If you see this face coming, kick him or spit on him or otherwise scorn him. He’s terrible.
I’m having a bad semester. I’m teaching my intro biology course, which is small and ideally sized with 10 students, and every day is a trial. I go in prepared; I’m cheerful and friendly, I think; I’m working on the shaggy Santa Claus look; I’ve got lectures with frequent pauses and breaks where I encourage discussion; I think it’s an interesting topic. I’m talking amiably, and I ask the class a question — it can be as simple as “what are the results of crossing two heterozygotes?” or more open-ended, like “what is your opinion of IVF?” and it’s always the same result: dead silence, stony faces, everyone avoiding my eyes. It’s killing me. Am I intimidating? Boring? Hideous? Should I wear a bag on my head? I keep trying to get them engaged, and all I’m getting for my troubles is flop sweat.
These are not stupid students, either. I gave them a quiz last week, the mean was somewhere in the low 80s, so I know they’re understanding the material. They just don’t want to talk to me.
I’m thinking that maybe I should try some in-class ice breakers next week, and see if I can get them more active. Anyone got any good suggestions? I’m getting desperate.
Alternatively, I pick up a fifth of vodka and numb myself before walking into the classroom, because the strain is getting to me.*
*Not actually an option. I gave up all alcohol during the pandemic.
I understand, even long after quitting physics. You try to explain the basics, and the response is either ill-informed nonsense, or silence from people who know better. Just keep plugging away.
PS the vodka works better after rather than before.
It’s an intro course. Most of them are probably there because they have to be. They just want the next quiz, then the mid-term, then the final and to get it over with.
Peyote & a sweat lodge
You might try having them respond digitally and in real time. The link below has some resources that might interest you.
https://www.nwea.org/blog/2024/75-digital-tools-apps-teachers-use-to-support-classroom-formative-assessment/
Perhaps the old carnival trick of shills in the audience.
Perhaps not a very helpful suggestion, but I wonder if it might be useful to look at some of the output of Harry Brighouse – e.g.
https://acue.org/blog/navigating-the-need-for-rigor-and-engagement-how-to-make-fruitful-class-discussions-happen/
Lock the doors and tell them the bomb will go off in exactly ten minutes unless they talk to you. If they still say nothing, after nine minutes open the bottle of vodka, take a long swig and say, “Goodbye, cruel world!” Someone will break.
A game of some sort, in groups of 4.
Maybe a subject card. Each player wrotes a short opinion. Shuffle so authorship is unknown, then read out in the gtoup.
Listen and then class questions.
I’m having the same experience with my “Evolution in American Society” class. For whatever reason, they are just not really interested in talking.
Maybe I should offer a bright, shiny nickel for anyone who speaks out.
I was a biologist for 32 years doing environmental work when I retired (the knees wouldn’t let me out into the field any longer). The Missus talked me into becoming a driving instructor/state tester. Now, when I was working with other scientists, I knew a fair number of biologically “suggestive’ jokes that I used to break the ice-but I couldn’t go that route with 15 year olds…so I started learning “Dad jokes”, but actually funny ones. About 1 out of 4 to 5 don’t like the jokes, and mention it it reviews, but most do, and it seems to make them feel that I’m not just correcting them over and over. Whip out a story about my dogs, then mention that they should’ve cleared their blind spot for that last lane change. long straight bit of road? Throw out a vaguely scientific fact that is actually a funny Dad joke. They do something that could hurt them if something went wrong? I point out what it was, then tell a bad Dad joke. Maybe a bit too carrot/stick, but I get a lot of kids who ask for me again… then again, 15/16 year olds are not in college…your mileage may vary.
Do you tell them stories? Do you stop being a professor and start being an old relative?
Try introducing a weekly discussion session where reading even if its only from the textbook is assigned beforehand with one student assigned to present and lead the topic. That way it is a student up front and teaching for 15 -20 mins. Good practice for when they have to present and defend their ideas at conferences or speak at meetings. Alternatively direct a question to a particular student then ask anyone else if they want to contribute.
Depressing when you tell a joke and see them carefully and seriously write it down, wondering whether it will be on the test. Very different from the early 1970s when, under the influence of The Movement on campus, students were endlessly correcting me (“I’m sorry, Professor, but I worked in a blood lab last summer, and what you said about blood types is wrong”). I spent the first part of every class apologizing for wrong statements I made in the previous class.
You could try the Socratic method and tell them that their grade is based upon their participation in the discussion.
I’d be completely honest and transparent by letting them know how disappointed you are that they won’t speak to you or even look at you. Tell them how hurt your feelings are. A little guilt trip might just work. If not, you could resort to livening things up by pretending all the juvenile black widows escaped.
Rather than you asking the questions and seeing if anyone answers, group them into pairs or triplets, give them a question, and ask them to discuss it amongst themselves. Then after 5-10 minutes ask the groups to give their responses. (If you really must, have them write down an answer and then recite it out loud, but that probably won’t be necessary).
Not quite germane but I had to take introductory bio twice. It wasn’t that I failed the first time, but I took it at a community college. When I started at the four year I kinda fell (or tripped) into a biology minor (then major). I took all the courses required to graduate with a BS and when I filed for graduation they kicked it back and said I needed the biology 101 weed-out course because they wouldn’t accept the CC course. WTF. So that was an easy course to take. I was stuck with a bunch of fresh outta HS greenhorns. It was a nightmare for many of them. The guys in my lab course were cool. One of them told me about No Doubt. This was late 90s. I floored the professor (an Aussie botanist) with some of the questions I asked after class. The lab GTAs knew me because I had taken more advanced classes, did a stint as a paid research assistant, etc.
Anyway it is an intro course so maybe a small portion of students are really into it. My class was well over 100 students. The chances you will get a 2 year AA transfer who almost completed their 4+ year biology degree and got told last minute they need the intro course to graduate are slim.
Ah shucks, an icon of ID “science” has passed.
https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2024/10/jonathan-wells-1942-2024.html
I had forgotten:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Wells_(intelligent_design_advocate)
@12 garydargan — Had a professor do something similar in one of my required math courses. Horrified me (and a few others) into dropping the class and waiting two additional semesters for someone else to teach it. Ended up tagging an additional year onto my program but I never once regretted doing it.
May be too much trouble, but… give them a 3-5 minute presentation, dissertation defence, presenting a paper to this august chamber of protobiologists, new research, etc. Their job is to decide if it is true or not AND present their work, i.e. what clews led them to their belief it was true or a lie.
On the other had, you might only help them become more effective liars.
Oh, and importantly, tell them what you’re doing before you start.
They are probably conditioned by their high school experience not to ask questions or stand out in any way.
Maybe it would help if you brought in a few nice, big, cuddly spiders.
As a math prof, this was a common problem for me. I have found that a fantastic system is the iClicker (now an app, so they can use their phones). You can run a “poll question,” usually multiple choice, and the students can answer immediately – and more importantly, anonymously. It vastly increases the participation rate in a class, especially a large lecture.
It doesn’t help discussion very much, but it is excellent at taking a snapshot of student comprehension.
I’ve done a similar thing with mentimeter, can have anonymous answers, long form, word cloud or multiple choice. I also use board tools built into Moodle.
I hate to bring up the possibility, but: the relatively high median score doesn’t necessarily mean much if they’ve been cheating enough, which smartphones make ridiculously easy to do. It’s possible they’re pooling their answers to pass tests and most of them, even the high-scoring ones, don’t really understand the material at all. If you can handle being depressed, read this recounting of such a tale.
I think the solution is going to depend on whether you think they’re more afraid of speaking up to you, speaking in front of the whole class (presumably a large one as it’s an intro course), or if they’re just so very bored that it’s a chore to keep up with the lecture.
It might be a mix of all of these (or maybe something else I forgot) but if you target what you think is the largest group then you’ll have an easier time picking a solution.
I know that’s probably super obvious – it’s essentially “fix the problem you have” – but as a teacher I’m sure you understand how sometimes hearing someone else repeat a thing you already know can give you the convidence to try a solution. But if it’s not helpful… uh… sorry? At least I’m providing feedback even if I’m not in your class. :)
I found a box of chocolate frogs helped a lot. One for whoever answers the question. No one thought I was serious until I finally got someone to answer a simple obvious question and they got a frog. They all thought it was funny but within a few frogs the wall was broken and they became much more involved.
I took a class like that, and not just for one group of students but for every class every rotation, and with groups that were very loquacious on other topics. The class in question was about carers and their role in medicine. The problem was that the lesson was too open-ended for students who were used to discrete rational learning, and they felt uncomfortable even interviewing the carers they met in their clinical settings.
Eventually I stumbled on a method that worked well for me. I wrote out a list of questions in two columns. One column was questions to ask carers, such as ‘What is the best thing and the worst thing about being a carer?’ and the other column was questions to learn by research such as ‘How many people in the community are carers?’ Then the students got to choose amongst themselves one question from each column to answer and in the lesson we went through the questions with the nominated student answering each. I didn’t use a lot of questions, and there were some questions that had 2 students nominated so there would be a difference in POV during the presentation.
This won’t necessarily work for your situation because I had the luxury of giving out these questions several weeks before the allocated lesson. But the key reason for the success, imo, was that the questions guided the students a little but most were still very open-ended, and even the closed questions (e.g. ‘How much is the government Carer’s Payment?’) were intended to open up group conversations about eligibity, adequacy, and so forth. That is, the questions gave a little bit of structure without railroading the answers. I expect humanities students would have coped a great deal better in the first place, but med students are trained from pre-med to give Correct Answers Drawn from Extensive Knowledge.
And sometimes you just get a reticent group for no apparent reason.
I agree with drksky. And if they are learning the material, is it a bad thing? This class might be a chore to them, and they might be fine with that – making work fun requires an investment cost and maybe they’d rather spend their energy elsewhere.
It could also be they aren’t willing to take the risk of interacting, not because of you, but because of the potential social consequences – or what they think are the potential social consequences with their peers if things go wrong. I’d do what some of the others suggest and find a way for them to engage anonymously, and if that doesn’t work, accept this is the way they choose it to be.
Well, PZ has been professing (ahem) for decades now.
Not unknown territory. Obs, he knows all the stuff mentioned here.
This is just a bit of venting, I reckon.
(But the support is nice)
—
Me, I reckon this business of full-time work is fine for one’s 30s and 40s and 50s, but by the 60s it becomes a bit onerous.
Maybe a bit more self-regard is in order?
I’ve never officially been a student of yours, PZ Myers but I’ve learnt a lot from your blog and I’m sure you’re NOT even remotely close to being the worst teacher in the world. For starters, there are the “teachers” in religious schools indoctrinating people with hatred and lies in far too many places globally.
Hi PZ. It’s not just you. I teach at a lower level than university, but I work with 16-18 and adult education. The current batch of 17+ students are very silent. Not sure if it’s a hangover from CoVID, or if it’s the current level of anxiety/trauma in the younger generation. Sadly, some of it is also from a very focussed/selfish attitude to learning (Is this in the exam?/How will this knowledge benefit me?), though that may be this side of the pond.
I’ve found that some soften with time, and some will not engage at more than a superficial level. I hope it improves!
Ask them!
Ask them why they don’t want to speak up, what they’re worried about if they do, or if they all just have interaction anxiety generally.
Say that getting this out of the way is part of today’s lesson. Or will be part of the next lesson, if you want to give them time to think about it and prepare statements.
If you are familiar with the principals of operant conditioning, marking and positive reinforcement this should make sense. One of the instructors for my continuing ed credits in pesticide application would give her class walking around the room with a bag of candy. If anyone interacted at all, asked a question, laughed, answered a question she would say “yes” and throw a piece of candy at them. These were landscapers, farmers, residential pest control aplicators and golf course guys. All guys, very vew actualy wanted to be there, the credits were required for license renewal. By the end of the class she had the most participation of any of the c.e. classes. Maybe there is something in there you can use.
Well in my course when they get like that I give them the prompt (or a problem) and make them get into groups to discuss for a few minutes, tell them that they will all be sharing and then that gets them a little more engaged. Sometimes I make them put their answers on the overhead. That scares the living daylights out of them but at least they don’t look like the walking dead during class after that. You could tell them the last person to answer gets fed to the spiders.
Cheer up, PZ! I remember the very first lecture in Biology 115 back in 1969. The professor went to the chalkboard, grabbed a new stick of chalk and very carefully wrote:
“Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.”
I had to look up every word. But, that was the state of biology education 50-plus years ago!
I taught English communication classes in a Japanese university where the students’ grades depended on them speaking in class. But if I asked a question to the whole class? Silence. So I would break them up into pairs or groups of three or four and give them all the same topic to discuss, possibly something from the homework I had assigned. Then I would walk around and listen in, sometimes joining in the discussion. Talking with their friends relaxed them and then when I joined in, they got used to talking with me. As mentioned above a couple of times, bringing treats is another good idea, maybe for the group with the best answer, or just for whoever spoke up afterward when you asked for their results.
I also had all their names written on index cards, so sometimes I would just shuffle the cards and then ask individuals directly for answers based on what we had studied. If they said anything remotely acceptable, they got a mark/point. If they didn’t say anything or were completely wrong, they didn’t. I didn’t criticize or comment on no/wrong answers, just went on to the next student. I made sure they knew that I counted up the points at the end of the semester and their points plus their test scores decided their grades.
Your situation is different from mine so it might not work, but it got my classes going.
If they answer correctly, they get a ‘crunchy frog’ chocolate. That should help with their motivation. Or not
I had a couple of thoughts…
Maybe begin each lesson with a discussion of weird/extreme biology — snake venoms; gynandromorphs; symbioses and cooperative organisms; giant viruses. Maybe read out Ursula Vernon’s Whalefall speech, or mention the beetle out of the frog bit, or talk about something from Armand Leroi’s Mutants.
Or, maybe go with pointing out the strangeness of something very familiar, like dogs — the huge variation in canine phenotypes, despite starting out with the more-or-less basic wolf shape. If there are cat people, you could talk about the genetics underlying cat appearances.
There must be something biological out there that will get their attention and perk them up a bit.
@Lauren Walker #15
I spent most of my primary and secondary school avoiding the endless guilt-tripping, blaming and emotionally manipulative teachers, so if I encountered that at uni, I think my brain would have rebelled and entirely switched off.
Sometimes at school you need the classes where you can just zone out and listen to the material without having to jump through hoops and mess about. Students can still get engaged by a teacher with the material without interacting or having excited discussions or dances and games.
=8)-DX
Do their names end with “nen” or “la” and are they born in 1970s? Because they sound like Finnish university students in the 1990s, much like I was then.