@ScottishTapWater But surely homework is even less effective (typically students all ask each other/TAs for help). I agree it's a hard problem but what's the alternative beyond 1-on-1 interviews of the student where you see through problems? (Don't get me wrong, I think that would be great, it's just that the staff-student ratio doesn't support it)

My calculus math lecturer said the following on the first lecture of the semester, while handing out homework sheets: "I won't ask for these back. I won't mark them. I won't see them again. They aren't part of your grade. But I will tell you one thing right now. If you do not do them, you will fail." I was determined to do them, and I passed because of it. There isn't even a need to make it 10%. No need to mark all that homework if they can use chatgpt to do it.

That class had <40% pass rate. I think the first exam had a 25% pass rate. A lot of people dropped out. It had a reputation, a lot of people did it 2 or 3 times. But no one blamed the lecturer. He was extremely highly regarded as being one of the best professors in our university. Extremely highly respected. It was understood that if you failed, that was on you.

@fedja One way to link the homework with a pressure to understand the homework is to give relatively low-stakes quizzes on which they are allowed to use their homework answers. What many students don't realize until this is explicitly done is that their homework answers are useless to them unless they have taken the time to understand the homework. I found this to be effective in getting my students to take their homework seriously this term.

@stanri I can't 100% agree with this, primarily because there are many students who don't do the homework but would if it was graded; see e.g. Hogan & Sathy's Inclusive Teaching for examples. How many more students would have passed the first exam if homework had been required?

There is a truth in education that many teachers apparently find uncomfortable: some students should fail.

For two reasons: 1) They don't put in the effort and/or are simply not smart enough. 2) The relative importance of passing requires failures.

@OpalE So you're arguing that it's a good thing to cater to that attitude? The attitude that makes one only do what is required by an authority, instead of for obvious self improvement?

I'd like if more graduates were filtered to be the self improving kind, instead of the bare minimum worker kind.

@22286 I think that this depends on how you view the purpose of teaching. If the purpose of a teacher is to provide an environment which is the best they can reasonably provide for learning, then requiring homework is a part of that environment, because more people learn the material successfully when homework is required.

I find that this also leads to my students developing the tools for self-improvement; instead of demanding that they have those tools before my class, they develop them during the class. Many students are leaving high school these days without knowing what work it takes to improve their learning. Should they be doomed, at this point?

@OpalE Quizzes based on homework is a great idea and I was doing all the time (though I rarely went as far as including exactly the same problem into the quiz). I also have always told the students what exactly the next quiz or 4 out of 5 problems on the exam would be about (in general terms: like you'll have to differentiate a function in #1 or you'll have to find the maximum in #2, or you'll have to investigate the convergence of a series in #4, etc.).

@OpalE That (IMHO) should help the students to concentrate on several particular topics each time instead of frantically trying to cover everything each time. So, yeah, I implemented a few techniques like that. The problem usually is not that we don't create a reasonably friendly learning environment, but that the students refuse to believe that studying a bit every day will give one easier life and better results than doing everything at the last moment. And then it does become stressful.

@OpalE The point is to produce competent and conscientious graduates, not simply educated ones. Knowing how to do math and have the impetus to do it are different things, but both are required for competence and conscientiousness.

@OpalE Yes. If you sucked at high school you now enroll in the school of hard knocks. The primary cause of the diminution of high school graduates is this exact same attitude, the reluctance of teachers to fail the failing students. And they haven't even met their goal. Tons of people still don't graduate high school.

You, a college professor, shouldn't even have such people in your class! They should have already failed high school, thereby disqualifying them for college.