A Sense of Entitlement

Is it "a sense of entitlement" if students are actually entitled to it? To what are learners in fact entitled?

A recent Language Log post tracks the meaning of the word "entitlement" over time. I was surprised to see how early it acquired negative connotations. Originally meaning something to which a person is legitimately entitled (think of going to college on the GI bill, for example), it came quickly to be used in contexts where a person believes they are entitled to something on which they actually have no legitimate claim. The string, "…sense of entitlement…" is common.

You hear a lot in higher ed these days about the "sense of entitlement" among students, and this does point to a genuine problem. Grade inflation is real, as is a consumer mentality around education: you hear sentiments like "I pay the teacher's salary, so they have to do x for me," where x = "respect my learning style," "cut me a break because of my full-time job," "avoid offending me." (Side point: an instructor is no more employed by her learners than a waiter is employed by the guy ordering a steak.)

But are learners entitled to nothing? I'll offer today two things to which a learner is, in my view, entitled: Clarity regarding time commitments, and clarity regarding assessments.

Time commitments: A learner is entitled to know how many hours the course work is designed to take. Many of my students work long hours (usually in a church), and frankly, should either be working fewer hours or taking fewer classes ("But my scholarship requires…"). It's a real systemic problem in need of address. At the same time, we all know that being squeezed from both sides is the human condition: it's how you develop muscle, and learning to "push back" against one's employer is a survival skill.

I often say,

Here is the difference between me and your church employer. The church will never tell you it has "enough" of your time. It will always want more. Me, I will design my course in such a way that its time requirements are predictable: about so many hours of reading, about so many hours of activities. If you are spending (say) 6-8 hours each week, outside of class, on this 3-credit course, and not getting the results you want, then come see me. I won't simply say, "spend more time." I'll first work with you to help you make the most of that 6-8 hours.

Some students will, in fact, need to put in more time than others, especially if language is an issue, or they have a poor background in reading. Maybe some can only achieve sub-"A" work in the time that they have. But again, if they put in the time, they are entitled to my help on getting the most out of that time.

(Side note to instructors: do you know how many words are in your assigned readings? Do you know what reading rates are typical for your learners?)

Assessments: A learner who attempts to "meet the bar" of expectations is entitled to know where the bars are set. I am a convert to rubrics, and have all the fanaticism of a convert. No matter how carefully I try to write my expectations into paragraphs of prose, it's not enough. The fact is, I do have, in my head, 1) a list of things that I am assessing in an assignment, and 2) a mental picture of what "not good enough," "good enough," and "more than good enough" looks like for each of those things I am looking for. The learners deserve to have access to that "mental map," taken out of my head and spelled out visibly on paper. Here is an example of my assessment rubrics: the assignment is peer review. (Imagine the learners have written a draft of a paper, and are to review one another's drafts; they are graded on their peer reviews, so this is the rubric for that review.)

What challenges have I overlooked regarding time commitments and assessments? To what else, in your view, are learners "entitled"? How do you view student "entitlements"?

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[A Sense of Entitlement was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2012/10/08. Except as noted, it is © 2012 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Making Better Ancient-Language Reading Exams

Some modern-language "reading exams" reflect a sound pedagogy that 1) reflects communicative learning of the target language, 2) offers clarity of expectations for assessment. I would love to see graduate reading exams in Hebrew and Greek achieve that same pedagogical footing, incorporating an extemporaneous oral component and rubrics made available to the learner.

The "reading exam" is well known to many graduate students. Because introductory and intermediate foreign-langauge courses vary from school to school, most Ph.D. programs will ask applicants to take a reading exam to show their proficiency in a given "research language" (often German, French, Italian). In some cases, a program might ask for a similar examination for an ancient ("dead") language: in my field, for example, Hellenistic Greek or Biblical Hebrew.

Reading exams tend to vary with the idiosyncracies of the examining instructor. A departmental guideline might offer expectations or options regarding format: our own offers the student a choice of having two "unseen" texts to translate, or else having to answer comprehension questions (posed in English) on both an "unseen" text and a set of short "seen" texts. Beyond the formatting guidelines, though, expectations are usually pretty opaque. How long will it be? Will the content be related to the learner's field of study? What kinds of errors are important? Is it better to turn in an incomplete exam that is error-free in what it accomplishes, or is it better to finish with some parts left really rough? "Only the Shadow knows."

Some modern language reading exams reflect an expectation that the student has really learned to communicate extemporaneously in the target language, for example by an oral component with "Q and A" conducted in that language. To my knowledge, exams in Hebrew and Greek never include this, because so very few seminaries or divinity schools teach biblical languages using communicative-language/second-language-acquisitions methods. (The overwhelmingly common model is to teach the elementary linguistics of the target language; believe it or not, in many courses, the target material is not even read out loud by the learner.)

Here's what I would like to see in ancient language reading exams:

1. Extemporaneous, oral component: This could be small or large. At minimum, the exam itself could be simple translation, but preceded by a "social" exchange in the target language (welcoming the student, pleasantries, getting settled). At most, the entire exam could be a discussion, in the target language, of readings that have been accomplished ahead of time by the student. I might like to see an exam that splits the difference:
   • a brief social exchange in the target language;
   • simple translation of a reading not seen before by the learner;
   • a handful of comprehension questions, in the target language, concerning a reading that the learner has pre-read.
2. Rubrics for assessment: The truth is, not every mistake counts equally in assessment, and (depending on the assessor) some mistakes won't count at all. For example, an assessor might not detract from the student's score if she appears to transform a passive form into an active form while preserving the correct meaning. These matters should be agreed upon within a department, and made available to the student in a rubric.
3. Word count expectations: In a timed exam, how many words/minute can the student expect to be asked to translate? This needn't be the same for all languages and all programs, but again should be made clear in the rubric. From the very few examples I have been able to put my hand to, I think that 4+ words/minute (250/hour) is reasonable for modern research languages; for ancient languages (Latin, Hebrew, Greek) I would like to think that the same expectation is within reach, while about half that (2-3 words/minute) is usual.

The first item could only be used, of course, with a learner whose instruction has prepared her for it. The second and third items, however, should be incorporated into every program's guidelines for foreign-language reading exams.

What is your experience with "reading exams"? Does your experience with them give you grounds to critically assess my observations or suggestions?

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[Making Better Ancient-Language Reading Exams was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2012/08/22. Except as noted, it is © 2012 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Borrowing Syllabi: Collaborate, Re-mix, Acknowledge

A number of years back, Chris Heard posted the flowchart [link updated] by which he assessed a certain paper-writing assignment. I have mentioned before that I picked it up and modified it for my own use. At that time, I incorporated much of it into a checklist for the students to consult before submitting the paper. More recently, convinced of the value of rubrics for assessment, I have developed that into a three-column rubric. I realized recently that, some point, in the heat of revision, I had dropped my standard acknowledgment of Chris's original work.

Katharine Harris wrote recently on the value of including acknowledgments in syllabi: if we are smart, we are re-mixing assignments and assessment tools designed by others, and as an ongoing research project in curriculum, a syllabus should reflect that.

"Re-mixing" syllabi created by others (or their elements) is not different from how designers of open-source software "fork" already-existing applications: taking a tool that exists, then copying and modifying it into a new creation, is to create a new "fork" for that tool. Brian Croxell talks about "forking a syllabus," and Lincoln Muller offers tips on using GitHub—an online resource for sharing and forking software code—to collaborate on and share syllabi, assignments, and assessment tools.

I have begun developing an online lesson for faculty on the value of using plain text [in] the writing process and in collaborative writing, and a section of that lesson will include the use of GitHub for sharing modules from syllabi: policy statements, projects, assessment tools, and so on. I will plan to work out parts of that lesson here on the blog.

How have you built on tools drawn from others' syllabi? What are your habits regarding acknowledgment?

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[Borrowing Syllabi: Collaborate, Re-mix, Acknowledge was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 20121/04/18. Except as noted, it is © 2012 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]