One of the main ideas that I found both interesting and relevant within the assigned reading (Markwell and Courtney, 2005) is the idea that there are varying levels of motivation and readiness to learn in an undergraduate classroom. I always used to assume everyone was like myself and at the same cognitive level. It wasn't until I recently started graduate school that I realized how very different students can be.
Last semester, I was enrolled in Evolution- Biology 659. This class is cross-listed with Biology 459, meaning the majority of the students in the class were undergraduates. There were four graduate students, and we met separately on a different day in addition to attending the lecture portion three times per week with the undergraduates. Not being that much older than most of the people sitting around me, and less prepared for the class, as my undergraduate major was psychology, I felt a little intimidated by the course, material, and the biology majors. But that changed very quickly after the first exam.
Upon receiving our corrected exams back, an open discussion ensued about the way the first exam had gone. Undergraduate students were furious at the amount of content on the exam and the way it was designed. They were also angry that there were so many short answer questions and essays to write. The few multiple choice questions presented were not a sufficient amount to suit their taste levels. They were baffled by additional answer choices in the matching section of the exam. The biggest complaint was that the matching section was not a vocabulary word and it's definition, but rather a term, process, or evolutionary theory and its associated corresponding idea. They were downright open and rude about "the difficulty level" of the exam to the professor. To be honest, it was not the easiest exam I had ever encountered, but it was a fair assessment of the material covered in weeks prior. Benjamin Bloom and his taxonomy would have applauded that particular exam. Noticing these opposing levels of heterogeneity between the undergraduates and the graduate students was shocking to me. I now wonder how much of this backlash was a result of breaking down the "Hidden Assessment Contract" experienced in previous biology courses, and how much of it was actual differences in levels of cognitive development.
This article also made me ponder how I present material to the class that I teach, and whether they need to write down words I use that have unfamiliar meanings to them. I never would have thought twice about it if I had not gotten the idea from this article. Anatomy has a lot of vocabulary, and I admit that I have made assumptions as an instructor. While teaching last semester, I viewed my students as adults, fully cognitively developed human beings at a similar level. Reading this article has made me think twice about doing so again this semester.
In addition, the article brought forth quite a few points about the difference in students who ask questions or do not believe something presented, and those who are just looking for the letter grade and feeling of achievement associated with a high mark, regardless if what I am telling them is correct or not (the dualists). If I had a dollar for every time a student asked me if "such and such a thing" was going to be on the next A&P practical exam, I could afford to take the entire class for a solid night out at the Turf. In my evolution class last semester, the professor barely started in on some supplementary material before being the recipient of a barrage of questions such as: "How is this material going to be covered on an exam? Can you provide an example exam question?" The amount of dualism that I have encountered from undergraduate students is astounding. Before reading this article, I had just never realized that this behavior had a title associated with it, and that it was occurring so frequently in our science classrooms.
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