On effort

Today's NYT letters page features several responses to last week's story about college students' grade expectations. That story summarized recent studies suggesting that college students expect to be rewarded with higher grades for their effort, not necessarily the quality of the products they produce in class. As one undergraduate quoted in the article puts it, "If someone goes to every class and reads every chapter in the book and does everything the teacher asks of them and more, then they should be getting an A like their effort deserves."

It's easy to respond to a comment like this with eye-rolling and complaints about spoiled students, lack of standards, or the faults of a K-12 educational system where everyone "wins" but no one learns anything. My response is to ask a question: How, exactly, am I supposed to measure or evaluate a student's effort?

This is not a snarky or idle question. Let's really think about this for a moment. Setting aside for a moment the idea that effort may not be something we should measure or evaluate, if we were to measure it, how would we do so? How do I know concretely if a student is "making the effort" in class? I certainly can't follow each of them around to determine how much time she spent on the reading, how long he studied for the test, or whether he wrote the paper in one sitting or two. And even if I did so, I would not have any way of really ascertaining, objectively, how much work each of those tasks was for the individual student, how much effort was really required. Save popping in on them while they are working and asking them to rate their "perceived exertion" at that moment (something my cycling instructor likes us to do during class), I have no way to measure the student's effort on class work s/he does outside of class.

How else might we measure effort? How about in class? There is some evidence there: students who are obviously engaged with the material, participating, asking questions, pushing the discussion. But here, too, how much effort does this require? (For communication majors, "class participation" is like breathing). Surely, lots of my colleagues would suggest that traces of effort - perhaps substantial traces - are right there in the work the student produces: the tests, the papers, the quality of their class participation. In this view, professors implicitly recognize student effort by recognizing quality work. While the quality of the work and effort do not always correlate, it's probably fair to say that if a student "does everything the teacher asks of them and more," as our undergraduate above puts it, then s/he will probably do pretty well in class. And then everyone's happy.

But there remains the problem of the frequent disjuncture between the quality of the work as evaluated by the professor and the student's perception of her own effort. The latter is, as my social science colleagues would call it, a self-report measure: illuminating, perhaps, but not always the most robust assessment. It would seem that we are left with the very impasse the NYT article suggests: students expect that effort equals good grades, while professors blather on and on about product and quality. Short of berating them with the analogy that no matter how hard I train I will never run a sub-two-hour half marathon, how else to handle the moments of inevitable impasse?

My charitable hunch is that when students talk about "effort," they are really talking about process. I have noticed that in my courses which include a focus on process as well as product, students tend not to play the effort card. For example, in my rhetorical criticism course students write a final paper that is assembled in stages. At each stage, they do a required but ungraded draft and then a final, graded draft. Students get substantial feedback from me on their drafts, but that feedback doesn't initially come with a grade. Their perceived efforts on the draft are validated simply by my attention and feedback; when it comes time to attach a grade to my evaluation, they know that I know where they've been and where they are now. In short, they probably feel that something about their effort is visible to me, because they got my substantive attention before it "counted." This doesn't necessarily mean they are happy with my final assessment, of course, but if they do require further explanation for a grade the request tends not to be couched in the language of effort.

I teach the criticism course this way because a focus on process in this methods course forces - and I mean forces - the students to become better writers. They usually buy in because they see the benefits for themselves. As for my other courses, I sometimes use ungraded evaluation where it makes sense (e.g., paper drafts), though obviously this isn't always practical. Ultimately, it might be an interesting exercise to pose this question to students: If you believe that I should account for your effort in my evaluation of your performance in this class, how do you propose that I do so? I'd be curious to see what they come up with. 

Comments

[oratoricalanimal]

The two hour marathon part gets me. The most discouraging students to deal with are those that do try hard, hold high expectations, and just don't have the ability. Sometimes, if they actually see each perform (public speaking) their expectations shift accordingly.

[Mindy]

I like the idea of the group establishing the norm of "effort". I have colleagues who regularly use the "contract" version of assessment where students agree to what amount and quality of work they need to produce in order to achieve a specific grade. The students decide in advance what quality and "effort" it should require to achieve a specific grade as well as how that effort and quality are to be demonstrated. If they meet their end of the bargain---grade achieved. If they don't, grade not achieved. My colleagues report that the standards the students help to set are not unlike what they would normally expect, but that the added element of input into the process (perceived or real) decreases complaints because of the participation in establishing the expectations.

[Mom - niece #4]

or you could just reply with Fr. Malone's patented response; "Life isn't fair. If you didn't learn that this semester, you probably don't deserve the grade you got."

[Scott Sprigman]

Sadly these students who expect their effort to impact their grades are starting to become parents. The hardest part of a third or fifth grade report card is the side on behavior or "personal growth". It was always inevitable that I would be challenged by a parent on a report card in this area, and it really is impossible to quantify. I would always document so as to have some reasons, but in reality, the parents knew it was my opinion...so they would say things like, "She tries hard." or my personal favorite, "Isn't that just a boy being a boy?" Soon, you will have a "personal growth" area for undergrads because they won't know what the other grades really mean.

Sorry, off my soapbox...I hope I made some sense!

[Ida]

In my experience as a student, confusion around grades usually comes where I don’t understand the professor’s expectations. Some classes are about process, so producing crap work if it means that I made a breakthrough about my process gets me a deserving good grade. In other classes, the focus is on outcome, so it’s my job to manage the process and the professor’s job to evaluate the final product. Here it doesn’t matter that I’ve done the reading, toiled over studio work, or reached out to other students. The product is all that matters. Learning objectives and priorities vary so wildly among professors. I appreciate the ones who consistently emphasize what their expectations are and evaluate the work consistently within those guidelines. I am grateful for the bad grades I’ve received because they have helped me identify my weaknesses. Most of the professional situations I am in and will be in more come graduation in May require people of varying skills and strengths working together to successfully meet objectives.

If a student’s efforts are misplaced, it is the professor’s work to let the student know. Grades are one way of doing this, if a hopelessly un-nuanced way.

[caraf]

Thanks for these comments, everyone! Mindy, your colleagues' approaches are cool. I do a thing where students can select from among different kinds of assignments (exams, research paper, etc.), but don't take the further step re: handing over evaluation.

Scott, god forbid when we all have to grade based upon "personal growth"!