Ancient Wisdom

“It’s hard to get harder and easy to get easier.”

This ancient teaching wisdom was passed down to me many years ago and it has served me very well. I interpret it to mean that you must establish a firm and rigorous level of expectations from the very beginning of the class. If you do that and then “ease up” a little toward the middle and end of the semester, your students will respect and appreciate the class.

This is very tricky in an online class. For the first week or so, the students are finding their way to the class, trying to read all the materials, etc. I try to ramp it up gently but firmly over the first couple of weeks. The first couple of discussions are really easy: ”Introduce Yourself” and “Name Your Team”. I hand out “candy”. Here’s some extra credit if you read the Syllabus and send me an email stating that you understand it.

Notice how I am trying to draw them in. They are doing the very simple, mechanical things required in an online class and demonstrating their competence with the basic skills. But, I don’t wait too long to put them to work. I wouldn’t want to lull them in to a false sense that this is a “Slacker Safe Zone”. That would be fatal! If you do that, then later you will be dealing with endless excuses and complaints about how unfair you are. No, it’s better to step it up now. Warm up the engine and then petal to the metal. (Geez, I am glad none of the English Teachers read these blogs. The metaphors are awful!)

So that’s how I started the semester and most of my students are used to the idea that they are going to have to work hard. Here we are now at the midpoint of the semester. I feel like a drill sergeant who has conditioned his troops and prepared them for battle. If they have survived so far, they are doing a great job. The momentum they have developed will carry them through the remaining challenges.

They have been writing team papers and have been doing a pretty good job. But, these team papers are like Frankenstein Monsters. They are stitched together with several paragraphs written by different students on the team. Most of the papers do not flow well and suffer major organizational problems. This is not too much of a problem, because my main purpose is for them to learn about Astronomy. My secret agenda is to oblige them to read all the papers written by the other teams. That is where the learning about Astronomy happens. So why not have some fun, now that they are working hard? And if they accidentally think about English Composition in the process of learning Astronomy that is a double win!

So this week the teams are rewriting a paper produced by another team last week. The rewrites are often a major improvement, but the main thing is that all the students are reading all the papers and learning from each other.

At this point I have tasked my students greatly and many of them astound me with the high quality of their efforts. Online classes are not supposed to be “easier” than face to face classes. I don’t soften the requirements because the students have to deal with the online environment. That is just part of the situation, like dealing with parking on a campus, etc. Students in my classes have earned their grades with plenty of hard work, just like students in any of my face to face classes. But it is time to ease up a bit. This would be true in a face to face class as well.

Next week, they will have some fun!