Earlier quoted context omitted.
Standards that are more in line with the rest of the faculty? https://twitter.com/misandryinc/status/1577006428539482113/p...
Quoted post unavailable.
Certainly not someone who's yucky!
NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading
51–60 of 110 posts
Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is trivially simple for an educator(edit: typo) to write a test that every student fails, curve the grades into a normal distribution, and place blame on students while showing a normal distribution of outcomes to administration. Do you think that practice produces better learning?
Despite my comments above, some examiners can be bastards. Deliberately setting examinations to fail students is counterproductive and demoralizing (sometimes to the extent that potentially good students leave the course). In practice, examiners who do this are usually inexperienced and they soon learn to discontinue the practice for all the obvious readons. That's why in this instance I'd be inclined to think the st…
I don't mean to assume malice where incompetence will suffice. You're correct that its generally inexperienced instructors, and in this case was a very experienced instructor.
Is it possible then, that this very experienced instructor, experienced a difficult time adapting to teaching in a new setting, and failed to adapt their examination?
The solution likely isn't for pandemic students to be told they have experience they don't have, but the structure in place created a situation where an entire class experienced the fallout from their professor's failure. In this case, the professor was fired. In many more, students bear the same punishments (both to their academic records and actual learning), while inexperienced instructors are simply told to do better next time.
Why shouldn't students have the same option to do better next time?
Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
What connection do you see between the company hiring and the course content? I don't think there is a closed-loop there.
Tough question, but it boils down to the type of subject matter that's been taught. I'll use myself as a illustration: I've done a wide range of subjects in my time and I'll use two instances. One was philosophy which included political philosophy the other electronics (which was separate from science, physics, chemistry, etc.). Philosophy covers a vast field: analytic Phil./logic requires mathematical precision wher…
So, it varies, and is loosely coupled at best, even looking from a macro-level.
The problem I see is that while students have enormous incentive to match a company's standard, companies have very little incentive to be a part of that process.
A student pursuing a degree in a larger pursuit of a career is faced with a founder's dilemma. They shoulder all of the risk of failure, and have no recourse. It isn't a company's problem if they aren't trained properly, nor is it a professor's. When starting a company founders are able to seek funding and declare bankruptcy, but students are expected to take out loans that cannot be defaulted on.
If the macro-level goal is a highly trained, highly effective workforce, then why aren't students supported in pursuing training by any of the institutionsthey interact with on that macro level?
Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading
#54A point made in the article's comments — an experienced doctor working in prenatal diagnosis says he struggled with organic chemistry, has not found it relevant to his career, and found biochemistry in med school more approachable. He concludes with: > It makes no sense that a course so peripheral to successful, high quality medical careers is a gatekeeper > to medical school applications at undergraduate programs th…
What would be a correct handling of the situation? If organic chemistry is as unimportant to medicine as claimed, and you had a bunch of students whose education was spoilt by a pandemic, and a professor who wants to flunk a bunch of them out, what to do? Sounds like the administration was in a tough spot to me.
Admit that the failure to learn was caused by a failure to teach, strike the grades from the record, and give priority enrollment for a repeat section in the next term?
The instructor operates with the assumption that they'll be teaching the same class next term, so the friction for instructors to teach for a repeat class roster is low. The administration operates with the assumption that students will be enrolling for that class, so the friction for administration to enroll a repeat class roster is low.
It is possible to educate our students to a high standard, without effectively punishing them for failing under faulty leadership.
I haven't even yet suggested the idea that tuition would be waived for the repeat section, because while that argument could be made, the argument I'd like to highlight here is that whatever tough spot the administration percieves requires little more than a willingness to accomodate failure as a part of learning.
Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems to be a pervasive attitude. Today a group of my colleagues received their grades on a linear algebra test. The class average was below the failing mark. One of my acquaintances remarked: "The professor is going to have to do something about these grades, they can't fail the whole class!" Maybe it's the class that should do something about the grades...
It is trivially simple for an educator(edit: typo) to write a test that every student fails, curve the grades into a normal distribution, and place blame on students while showing a normal distribution of outcomes to administration. Do you think that practice produces better learning?
This is why external standardised testing matters. Low grades could either mean bad teaching, a test too hard, or lazy students.
Standardised tests mean that if just one class does bad, it’s probably bad teaching, if the whole country does bad, it’s a more widespread issue. If any individual does bad, it’s their own issue.
Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is trivially simple for an educator(edit: typo) to write a test that every student fails, curve the grades into a normal distribution, and place blame on students while showing a normal distribution of outcomes to administration. Do you think that practice produces better learning?
This is why external standardised testing matters. Low grades could either mean bad teaching, a test too hard, or lazy students. Standardised tests mean that if just one class does bad, it’s probably bad teaching, if the whole country does bad, it’s a more widespread issue. If any individual does bad, it’s their own issue.
Or, this is why evaluation other than rote testing matters.
In specific situations, professional testing is relevant. The Bar, the USMLE, etc. In many more situations, quality is driven by accomplishing goals and solving problems that are by definition nonstandard.
Every practicing physician and lawyer passed their professional exam, yet, some remain more effective than others. Standardized testing is a high-pass filter. You can enforce a minimum, but cannot evaluate maxima. In this situation, a whole class did bad on an exam they all took, and there is still no way to infer whether it was the students, the instruction, or both. Lots of energy spent, very little effective training and credentialing accomplished.
Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading
#57> The officials also had tried to placate the students by offering to review their grades and allowing them to withdraw from the class retroactively. The chemistry department’s chairman, Mark E. Tuckerman, said the unusual offer to withdraw was a “one-time exception granted to students by the dean of the college.” I find that one interesting. You'd normally not be allowed to retry a class you scored badly in? Or what…
I went to NYU, albeit many, many, years ago.
I also failed a class - a bonafide big fat F fail.
I retook the class and got an A. However my final grade for the class was a C, because NYU policy (at least back then) was to average out your grades.
Plus the primary reason I failed my first attempt was because my professor was a hardass strict ex-military Lt. Colonel who gave no mercy. On my second attempt, my professor was a sweet old man approaching retirement who gave open book + open notes multiple choice exams.
Meanwhile I had friends at other schools - Rutgers, for example, who also failed classes and retook them. However for them, their final grade was either their best grade, or most recent one (I don’t recall). So if they failed, then got an A on the retry, their grade would be an A.
I think we were given one chance to withdraw from a class, before it finished. I don’t remember why I didn’t for the class I failed - I might have used up my chance already because I recall I was doing terribly that semester in general.
Granted this was many years ago. I’m not sure what NYU’s current policies are.
I remember severely regretting choosing NYU over Rutgers because I graduated with an abominable GPA, partially because of this averaging of grades.
Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading
#58As a recent grad, this doesn't at all seem surprising I had a class where literally half of the people in it cheated on the autograded assignments and got caught. Then after getting caught a bunch of them cheated again by just refactoring what they already wrote There were two to three other classes where a group of 10-20 people banded together and started insisting out of nowhere that the class was "too difficult".…
When I was in college, in the 80s, some professors and courses had campus-wide reputations for difficulty. Of one the student course review said "if you take Professor X you'll learn more from your B- than you will from any other class you take".
It turned out that these were generally the most interesting and rewarding courses, and these professors the ones most concerned about their students learning. They were pretty well attended. Everyone knew from Day One what they were in for, and everyone did the work. Those that didn't want to do that work found other courses.
Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
> what's the purpose of retroactively withdrawing? GPA inflation. Failed O-chem and ruined your chances of a top med school? Not to worry, how about a do-over!
Which is stupid because who cares if you get it in one or ten tries? Allowing retaken classes to replace old grades should be the standard.
Doctors don't get do-overs.
Coming up in a culture of "get this right the first time" makes all kinds of sense for a medical training track.
Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading
#60> After retiring from Princeton in 2007, he taught organic chemistry at N.Y.U. on a series of yearly contracts. About a decade ago, he said in an interview, he noticed a loss of focus among the students, even as more of them enrolled in his class, hoping to pursue medical careers.
> “Students were misreading exam questions at an astonishing rate,” he wrote in a grievance to the university, protesting his termination. Grades fell even as he reduced the difficulty of his exams.
> The problem was exacerbated by the pandemic, he said. “In the last two years, they fell off a cliff,” he wrote. “We now see single digit scores and even zeros.”
We seem to be losing focus as a society on literally everything--from University courses to just driving around.