is designed to give students information about their progress that they can incorporate as they continue learning. It's any sort of mid-semester feedback, in a formalized semester setting, in other words. So it can include homework (online or human-marked), quizzes, tests, smaller projects or steps in a project, in-class clicker questions or concept tests, peer assessment activities, self-tests, journaling, in-class presentations, etc. This is as opposed to summative assessment, which gives a point-in-time (usually end-of-semester/end-of-course) snapshot of students' knowledge and skills.
Apparently at least some of my local grade schools use the term formative assessment to refer to feedback or assessment that doesn't get counted in the final course grade. There is, I gather, debate in education circles about how the pressure and stress induced by the grading process interacts with students' ability to incorporate the feedback provided by grades into their learning process. In grade school, students are a captive audience and there are some options beyond grades for encouraging or enforcing participation in a formative assessment process. This is not the case in university. From what I've read about research on best pedagogical practices at the university level (eg.), having graded formative assessments but allowing improved marks on the summative assessments to subsume those grades seems to work best.
posted by eviemath at 7:58 PM on October 12, 2015
Apparently at least some of my local grade schools use the term formative assessment to refer to feedback or assessment that doesn't get counted in the final course grade. There is, I gather, debate in education circles about how the pressure and stress induced by the grading process interacts with students' ability to incorporate the feedback provided by grades into their learning process. In grade school, students are a captive audience and there are some options beyond grades for encouraging or enforcing participation in a formative assessment process. This is not the case in university. From what I've read about research on best pedagogical practices at the university level (eg.), having graded formative assessments but allowing improved marks on the summative assessments to subsume those grades seems to work best.
posted by eviemath at 7:58 PM on October 12, 2015
"He's also a bit of a dick to his GSIs: everyone at Berkeley, from fields medalists to lecturers, help grade the midterms for your large lecture but he REFUSES. Just goes home and lets the grad students figure all that out."
I am not shocked that someone who scabbed during a GSI strike and went out of his way to pat himself on the back for it is a dick to his GSI's.
posted by Mavri at 8:02 PM on October 12, 2015
I am not shocked that someone who scabbed during a GSI strike and went out of his way to pat himself on the back for it is a dick to his GSI's.
posted by Mavri at 8:02 PM on October 12, 2015
Taking huge lecture classes when in-state tuition was peanuts seems like a totally acceptable compromise. Accepting class sizes like that today when costs at prestige state school skirt close to private college costs makes very little sense to me.
Don't knock it till you've tried it? It's not like no one has ever turned down a private college for a UC for reasons other than financial ones. There are absolutely people who should not go to somewhere like Berkeley. My brother would have failed out so fast you wouldn't believe it. Probably the best thing that could have happened to 18 year old me was being made responsible for myself.
My brother went to Yale, which while certainly not a small liberal arts college, is full of people who'll turn their nose up at Berkeley's class sizes. We counted the number of classes each of us took with more than 100 people and, if I recall correctly, came up even (maybe one of us had taken one more than the other). I think I won "smallest class" as well. (I probably won "largest class" too, but we weren't sure.) Granted, I had something of an advantage that he took mostly CS classes and I took mostly math and German.
posted by hoyland at 8:04 PM on October 12, 2015
Don't knock it till you've tried it? It's not like no one has ever turned down a private college for a UC for reasons other than financial ones. There are absolutely people who should not go to somewhere like Berkeley. My brother would have failed out so fast you wouldn't believe it. Probably the best thing that could have happened to 18 year old me was being made responsible for myself.
My brother went to Yale, which while certainly not a small liberal arts college, is full of people who'll turn their nose up at Berkeley's class sizes. We counted the number of classes each of us took with more than 100 people and, if I recall correctly, came up even (maybe one of us had taken one more than the other). I think I won "smallest class" as well. (I probably won "largest class" too, but we weren't sure.) Granted, I had something of an advantage that he took mostly CS classes and I took mostly math and German.
posted by hoyland at 8:04 PM on October 12, 2015
Jesus, those math lecture halls look exactly like the ones in physics building where I first went to undergraduate. Down to the panel on the walls, the emergency exit doors, the colors, the type of sliding blackboards, and the carpet design. I think the desk chairs may have been different. That's bizarre.
posted by Anonymous at 9:23 PM on October 12, 2015
posted by Anonymous at 9:23 PM on October 12, 2015
Berkeley's math department is terrible at teaching undergrads, I say that from experience. You have giant lecture halls for Math 1A and 1B, taught by researchers (typically) who are disorganized and all the fuck over the place. Also, how are you going to ask questions or interact with the professor in a class with 400 other kids? You aren't. Then you go to tutorial/discussion sections taught by people who may be in their first semester of grad school with zero teaching experience, usually.
Of course it's shit.
If you're in California and you want to actually get one-on-one , small class mathematics learning from the public college system, you go to community college. I've experienced both Cal and a community college and the later was a far superior course of instruction-- actual math ph.d.'s (some from Cal) who wanted to teach and did teach, day in and day out. I have several classmates who had similar experiences.
More money and resources would obviously make this better -- if UC hired enough lecturers such that the 1A/1B/1C classes were NO LARGER THAN 40 STUDENTS, then you can bet that there would be better outcomes.
posted by wuwei at 9:47 PM on October 12, 2015 [2 favorites]
Of course it's shit.
If you're in California and you want to actually get one-on-one , small class mathematics learning from the public college system, you go to community college. I've experienced both Cal and a community college and the later was a far superior course of instruction-- actual math ph.d.'s (some from Cal) who wanted to teach and did teach, day in and day out. I have several classmates who had similar experiences.
More money and resources would obviously make this better -- if UC hired enough lecturers such that the 1A/1B/1C classes were NO LARGER THAN 40 STUDENTS, then you can bet that there would be better outcomes.
posted by wuwei at 9:47 PM on October 12, 2015 [2 favorites]
schroedinger, it's not a mystery. Providing facilities and services to education is where all of Bush's increase in educational funding went. It's big business. (None of it went to teachers' salaries or general budget funding, as is clear from the fact schools were being closed and others were cutting their instruction time during times of overall budget increases.)
posted by oheso at 5:19 AM on October 13, 2015
posted by oheso at 5:19 AM on October 13, 2015
Those math classes aren't designed to teach, they are designed to make money, and gatekeep.
posted by entropone at 5:20 AM on October 13, 2015
posted by entropone at 5:20 AM on October 13, 2015
If you're in California and you want to actually get one-on-one , small class mathematics learning from the public college system, you go to community college.That's my experience in a totally different state, too, for what it's worth. I steer students towards community college math classes all the time. They're taught by math teachers, rather than mathematicians, and most students do better learning basic math from math teachers.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:59 AM on October 13, 2015 [2 favorites]
Stark used an odd choice of test statistic, though, as opposed to something more standard like the difference in the means, so they actually didn't test the difference, only the variation:Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) is actually pretty standard for when there are more than two groups to compare. The permutation test variant might be conservative but doesn't depend on gaussianity.
Anyway, his Rate My Professor page doesn't seem so great, he isn't the highest rated at Berkeley math even if he did get a chili pepper.
posted by nfultz at 10:49 PM on October 13, 2015
Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) is actually pretty standard for when there are more than two groups to compare.
Unfortunately, there are only two groups:
Group A: 384 students in non-Coward section
Group B: 804 students in Coward sections
I'm assuming the dataset and its purpose were removed before handing over to Stark, who appears to have treated it as:
Group 1: 384 students in non-Coward section
Group 2: 391 students in Coward section 1
Group 3: 403 students in Coward section 2
I imagine artificially dividing group B into 2 and 3 affects the results of ANOVA analysis, and also robs Coward's group of any additional statistical power from increases sample size.
posted by pwnguin at 10:28 AM on October 14, 2015
Unfortunately, there are only two groups:
Group A: 384 students in non-Coward section
Group B: 804 students in Coward sections
I'm assuming the dataset and its purpose were removed before handing over to Stark, who appears to have treated it as:
Group 1: 384 students in non-Coward section
Group 2: 391 students in Coward section 1
Group 3: 403 students in Coward section 2
I imagine artificially dividing group B into 2 and 3 affects the results of ANOVA analysis, and also robs Coward's group of any additional statistical power from increases sample size.
posted by pwnguin at 10:28 AM on October 14, 2015
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