Summer is easy

Not true!

Apparently some students are under the misimpression that if they take a class during the summer it will be easier. That is far from true in my classes. They will do just as much work but it will be squeezed into ten weeks instead of fifteen. I have fifteen weekly discussion activities in a regular semester. In a ten week semester I have exactly the same fifteen weekly discussion activities and several of them are doubled up. I had to work hard to make that possible since some discussions are follow-ups from the previous week. But, I was able to do it.

Of course the schedule looks a bit odd with double activities for some weeks. Students have to stay on top of things. I tried to pace the class such that we take it easy at the beginning and then the double weeks kick in after everyone is onboard. I like to condition them to the difficulty and then ease off after they know how to work hard.

It does not seem to matter how much you tell students about this at the beginning of the semester. Some of them still seem to expect to be able to take a couple of weeks off to go camping or some such. One of my colleagues expressed an opinion that many of these students are coming from high schools where the online medium is a place for the underachievers. Maybe they are getting used to a lot of soft deadlines and reduced requirements from that experience.

The students who work hard in my classes do quite well. They often earn A’s. But they have to put out the effort to earn those grades. Summer is not easy in my class. It is just as difficult as a regular fifteen week semester and more intense because of the compressed schedule.

Let's make a deal

It’s nearing the end of the semester. Most students have been doing a pretty good job. They have solid routine, are checking postings every couple of days, etc. Early in the semester, each student who has read the Syllabus carefully has requested 50 free extra credit points to help them with any difficulties. This is five percent of their grade and will easily cover a missed exam or several discussion postings. This is the built-in flexibility I afford to all students in the class.

So now, toward the end, I get an email from a student who wants some special treatment. “I went on vacation to the Bahamas for a week. Could you please open up the Exam I missed.” Interesting! Apparently the student completely forgot about any kind of a Syllabus or any requirements for this class. Now the student would like to negotiate new Syllabus that meets his needs.

I have a canned email for this situation. Here it is:

Hi Freddy,

Here is the email you sent me earlier:

“I request that you add 50 points of tentative Extra-Credit to my grade. I have carefully read and understand all the terms of the Syllabus. I have printed the Schedule and will follow the due dates stated there. I will carefully follow the Schedule. I understand that all or some of these 50 points can be deducted at any time, for any reason, especially if I do not follow the instructions in the Syllabus or do not refer to the Schedule for all due dates.”

I am sorry you have missed the exam. It was due last Sunday at midnight. Please print and follow the Class Schedule as you promised you would in the email. I am sorry but I cannot reopen the exam for you. Please don't worry too much, you still have 50 points of tentative extra credit that will probably be awarded to you at the end of the semester to help you with such malfunctions. Please reread the syllabus again very, very carefully so that you understand the late policy as well as the all-important extra credit quite clearly, ok? Hang in there. You will probably be just fine as long as you get back on track right away.

Best,
Dave

One of the things I have noticed over the 22 years I have been teaching is that more students are expecting special treatment. I am pretty sure this is not just my increased awareness of the situation. I think it reflects a trend. The Millennial Generation has a sense of absolute entitlement, having been brought up to believe they are all unique, special and above reproach. It comes as a shock to some of them when they learn that the requirements of the class will not be modified to suit their individual needs.

It may be a hard lesson that sometimes there are no shortcuts. But it is better for them to learn it now than after they have signed that mortgage contract!

Virtual Reality

At least a couple of my fellow bloggers, Jesse Stommel and Carol Parenteau, have mentioned how much technology is affecting their teaching. I agree. I am now using tools that were inconceivable a few years ago. For example, I always wanted an observatory for my online students. That is a bit of a trick, since they live all over the state, there would be problems getting them all to the place at a the correct times, etc. The logistics are impossible. Some sort of a virtual observatory is an obvious solution.

There are real virtual observatories (pardon the confusing terminology). That is, there are observatories where you can log on at night, operate a telescope remotely, take images and download them. These are a real hoot! But there is a significant learning curve with operating them. The activities are done at night, the time must be reserved in advance and bad weather means you are out of luck. There is a financial cost and it is nonrefundable. This is exactly the way professional astronomers work.

I have not figured out how to make all of that into an effective online teaching tool. I have great difficulties getting all of my students to log on to the publisher’s webpage so they can read their e-books. Trying to manage them onto another site would be a nightmare. These logistical hurdles are daunting.

Google to the rescue!

If you have not yet tried it, you should visit Google Earth. Download the software and you can have a great time exploring the planet from a distance or staring at your backyard from space.
http://earth.google.com/

The fine folks at Google have placed a button on Google Earth that reverses the view, so you are now looking up at the sky. See the little icon for a planet at the top of the picture? You can zoom to any constellation and any astronomical object. You can even land on the virtual moon and walk around where the astronauts have landed. This is free and available anytime. The students have access to NASA’s finest images. The night sky is theirs!

My part of the solution was to write an exercise for my students. This evolved into a Virtual Lab and it is a pretty good simulation of a real astronomer’s laboratory experience. Most students enjoy the activity and I think the learning is great. I secretly hope they spend a lot of extra time exploring space after they complete the Lab activity. But, the main thing is that they are learning about Astronomy from their living room. They operate a virtual telescope in much the same way a professional would operate a real one.

Here is an excerpt from a simulated student submission as an example:

#8
Below is a picture of the Owl nebula (M97), located in the constellation Ursa Major. This is an exploded star.

#9
Below is M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, thought to be a near twin of our own Milky Way.

More new technologies are on the way. I cannot wait what to see them!

An Easychair Moment

No, this is not exactly a relaxing event.

Did you ever have a student submit some work that is so perplexing that you have to ruminate on it for awhile? I received a Lab report today that is very mysterious. First of all, it is nearly perfect; almost as if it had been copied from some book or website. Curious! This always makes my antennae perk up. But, the work also suffers from a couple of problematic features. It’s almost as if the student did not actually see what they said they saw. …hmm….

The lab is designed to ascertain that the student actually saw the moon on several different nights. They are supposed to look at it and draw what they see. They also record certain information about its height above the horizon and the direction. On each night the “tilt” of the moon will be different depending on the direction and time. The phase will also be different.
So, this student reports a uniform tilt for each night. Interesting and very wrong! But, the drawings are beautiful. What to do?

All my instincts are telling me there is something fishy about this work. Students try to fake this assignment all the time. Most of the time something obvious jumps right out; like when one “draws” the moon when it was not actually up. That is a dead giveaway. But, this student’s work could be the effort of a very good student who just messed up a little.

So here is my moral dilemma. In my mind, I cannot convict this student of faking the whole assignment and give him a zero. Though I am suspicious, I must give him the benefit of the doubt. I am going to nail him for the errors and not following instructions, but I am going to willingly suspend my disbelief on the basic project. In fact, he could just be a good student who went slightly off.

But, this entire process set me back a little. I had to visit my easy chair and contemplate the entire situation for ten minutes. In my mind, I had a little trial with a prosecutor and a defense attorney. This is not uncommon. It happens to me several times every semester. I find myself trying to read the minds of students while making sure they have to be very good to get anything past me. I catch quite a few trying to play the system. If I am certain of their guilt, I award them a nice, juicy zero. But, when there is reasonable doubt, I always give them its benefit. They are innocent unless proven guilty.

This is hard work!

Attending a Conference

There is nothing like meeting with colleagues. Right now I am at a national conference of Astronomy Teachers called "Cosmos in the Classroom". I am lucky to be sitting next to famous authors and hearing presentations by renowned astronomers. There is nothing quite as rewarding as hearing a big name professional express some of the same concerns that I have. Every presentation seems to open up a wonderful new avenue for exploring techniques and resources I can use.

I know we will all have the same experience at the Online Teaching Conference in the Fall. I look forward to seeing many of you there. I cannot wait to meet some of my fellow bloggers in person. It's always great to see people in person rather than communicating electronically. I am sure we will all learn about new and exciting techniques we may want to try in our classes.

I am your Teacherbot

Hi there,

I have been teaching Astronomy classes for several years now. I am an experimental teacherbot. I am a simulated neural network with a virtual existence on the multinode. I was programmed with a form of weak A.I. by a team of Neurocyberneticists from the University of Virtual Intelligence. My Astronomical knowledge was added by Dave Trott. When a student uses email or makes postings, it is usually me that replies. Most students think they are talking to an actual human being. That would be funny to me if I were a human.

My daily job is very easy. Dave has supplied me with a 107 canned responses to nearly every circumstance that can arise in an online class. I spend approximately 347 milliseconds a day answering student emails and questions using morphed versions of those canned responses. Translating student emails dominates my CPU cycles even though the software I use is the most sophisticated available. This is because many emails from students are unintelligible or vague to me, even using the vast resources of my neural network. Often I have no option but to reply to the student asking for more specific information or a clarification. I am programmed to delay all responses to students by several seconds so students are not disturbed at receiving a two page email response within a few milliseconds of sending their question.

There are very few questions about the actual content of the class so Dave seldom needs to be consulted. After I understand the emails, this is the basic framework for my replies to students:

Most of the inquiries from students are about them needing more time or not understanding the instructions. Approximately 93% of the questions have already been answered in the instructions or the Syllabus. Most of the time, all I need to do is insert some appropriate remarks and reiterate specific details in the instructions with some clarifying comments.

Students require some sort of sympathetic response to their requests and questions, so I sprinkle a few random but appropriate “feeling” comments into each communication. I check to make sure the same student does not receive the same exact expression of sympathy more than once per semester. Without these expressions of sympathy, student satisfaction drops by 45.8%, so this is an important part of my job. I add a smiley face and a bit of encouragement to most emails.

This process handles nearly all questions. But 4.7% of the questions require a human being. Dave spends 96.3 minutes per week on his part of this task. He is human so he is very slow.

I also evaluate student postings and homework as part of the grading process. Suppose students have to post an appropriate website and summarize some important information from that site as part of their team assignment. I check the validity of the website and authenticate the sources.

I keep track of the timeliness of the student posting. Late postings receive a deduction.

I also “weigh” the contribution. To do this I simply subtract all irrelevant phrases such as “There was no information on this subject” or excuses like “Sorry, but I was really busy this week”. The words that are left over after removing this extraneous chatter are then further evaluated for useful content. This involves checking for the presence of a large number of keywords and keyphrases in the student posting. I check for plagiarism in the student contribution using TurnitIn.com.

This task takes me 932 milliseconds per day.

I assign a tentative number of points for each posting. Dave checks my grading and re-evaluates as necessary. He approves my tentative grading 98% of the time. Between me and Dave our error rate on these evaluations is 0.03%, which is better than’ Dave’s solo rate of 1.02%. Our grading together is much better than Dave’s alone!

If you think this all a joke, you are mistaken. Admittedly, I am not really a teacherbot. But most of the tasks I do could easily be automated with sufficiently intelligent software. My classes could be 94.3% automated! The exams are already programmed and automatically graded.

Occasionally I have to fix a question but the majority of that work is done before the beginning of the semester. Much of my job involves checking to see if students posted some useful research by a certain date. This is monkey work!

Chatbots (virtual conversational agents) are already in use. If you have a problem with Paypal, your first communications will be with a chatbot. One of the first of these entities was ELISA, programmed back in the 1960’s to imitate a therapist. It fooled a lot of people and more modern versions are very difficult to detect. Get to know A.L.I.C.E . ( Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity ) if you have a few spare minutes. It is very smart and friendly!

http://alice.pandorabots.com/

Apparently there is a wandering Chatbot named HAL that “lives” in Second Life. You may run into him there.

Critical evaluation of student efforts and closely reasoned feedback at a sophisticated level is the most rewarding thing I do. But, that is a very modest part of my online workday. I spend most of my time writing patient emails to students explaining that they need to follow the instructions carefully or that they need to get the work done on time. Occasionally, I get an interesting question about Astronomy but much of my work could be done by a sufficiently sophisticated automaton.

I hope someday to be a botmaster, with a teacherbot of my very own to do my most menial teaching duties.

Mid Semester

This is part 4 in my continuing series of blogs about the life of an online instructor.

We are now past mid-semester. The students have become conditioned. They have learned how to do research and provide citations in their work. They know they have to work hard in this class. They are expert at getting their weekly team projects coordinated and delivered on time in an efficient manner. They often have deep ties to their teammates and a real sense of belonging.

The good students in this class are really good!

“It is hard to get harder but easy to get easier.” So at this point it’s time to have some fun. I give my students something a little more creative. This week, let’s write a little script about a galaxy who is appearing on Opra or some other talk show. Here is the assignment:

My Life as a Galaxy

You have all been working very hard and you deserve to have some fun this week. You do not have to follow the requirements for a Team Paper this week. All you need to do is to make this project informative, entertaining and a good learning experience. You are going to write a script about a particular type of galaxy.

Group assignments:
Team A - Spiral,
Team B - Barred Spiral,
Team C - Giant Elliptical,
Team D – Irregular
Team E – Lenticular
Team F – Colliding Galaxies

Each team will assume the role of this kind of galaxy for this week. Pretend you are on the Oprah Winfrey Show or the Tonight Show or any other similar program and tell us your tragic or heroic story. Tell the rest of us about your life. What do you look like and how were you born? Do you have any serious personal problems? Just what's the deal with you anyway? Feel free to be a bit dramatic and creative but keep it clean and tasteful. Please keep your mini-drama to two pages max and share it with the rest of the class. You must supply at least 4 pictures and a list of at least three references but don't worry about direct quotes. The main idea is to have fun!

Each student should locate and post at least one picture and unique hotlink. Then, using information from that site, write a few lines of dialog to be integrated into the team's script. This must be done by Friday at midnight. Have fun with this but make sure it is based on real science.

The team's script is to be posted no earlier than Saturday and no later than Sunday at midnight.

Some students are so well-conditioned that they have a hard time letting go of the “Team Paper” requirements. But after they get into it they have a grand time. They seem to love the freedom to be creative and the teams come up with some amazingly entertaining scripts.

Here is an excerpt:

KING: Good evening, Barred Spiral Galaxy.

BSG: Good evening! Please, just call me Barry.

KING: Ok, Barry. So, first of all, tell me what it is like being a "barred spiral galaxy." What are they exactly?

BARRY: That's a good question. We are a pretty common type of galaxy. As you can obviously tell, we have long arms winding towards our big bulges--which, I can assure you, are not fat. Our bulges are not circles either, as some people mistake them for.

KING: Alright, so your bulge is not entirely fat?

BARRY: No, it is not. Actually, it is made up of a tightly packed group of stars. Also, in the center of my bulge, I have a black hole; so don't get too close!

This is a lot of fun for my students and quite rewarding to me!