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aeismail

 Discussion on question by aeismail: H…

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aeismail
Jul 6, 2018 16:19
@BaileyS: I do drop a quiz grade because there are enough of them to do so. And I think I will try to relax a bit more and trust the process this semester.
aeismail
Jul 6, 2018 16:16
@O.R.Mapper Yes, that's the system I'm talking about. Here's what I mean about being in the dark about your final grade. Let's say passing is announced as 40% of the available points, and you think you got 60%. Will that be a 2,0 or a 2,3 or a 3,0? You don't know that until the final grade is announced.
aeismail
Jul 6, 2018 16:14
@JessicaB Yes, you're right. That is part of the reason why I write some harder questions on my quizzes and exams: if you get 90% to 100% on an exam, you should really have to work for it. Something that anybody can get that grade on doesn't show the difference between basic mastery and advanced understanding.
aeismail
Jul 6, 2018 16:09
@BaileyS I do give rough updates several times during the semester, and there are lots of quizzes. I tell them at the start, but perhaps I just need to back up my claims with more hard numbers so they know that I’m not just trying to give them a false sense of security. (And things aren’t as bad as your case. It’s more like what would be a B- in just about any other course in the department would be a B+ or A- in mine. If I had an average of 30% on anything, I’d give them a second chance.)
aeismail
Jul 6, 2018 16:09
@BaileyS Please reread the question. I clearly state the “A > 90, etc.” rule, plus a note that I may lower the percentages at my discretion. I am being more lenient. They also know the percentages everything they do will be worth. The only unknown is what the lowered percentages will ultimately be. How is any of that unfair or zany? (The “zany” system was when I worked in Germany, where not announcing anything other than the required minimum passing score before the exam was official faculty policy, and I literally had no control over it. That is not the case here.)
aeismail
Jul 6, 2018 16:09
@JonCuster When I was in Germany, it was an enormous issue, because the system literally had no way to judge if students were learning anything or not except for a single final. In the US, I’ve set up the class to include frequent quizzes. The early quizzes are the problem, because I don’t have enough of a basis at that point. A few weeks in, I have enough data to understand what’s going on. But the first quizzes are enough to spook students despite my feedback to them in class and the quiz.
aeismail
Jul 6, 2018 16:09
@GypsySpellweaver It’s more the issue that I know of other classes in the department where that could actually happen. When a midterm has two or three problems and is worth 20% of your grade, getting one problem badly wrong can cost you a full letter grade. I try to mitigate that by having a series of small quizzes each worth a few percentage points so that one bad goof can’t completely ruin things.
aeismail
Jul 6, 2018 16:09
Also, there is the official scale as a ceiling. Let me revise.
aeismail
Jul 6, 2018 16:09
I don’t do that. I was offering a counterexample of a system where students don’t know what they need to score for a 1,0 versus a 3,0. I’m teaching in the US, and I try to tell them once or twice “right now X% would be a C.”
aeismail
Jul 6, 2018 16:09
@JonCuster That’s a bit US-centric. Other countries, such as Germany, do not announce the scale in advance. You have no idea walking out what you need except to avoid an F.
aeismail
Jul 6, 2018 16:09
That’s a lot of assignments to have to guess on when I’m more concerned about aggregate performance. I try around midterms to suggest where the grades currently stand, but that doesn’t seem to work either.
 

 Discussion on question by SSimon: Is …

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aeismail
Jun 13, 2018 17:23
Please up on the racial history of America before making such uninformed comments.
aeismail
Jun 12, 2018 14:10
Minority students are underrepresented in US Academia. It’s a basic fact. When I graduated, the proportion of African-American men getting PhDs was much lower than 1%. So a statement of fact is going to look “political,” because to a degree it has to.
 

 Discussion on question by Dragonite: …

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aeismail
Jun 2, 2018 07:15
The 30% reduction in grade seems excessive, and probably goes far beyond what the professor might be allowed to assess at a US school. You should at least try to appeal.
 

 Discussion on question by Herman Toot…

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aeismail
May 27, 2018 18:13
Recent monographs written for habilitation theses are not textbooks, nor is a textbook required for promotion (if it's "desirable," it can't be a requirement).
aeismail
May 27, 2018 18:13
Congratulations—you've now conceded that your point that it's a requirement is wrong.
aeismail
May 27, 2018 16:10
@SSimon Because, as we've already said, a monograph is not a textbook, and because it's not a qualification for faculty members for appointment to a W2/W3 professorship. It is a sufficient but not necessary criterion—there are other ways of meeting the standards needed for appointment; you can have significant accomplishments in industry, or be a successful assistant professor.
aeismail
May 27, 2018 05:00
And, by the way, most of the classes junior faculty in Germany teach are “special subjects,” not the mandatory subjects.
aeismail
May 27, 2018 04:58
And “otherwise many write those books” is a vapor ware claim unless you have some evidence of them writing textbooks. Monographs don’t count..
aeismail
May 27, 2018 04:54
@SSimon I don’t know what to tell you. You refuse any and ell evidence to the contrary. It makes no sense to make writing a textbook a promotion criterion as a junior faculty for anyone involved, none of the junior faculty I know was working on or considering writing a textbook, none of my mentors encouraged me to write one, and it was never mentioned anywhere that it’s a criterion.
aeismail
May 26, 2018 15:01
@SSimon I don’t know why you’re continuing to insist this is the case. Do you know what the teaching system is for assistant professors in Germany? They are rarely asked to teach anything other than niche elective courses. You’d be asking the junior faculty to waste many months of their time writing a textbook that hardly anyone is going to use instead of securing grants, growing their research group, and doing more productive activities?
aeismail
May 25, 2018 17:24
@SSimon You are apparently confusing assistant professorships with the old Habilitation process. The two have very different requirements. Assistant professorships do not require monographs..
aeismail
May 25, 2018 17:23
@KonradRudolph @SSimon Technically a textbook is a monograph, but a monograph need not be a textbook.
aeismail
May 24, 2018 12:38
It’s infeasible—you’d end up with a bad textbook which would defeat the purpose for everybody involved.
aeismail
May 24, 2018 12:35
But if that argument isn’t persuasive, let’s consider the following. Why in the world would you ask someone who hasn’t taught extensively to write a textbook? It doesn’t make any sense. An assistant professor would only have taught a given course two or three times, and would then have to produce a 500-page textbook on the subject, on top of all the grant and paper writing, supervision, and other details, in just a year or 18 months?
aeismail
May 24, 2018 12:29
As I said, I was working in a program with lots of junior professors, and was connected to other universities as well. Not a single one of us was working on a textbook, or was even thinking about it. None. Are we all being lied to, and told we don’t need to write textbooks when that’s a “hidden” criteria for promotion?
aeismail
May 24, 2018 12:22
@SSimon: You are completely wrong on this. There is no requirement to write a textbook to receive a W2/W3 in Germany. Most faculty members never write a textbook. A monograph, maybe, but not a textbook.
aeismail
May 24, 2018 05:35
(Unless, that is, you’re trying to claim that the set of lecture notes a faculty member produces for a new course is the same thing as a textbook.)
aeismail
May 24, 2018 05:34
@SSimon I am not a mathematician. And I was the equivalent of an assistant professor in Germany. There was absolutely no expectation whatsoever that I would publish a textbook while I was there—and none of my colleagues in multiple disciplines across several universities had such expectations placed on them for promotion, either. We may have produced some course notes, but no textbooks. So I honestly have no idea why you’re making the claim a textbook is required for promotion.
aeismail
May 23, 2018 17:54
Nor is having one a requirement to get a job as a professor in England, France, Germany, Netherlands, and a number of other countries. If there are specific countries where it is, please let me know which ones, so I can recommend that my friends and colleagues avoid applying there.
aeismail
May 23, 2018 17:51
@SSimon I worked in Europe. It may be true in some countries, but In Germany, it was not required. A series of lecture notes is not a textboo; neither is course creation.
aeismail
May 23, 2018 16:46
@SSimon: Assistant Professors in the US and much of Western Europe are not required to write textbooks either to get hired or promoted. Virtually all textbook authors in those countries are tenured when the book is written, and assistant professors are encouraged not to write a textbook until later, because the time spent on writing the textbook could be used on producing materials more useful for a tenure application. I only know of one assistant professor in my field who wrote a textbook; he didn’t make it to associate.
 

 Discussion on question by jakebeal: H…

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aeismail
May 21, 2018 19:49
It's not just because of gender or location—it applies in any academic environment and includes diversity in all of its forms.
 

 Discussion on answer by Anonymous Phy…

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aeismail
May 18, 2018 01:21
I would not say that they need to be paid; they do need to be compensated. If they get course credit, that's fine, too!
 

 Discussion on question by AnonymousSc…

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aeismail
May 15, 2018 17:18
As for editing and revising, one thing that might help would be to think you're working on revising someone else's work, instead of it being your own writing. Having a little distance can make it easier.
aeismail
May 15, 2018 17:18
You sit down, you look at what you've written, and you just feel too bad to actually fix what is wrong and write something good. From what you've written here and in your other question, it may be that your psychological issues could be clouding your judgment. I know this is probably a scary idea, but have you ran a sample of your "bad" writing by one of your colleagues to get feedback? It may be the case that what you think is "bad" is actually pretty good!
 

 Discussion on answer by aeismail: Sle…

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aeismail
May 13, 2018 15:45
@goblin What exactly is immoral or offensive about this answer?
3
aeismail
May 13, 2018 15:45
@user234461 In the US, final exams are rarely the majority of your grade for the semester, but instead are typically between 20% to 50% of the total. They therefore cannot be signed up for the way they are in the UK or Germany.
aeismail
May 13, 2018 15:45
@user234461 The exam system isn't set up that way in the US. You can't just take a free-standing exam; you generally have to repeat the entire course. Also, as I said, what's allowed is generally up to the school's policies—some will permit the instructor to assign an incomplete, others won't. As for the fairness of the punishment, we should also be asking: is it fair to ask the instructor to write, administer, and grade an entirely new exam for one student who overslept? Is it fair to the other students? Actions and decisions do have consequences.
aeismail
May 13, 2018 15:45
@Ooker: That falls under the "my discretion" aspect. I try to be reasonable about things, and try to work with my students within practical limits.
 

 The Ivory Tower

General discussion for academia.stackexchange.com
aeismail
May 10, 2018 06:18
Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
aeismail
May 10, 2018 06:18
No need. I accepted it.
aeismail
May 10, 2018 06:14
I took both of those out.
aeismail
May 10, 2018 06:14
But the advice to date the kid of the dean is worse advice still.
aeismail
May 10, 2018 06:13
@scaaahu: Yeah, I figured.
aeismail
May 10, 2018 06:11
What's up?
aeismail
May 10, 2018 06:11
Yes, I'm here.
 

 Discussion on question by Lauren DeGu…

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aeismail
May 8, 2018 15:56
It's worth pointing out, that in many European countries, "a student should learn and learn for an entire semester and then have one time slot to prove their knowledge" is exactly the testing model used.
 

 Discussion on question by iamnarra: M…

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aeismail
Mar 23, 2018 22:56
@Kenshin: That is horrible advice. Walking away from a PhD is an awful solution to the problem.
 

 2018 Academia Moderator Election Chat

Open Discussion for academia.stackexchange.com/election/2
aeismail
Mar 5, 2018 23:55
@FredDouglis: There is not nearly that much meta activity. Most of the duties fall under management of the main site. As for level of activities, there are different levels possible, depending on schedule. I might spend five or ten minutes some days, and an hour on the busiest days.