Quotidian Quizzes—Introduction (d)

A year ago on Round and Square (6 December 2011)—Kanji Mastery: Radical 116: Cave

[a] Drop-by-drop RF

This is one part of a multi-post introduction. Click below for the other posts:

Quizzes 1          Quizzes 2          Quizzes 3          Quizzes 4
Quizzes 5          Quizzes 6          Quizzes 7          Quizzes 8

Yesterday, we considered the downsides of giving daily quizzes, and they are hardly inconsequential. In fact, while writing yesterday's post, I started to reconsider the whole thing. They need to be written, copied, distributed, graded, and sent back to students. On top of it, they take up over ten percent of total class time. That's a lot of "cost." The benefits had better be good—as I noted at the end of yesterday's post—if I am to continue down this path of giving daily (quotidian) quizzes.

[b] Kōan RF

Let's take a look.

To begin, quizzes strike right to the heart of the biggest problem I have faced in college teaching—class attendance. Although the vast majority of students have no problem with this basic concept, I actually understand a little bit about the whole missing class thing. Although I would like to say that my motives were pure, and I was unusually oriented toward geeky library pursuits, I missed a very large share of classes as an undergraduate. I regret this very much, and it is one of the reasons that attendance matters to me these days. I was clueless, and only wish that I had been pulled aside and been shocked into enlightenment, so to speak.

Quizzes, you see, are like Zen kōan (公案).

They have the potential to surprise students into new understanding. More on that in a minute. In the meantime, and on a much more humble level, they are very fine indicators of class attendance. You see, in my classroom schema, seventy (of one-hundred) points await the student who just shows up. That means the tortoise who isn't very well-prepared outscores the intellectual hare who is sleeping back in his room...by a score of 70-0. 

Is that fair? Well, yes, I think it is. Attendance matters, and the fact that quizzes are scheduled every meeting time during the term means that students need to be in their seats. Brilliance on papers and exams will serve them well, but a terrible attendance record will etch a big "D" or "F" into their quiz scores if they tune out for many days or even weeks.

I suspect that you don't quite believe that this is a serious problem. 

It is. Let me tell you a story by way of illustration.

Back in 2009, while serving as president of Beloit College's Phi Beta Kappa chapter, an earnest young electee made an appointment to talk with me. She seemed nervous as she began to speak, but her mission became clear over the course of the first few minutes. Finally, she just blurted it out. "Why are so few men in the Phi Beta Kappa group?" I am not sure that any of us who had done the selection had realized it, but the number of women dwarfed the number of men that year. In my imagination, I now remember it as 41-4, among the fifteen percent of the graduating class that was chosen. That might well not be accurate, but suffice (it) to say that women outnumbered men by at least five-to-one.*

*Dear reader: This was written in 2012, and from residence life to college administration, far too many of us naively thought we lived in a binary gender world. Reading this today, the example clunks, but it happened just as related here.

[c] Question RF

I was taken aback. It hadn't occurred to me. I paused, and then did what everyone from Socrates to Hélène Cixous has done in similar circumstances: I asked a question. I was not sure, at the time, where this was going, but I knew that I had to hit the rhetorical ball back over the net. It was in my court, and my question was sincere. Thwack—why do you think that women so far outnumber men? She paused, as though holding her racket in thought, and considered the question she had just raised for me seconds earlier. She paused, and thought some more. 

Finally, the answer came rushing forth in a winner down the line. It had never even occurred to me before but, the minute she said it, I knew she was right. Here's what she said:

          Video games.*
          They don't get the highest grades because all but a few of them play video 
          games all of the time. Sometimes they can't stop. They don't eat, they don't 
          sleep (until later), and they play all of the way through classes. 

*Dear reader: Again, this was written in 2012, and I can attest that the example rings true to its time. It sounds passé today, perhaps, but it actually was quite historically and culturally accurate.

Whoa. What a blow was there struck. She nailed it, and I knew it. I never thought that it was a problem until it was upon me. It is still true today, even though I am happy to report that recent Phi Beta Kappa groups have at least approximated 50-50 in terms of gender breakdown. 2009 might have been an aberration at the Phi Beta Kappa level, but let's not kid ourselves. Below the fifteen percent of the student body elected to that organization, a whole bunch of folks—mostly young men—just miss class. Whole bunches of it. I know that most of the time they are playing video games...or sleeping them off.

Quizzes are a little bit of a prod in the backside. 

Zaaaaaap. Up and out of bed, Game-Boy. It's time to take the quiz and stop running Madden NFL 13 post patterns in your fitful dreams. It's time to consider (Japanese) history and culture instead of (NFL) histrionics and couture. Quizzes at least allow me to plant a stake into the untrodden territory of guy-games and underachievement. It is a big, gendered, help in the battle against the friendly "C." Minus.

To be sure, I have begun noticing that a whole lot of women miss class too. The percentages are lower, and I sometimes wonder about the reasons. I do know that gaming does play a role in this, and that the gender breakdowns are changing every semester. This is as intriguing for social theory as it is demoralizing from a pedagogical perspective. Nonetheless, there is a clear stream that runs through it all.

[d] Old School RF

Quizzes will cure what ails you. 

Just show up and get your seventy points. Heck, why don't you actually read the material and get a ninety, ninety-five, or even one-hundred? How great would that be? It might even be something about which you could get competitive. Wouldn't it be great to beat your top score in Japanese History and Culture 5.0? Wouldn't that even make some of those worrisome panic attacks (the kind that come on in moments of clarity) go away? What a concept.

Quizzes accomplish these things. I would have to say that they might well be worth it just because of this. Still, ninety minutes a week spent on quizzes (and this is the most efficient possible scenario) is a large outlay of a professor's time. There must be more. As one wandering warrior says to the group's leader in Seven Samurai when Kambei describes the task for which he hopes to employ him (defending a farming village), "My ambitions are greater than this."   

Well, so, too, are mine when it comes to teaching. Getting students to come to class is a wonderful thing, but there had better be more.  

There is, and we'll consider it tomorrow in the introduction that will not end (and is becoming more like a term paper than a quiz). See you then.

This is one part of a multi-post introduction. Click below for the other posts:

Quizzes 1          Quizzes 2          Quizzes 3          Quizzes 4
Quizzes 5          Quizzes 6          Quizzes 7          Quizzes 8

[e] Training RF