A Teachable Moment

One of the complaints that the TTF in my department have is that our students go into upper division courses having no concept of experimental design. This is understandable because our intro courses are taught by instructors like myself who don't actually do experiments anymore. Admittedly, experimental design is a weakness of mine. Even when I had to do experiments, it was a weakness, which is probably a big reason I don't have a Ph.D. That and the fact that not only did I loathe designing experiments, I also hated doing them. LOL.

At any rate, since I realize we are trying to educate our students for careers greater than being a lowly and poorly paid NTTF at a mediocre university, I've been trying to spend more time on experimental design. I am not opposed to trying to teach this; in fact, it fits in with my goal of teaching skills rather than facts. It's just... it's hard for me.

This semester, I attempted due diligence and put a question into my homework asking for a very simple experimental design. In a hypothetical situation, I asked the students to pretend they had a pill that they believed would help people get an A in my class. But before they could market it, they had to do a controlled experiment showing that it actually worked, and they had to write out their experimental design. It actually led to a good discussion about a number of things, including whether or not they would actually share such a pill with their classmates, as well what statistically significant data are, so I was glad I had put the question in, even though it seemed ridiculously elementary at the time. In the discussion, I asked the class what the implication would be if everyone in the control group and the experimental group got As in the class, and a bunch of people immediately replied, "Then it's not the pill." I added jokingly, "Yes, it's obviously my superior teaching skills." They all laughed. I'm not sure how to interpret that. LOL.

Today, they had their first exam. Before the exam, I told them that I had just given the same exam to my online class, and my online class did pretty well, despite the fact that they had to learn a lot of the material on their own, without me constantly harping on them and reminding them of things like INDIVIDUALS DO NOT EVOLVE; ONLY POPULATIONS CAN EVOLVE! ten kazillion times per lecture. Then, I had a thought, and that thought just slipped out, and I said aloud, "What does it mean if you guys don't do any better on the exam than my online class did?" They sat there for a few seconds shifting uncomfortably until one brave student - bless his heart - called out, "It means you're doing a lousy job!" Then he immediately said, "Just kidding!" Yes, I asked for it, and I got it, hahahaha. I was very quick to point out that that was a logical conclusion, then said, "How depressing! If you are no better off with in-person instruction than you are just reading the text and learning the material on your own, then my job is becoming obsolete." Then I added, "So I hope you do better than my online class!"

It was a teachable moment - one in which I was happy that my students immediately understood the implications of a result, even if that result meant I was doing a lousy job. And as for the actual result? Honestly, they didn't do much better than my online class. The implications other than I'm doing a lousy job? Maybe it's time for me to move on.