The physical science path can be devastating if you make a wrong turn or start from the wrong place. How many would be engineers at engineering schools switch their major mid-year one? In a traditional physical science program every bit of math and science you learn builds off of other math and science you have already learned. You learn A from your physics I class and you learn B from your calculus class, in theory knowing A and B allows you to learn C in your modern physics and so on. But if you are missing a piece of it the whole thing collapses. When this happens to a student, out they go…

I have been thinking long and hard about grades lately. I wrote about in this blog just a few days ago, Feeling Sour Grapes over Posting Summer Grades. I concluded with the statement “I don’t want to pass on unprepared students to the next level and have them get crushed. Especially if I am the guy who has to do the crushing.” Or to say not give them the key thing from my class. (Yes there are learning goals, but those are just words on paper.) A dear friend shot back in horror “I can’t imagine you EVER crushing a student.  That’s certainly not learning!” The sad reality is that is what often happens in physical science classes. If you don’t have the background, learning in this house of cards style fails. One piece missing and BOOM!

As an instructor I work hard to try to catch it when I can. When I catch it though I often have to convince the student to suddenly work much more than everyone in the class; “catching up” on the missing pieces. Here is the problem, THE FREAKING HUGE PROBLEM, even if that student catches up and learns a lot, they will likely not end up with an A in the class. Usually students have to have done badly once or twice on exams to go into “catch up” mode so their grade is already starting from a poor place. I do try to give low stakes problems at the beginning of the semester, but I have found it usually takes a semester or two of “catching up” before it turns into good grades. Not to mention that many students don’t have the time or resources to spend the extra time “catching up”.

The fact graduate schools, medical schools, companies, and engineering programs would block students with low but rising GPAs bothers me. If our goal is to learn in college, how important is an A or a D earned in a freshman year to a student who is graduating? We do need a system to evaluate our students, but ugh.

I was attending a recent webinar provided by superstar Harvard Physics professor Eric Mazur. He said in that meeting that he takes a projects approach in his classes. I think this is the way to go. Let the students build the skills they need in a Just-In-Time way that supports the projects they are working on. If they don’t have skill A and its needed, they can build it in real time with the students in the project. While at the same continuously evaluating the student’s participation in the project. Note I used the singular form there. We have to make sure each student is working on the project.

Doing this in an online environment is tricky. I tried to do it organically this summer. It worked for the four or so students that frequently attended office hours, a group of students who were working together before the class started, but failed for a number of students that were lost in the madness. I like building up projects organically with a small adjustments after I see how the groups sort themselves out. It always seems the most painless way to go. I think that in online courses, I might have to break the groups up myself and assign roles similar to POGIL in the future. Or practice more, and again ugh.

I’d like to say this blog post has a point. I am not sure it does. All of these seem connected but not completely clear to me to articulate into a coherent post. Let me summarize:

1. Online teaching is hard
2. If you force people to learn in a rigid way, they can get “crushed”
3. I try REALLY HARD not to crush students, but it has happened. 🙁
4. Reshaping to a project-based curriculum may help students to fill in the gaps in their knowledge in a just-in-time way.
5. I really need to start reading more physics and STEM education Literature.