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Lead Balloon

Hmm. It seems my post from yesterday went over like a lead balloon. Oh well.

Today was a busy day of teaching. A myriad of students came in as this is the last lecture prior to their next exam in anatomy & physiology. The students who came in were concerned about their prior score. Of the nearly dozen students who came in, only one student had a score above 70%. She actually earned an 88% which I said was a pleasant score. She still wanted to do better so we analyzed her efforts and gave her a plan. The other scores from the other students were 38%, 42%, 52%, and 66%... plus a few others I cannot recall at the moment. In each of these cases I suggested that the student needed to devote more time to studying and also offered suggestions of different methods to address some of their specific issues. All of them (of course) balked at the mention of "studying more". They would proclaim loudly in nearly every case,

"I studied SOOOOOO very hard for this test! I spent hours upon hours pouring over my notes, etc."

Unfortunately, when pressed further for details, the typical response was that they had in fact studied for an hour or perhaps two for each of the two or three days prior to the test. Unfortunately, that is inadequate in terms of processing, thinking and digesting all the information they were being tested over, and I suggested this as kindly as I could muster.

A subject like anatomy and physiology... or for that matter any content driven course that is attempting to allow students to obtain a true depth of understanding is going to take a SIZABLE amount of effort to master. I have said to the class in general that this is not High School, nor is it a Freshman level course. I tell them that I am training them to be deep, critical thinkers and helping them to amass a large body of information. I am not going to simply give them detail that they can regurgitate back to me.... I need them to think deeply and look beyond simple memorization of detail.

They get frustrated and yet I encourage them to continue on, but to do so more deeply.

PipeTobacco