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Coping with Time/Effort-Stingy Students Michael R. Hyman Professor of Marketing New Mexico State University College of Business Administration and Economics Department of Marketing Box 30001, Dept. 5280 Las Cruces, NM 88003-8001 Voice Phone: (505) 646-5238 Fax: (505) 646-1498 e-mail:
[email protected] Susan D. Conte Associate Professor of Management University of Tampa 401 W. Kennedy Blvd. Tampa, FL 33606 e-mail:
[email protected]
Coping with Time/Effort-Stingy Students Abstract Professors must increasingly cope with substantial heterogeneity in their students' dedication to higher education. Many less dedicated students could be described as time and effort stingy. Time-stingy students are so over committed to non-course-related activities that their course performance suffers. Effort-stingy students attempt to earn adequate grades while exerting minimum efforts. When professors try to mollify time/effort-stingy students, the quality of education received by other students suffers. To satisfy time/effort stingy students without compromising the instruction of other students or imposing undue burdens on faculty, the creation of parallel, text-only, on-line version of courses is described and encouraged. Max is one of many disenchanted students who want to graduate without having to do tasks that they consider boring but normally are associated with getting a degree. Open enrollment policies . . . are bringing students into . . . classrooms who, a few years ago, probably would have pursued careers in blue-collar occupations. . . . For many reasons, some adults do not know how to interact positively in an academic setting. -Kilmer (1998), p.81 As a dedicated and thoughtful instructor, you set clear and consistent course guidelines, start each class on time, provide outlines for lectures, relate in-class discussion to the real world and other disciplines, use humor often and appropriately, create an atmosphere of harmony and trust, keep office hours, set meaningful yet properly challenging learning objectives, adapt tasks to students' interests, minimize students' performance anxiety, give students prompt feedback on their work, reward good (or improved) performance, and show great enthusiasm for your discipline and the course (Brophy 1987). In other words, you apply all the accepted strategies for motivating students. Yet, despite your meritorious effort, some seemingly capable students are never prepared for class and perform poorly on assignments and exams. Other students believe that inclement weather, a ski trip, or fetching a friend from the airport are sufficient reasons for skipping class. A few students are openly hostile and use obstructing tactics-such as grandstanding (i.e., monopolizing class time with protracted and bombastic discussions on a favorite but f ile:///F:/My Stuf f /My Files/OldDocs/Published/Stingy /Hy man_TimeEf f ortStingy .htm
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irrelevant topic), prolonged private conversations, ostentatious displays of inattentiveness (e.g., reading a newspaper in class), verbal or physical threats to students or faculty, offensive language, and challenges to your authority and expertise (Amada 1999)--to impede learning by other students. Trying to mollify these less dedicated students only detracts from the attention that you should pay to your more dedicated students. Alternatively, ignoring these less dedicated students only exacerbates the problem and encourages punishing teaching evaluations by all students. Can you readily manage these problematic students for the benefit of all students and yourself? Instructors who want to handle such students more effectively and efficiently can develop parallel, text-only, on-line versions of their current courses. If properly designed, such courses benefit both students and faculty yet require little additional administrative effort. After a brief discussion of current distance education, this alternative on-line class format is discussed. Current Distance Education Viewed as a Win-Win-Win Situation Although questionable from both a cost-benefit perspective and a long-term supply and demand perspective (Greene 2000), many university administrators know enough about the marketing concept and market segmentation to believe distance education can enhance their institution's enrollment, visibility, and total revenue. Faculty believe distance education affords convenient opportunities for supplemental income (e.g., additional remuneration for off-load teaching) and increased scheduling flexibility (e.g., course release time, off-site teaching during summers). Students believe distance education enhances their work flexibility (e.g., can work or intern off campus yet take courses, can complete course work when convenient). Thus, administrators, faculty, and students have embraced it enthusiastically; for example, there are now at least 150 on-line M.B.A. programs (http://www.gradschools.com/listings/distance/bus_admin_distance.html). Current Students Students currently targeted for distance education are geographically and/or time inflexible. Some geographically inflexible students suffer from physical disabilities that make routine class attendance impossibly onerous; others, especially in the western U.S., live in geographically isolated areas without a local institution of higher learning. Timeinflexible students are typically non-traditional students with full-time jobs. They may want to complete an unfinished degree, earn an associates degree, or participate in a non-degree certificate program. Potential Students Although currently untargeted, the needs of psychologically challenged students, i.e., "extremely disturbed but neither clinically psychotic nor classically neurotic" (Arnstein 1973, p.173), are consistent with geographically and/or time inflexible students. By moving such students off site, universities can avoid their often disruptive and antisocial behaviors. As Amada (1999) notes: [E]ach year, it seems, larger numbers of students are engaging in behaviors that frighten and confound instructors, contaminate the academic climate of the classroom, and make genuine learning and teaching unattainable (p.1). Another possible target for distance education is the time/effort-stingy student. Time-stingy students are so over committed to non-course-related activities that their course performance suffers. Examples of time-stingy students include co-op students, who often work long days hundreds of miles from campus, and dollar-constrained students, who either carry excessive course loads to graduate early or work excessive hours for financial reasons. Effort-stingy students try to earn adequate grades while exerting minimum efforts. Encouraged to believe that they are customers (McCollough and Gremler 1999; Scrabec 2000; Swenson 1998) (cf. Baldwin 1994; Driscoll and Wicks 1998) rather than either trusting, respectful, and participative clients in a professional relationship (Bailey 2000) or "coworkers in the educational enterprise" (Franz 1998, p.66), such students prize work avoidance goals (i.e., to complete work with minimal effort) more than mastery goals (i.e., the desire to develop competence) (Harackiewicz f ile:///F:/My Stuf f /My Files/OldDocs/Published/Stingy /Hy man_TimeEf f ortStingy .htm
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et al. 1997), and often adopt a surface approach to learning sustained by fear of failure or an instrumental motivation, [and] actively prefer . . . . lecturers who told them what to put in their notes, and who entertained rather than informed. They rated highly examinations which could be answered solely from their notes . . . . and they wanted courses which indicated exactly which books to read, and where topics were linked directly to examination requirements (Entwistle, Meyer, and Tait 1991, pp.249-250). Effort-stingy students believe "they have a right to a degree because they have purchased it" (Bailey 2000, p.357). For them, learning is incidental to passing a course, which is viewed merely as a step toward a degree that warrants acceptable employment. Although often generalizable to an entire degree program, their effort stinginess may be limited to a single required course believed of little value. If required to attend class, time/effort-stingy students often sabotage other students' efforts to learn. Motivated by work avoidance goals, they intentionally impede learning--and thus limit the scope of testable knowledge and/or the performance of other students--by being disruptive and poisoning the instructional environment. Furthermore, they often debase cooperative-learning/group-learning exercises by posing a free rider problem (Joyce 1999). Solution To accommodate time/effort-stingy students and isolate them from other students, instructors could create alternative, distance education versions of their regularly scheduled courses. Unfortunately, multimedia courses delivered via two-way video links to remote sites, the Internet, or video on demand (which includes low-tech prepackaged videotapes available for purchase or rent) impose an excessive development burden on instructors and may inflict buggy video technology on students (especially over a narrow bandwidth network). Furthermore, distance education courses with a synchronous component (e.g., regularly scheduled chat rooms that students must visit and instructors must moderate) may pose an excessive administrative burden on faculty and impractical time restrictions on students. As an alternative to an in-class course or traditional distance education course, time/effort-stingy students can be encouraged to select a parallel, textbook-only, on-line version of the course. For this version, most or all assignments are based on end-of-chapter questions and cases (or the like). Only existing pedagogical materials are used, so the copyright issues inherent to most distance education courses are eliminated (Carnevale 2000). Because detailed teacher's manuals are now de rigueur with textbooks, instructors can be assigned (or hire) graders familiar with their courses to assess these assignments. Furthermore, exam grading and recording can be automated (as in Web-CT). Thus, instructors' development and administrative burdens are minimized. Course Mechanics The first class of the semester serves as an orientation about the two ways to complete the course. Because time/effort-stingy students worry more about work avoidance goals than mastery goals (Harackiewicz et al. 1997), the workload for the on-line version should be sufficient to demonstrate competence yet require less time than the inclass version. By stressing the relative time requirements for the two versions, instructors encourage time/effortstingy students to opt for the on-line version (i.e., students will self select into the most suitable version of the course). To avoid mid-semester requests to switch from the in-class version to the on-line version--which are often motivated by a failed exam or other poor performance--within the first two weeks students must submit a signed contract that confirms their version choice and their acceptance of the syllabus. Such a contract can appear as the back page of a hard-copy syllabus or a link to an on-line syllabus. Of course, students can also confirm via conventional e-mail. The two-week period allows them to attend several regularly scheduled classes and make a more informed decision about whether or not to select the on-line version. Students submit all assignments via e-mail, either as within-message texts or attached Word or WordPerfect documents. (Any student who uses another word processor should be sufficiently computer literate to either cut-andpaste text into an e-mail message or convert documents to Word/WordPerfect format.) To help with file f ile:///F:/My Stuf f /My Files/OldDocs/Published/Stingy /Hy man_TimeEf f ortStingy .htm
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management, the subject line (i.e., the subject of the e-mail message) should read Assignment #xx, where xx is the number of the assignment as listed in the syllabus. For students who submit attachments, the file naming convention should include some or all of the student's last name, like SmithAssignment01.wpd. Of course, instructors versed in on-line course software such as Web-CT may ignore these file management tips. Regardless of the submission protocol, requiring each answer to include the textbook-assigned number and a brief restatement of the question will facilitate grading. In addition to textbook-based questions, assignments can easily include multiple critiques of course-related articles. For example, the critiques for a marketing research course could include, but need not be limited to, the following: basic bibliographic information (e.g., title, author[s], and journal [including the volume/issue and date]), a description of the research question, a detailed summary of the research methods, a detailed summary of the research findings, and a substantive evaluation of the research question/methods/findings. If students have access to full-text databases like ProQuest, then they can download text-only versions of the articles. (Should the text-only version prove inadequate for assessing a critique, the instructor can download the page image file from ProQuest.) Students can then submit electronic copies of the articles and their critiques on-line. Otherwise, they can submit hard copies. In the spirit of TQM, a multiple submission policy pertains. For a given assignment, a student may receive one of three grades: (1) accepted, (2) provisionally accepted, or (3) rejected. To preclude a deluge of end-of-semester submissions, which might compromise both grading quality and revision time, the course should be structured around multiple modules with clear submission deadlines. Although students who miss these deadlines without a universitysanctioned excuse are likely to file successful extension appeals with administrators, repeatedly reminding students via e-mail about missed deadlines creates an electronic record that may prove useful in refuting a grade appeal. Instructors have two choices on exam administration: on-line or on-site. Unless available bandwidth and budgets-both student and university--allow for web cameras and multi-viewer software, it is impossible to secure on-line exams (Dellana, Collins, and West 2000). As a secure alternative, instructors (or their representatives) can administer on-site exams at students' convenience. If students cannot sit for the exam(s) before grades are due, and the university discourages incompletes, then they can receive grades for work to date and the instructor can submit grade changes for students with meritorious exam scores. From an academic integrity and an accreditation perspective, a course should be designed so that students can achieve the same learning outcomes regardless of delivery system. These learning outcomes not only deal with content areas, such as marketing management, but cognitive skill areas, such as the formulation and assessment of strategic options. Bloom's taxonomy (1956), a classic in education theory, provides an excellent basis for creating and evaluating student assignments. Bloom orders cognitive functioning into six intellectual skills arranged in the following hierarchical order. Knowledge: displays previously learned material by recalling facts, terms, basic concepts, and answers. Comprehension: shows understanding of facts and ideas by organizing, comparing, translating, interpreting, giving descriptions, and stating main ideas. Application: solves problems by applying acquired knowledge, facts, techniques, and rules. Analysis: examines and parses information by identifying motives or causes, making inferences, and finding evidence to support generalizations. Synthesis: compiles information in a different way by combining elements in a new pattern or proposing alternative solutions. Evaluation: uses multiple criteria to present and defend opinions about information (e.g., validity). f ile:///F:/My Stuf f /My Files/OldDocs/Published/Stingy /Hy man_TimeEf f ortStingy .htm
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Assignments requiring higher-order thinking skills (i.e., Bloom's categories 4 to 6) tend to be more complex and more time-consuming than assignments requiring lower-order thinking skills (i.e., Bloom's categories 1 to 3). Many time/effort-stingy students will opt to forego assignments of the first type. Nonetheless, course grades relate to demonstrated mastery, which depends on assignment grades weighted by assignment type. Under a Bloom-type system, students grades might be assigned as follows. F: failed to achieve a grade of 'accepted' on x% of assignments based on end-of-chapter questions in the textbook. D: achieved a grade of 'accepted' on x% of assignments based on end-of-chapter questions in the textbook. C: completed all requirements for a 'D' and achieved y1% or better average on objective exam(s) based on the textbook. B: completed all requirements for a 'C', achieved y2% (> y1%) or better average on objective exam(s) based on the textbook, and achieved a grade of 'accepted' on z% of other assignments (e.g., simple cases and article critiques). A: completed all requirements for a 'C', achieved y3% (> y2%) or better average on objective exam(s) based on the textbook, and achieved a grade of 'accepted' on z% of other assignments (e.g., moderately difficult cases). Although courses, exam question sets, and students differ, good starting values are 80% for x and z, 65% for y1, 75% for y2, and 85% for y3. Again, development and administrative burdens can be minimized. Graders--assigned or hired--can assess written assignments. Exams can be graded and scores can be recorded automatically in on-line course platforms like WebCT. Finally, random selection of objective questions from the electronic test banks that accompany most textbooks can eliminate the need to design and keypunch exams. (In electronic form, questions can be imported, via programs such as Respondus (http://www.respondus.com), into Web-CT. Alternatively, many publishers offer their own platforms for authoring and delivering examinations on-line (e.g., ExamView by South-Western Publishing; http://www.swcollege.com).) Conclusion Although "online education could be the latest in a string of overhyped Internet concepts in which an excess of giddy supply overestimates the demand" (Green 2000, p.33), university administrators will continue to pressure faculty to develop on-line courses. In response, marketing professors interested in isolating time/effort-stingy students from their other students yet avoiding buggy video technology and onerous course development and administration time can develop parallel, textbook-only, on-line versions of their current courses. Some educators argue that on-line instruction is inferior to in-class instruction (Arbaugh 2000; Carnevale 2000; Piotrowski and Vodanovich 2000; Schulman and Sims 1999); others argue for either the reverse or no difference (Sonner 1999; Vachris and Bredon 1999). Certainly, retention rates for on-line courses are somewhat lower (Carr 2000). Nonetheless, because students self-select the on-line version, the onus is on them provided the instructor clearly documents and explains the alternatives. Furthermore, preliminary results suggest that students prefer this approach; a convenience sample of faculty who teach a required class at a research university in the southwestern U.S. received far better teaching evaluations once they introduced this on-line alternative. References Amada, Gerald (1999), Coping with Misconduct in the College Classroom: A Practical Model. Asheville, NC: College Administration Publications, Inc. Arbaugh, J. B. (2000), "Virtual Classroom versus Physical Classroom: An Exploratory Study of Class Discussion Patterns and Student Learning in an Asynchronous Internet-based MBA Course," Journal of Management Education, 24 (April), 213-233. f ile:///F:/My Stuf f /My Files/OldDocs/Published/Stingy /Hy man_TimeEf f ortStingy .htm
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Arnstein, Robert L. (1973), "The Borderline Patient in the College Setting," in Psychosocial Problems of College Men, Bryant M. Wedge, ed. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press. Bailey, Jeffrey I. (2000), "Students as Clients in a Professional/Client Relationship," Journal of Management Education, 24 (June), 353-365. Baldwin, Gabrielle (1994), "The Student as Customer: The Discourse of 'Quality' in Higher Education," Journal for Higher Education Management, 9 (Winter-Spring), 131-139. Bloom, Benjamin S., ed. (1956), Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Book/Cognitive Domain. New York, NY: Longman. Brophy, Jere (1987), "Synthesis of Research on Strategies for Motivating Students to Learn," Educational Leadership, 45 (October), 40-48. Carnevale, Dan (2000), "Duke U. Moves to set Policies on Online Courses," The Chronicle of Higher Education, 46 (June 9), A47. Carr, Sarah (2000), "As Distance Education Comes of Age, the Challenge is Keeping the Students," The Chronicle of Higher Education, 46 (February 11), A39-A41. Dellana, Scott A., William H. Collins, and David West (2000), "On-line Education in a Management Science CourseEffectiveness and Performance Factors," Journal of Education for Business, 76 (1), 43-47. Driscoll, Cathy and David Wicks (1998), "The Customer-Driven Approach in Business Education: A Possible Danger," Journal of Education for Business, 74 (September/October), 58-61. Entwistle, N. J., J. H. F. Meyer, and Hilary Tait (1991), "Student Failure: Disintegrated patterns of Study Strategies and Perceptions of the Learning Environment," Higher Education, 21 (March), 249-261. Franz, Randall S. (1998), "Whatever You Do, Don't Treat Your Students Like Customers," Journal of Management Education, 22 (February), 63-69. Green, Joshua (2000), "The Online Education Bubble," The American Prospect, 11 (October 23), 32-35. Harackiewicz, Judith M., Kenneth E. Barron, Suzanne M. Carter, Alan T. Lehto, and Andrew J. Elliot (1997), "Predictors and Consequences of Achievement Goals in the College Classroom: Maintaining Interest and Making the Grade," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73 (June), 1284-1295. Joyce, William B. (1999), "On the Free-Rider Problem in Cooperative Learning," Journal of Education for Business, 74 (May-June), 271-274. Kilmer, Paulette D. (1998), "When a Few Disruptive Students Challenge an Instructor's Plan," Journalism & Mass Communication, 53 (Summer), 81-84. McCollough, Michael A. and Dwayne D. Gremler (1999), "Guaranteeing Student Satisfaction: An Exercise in Treating Students as Customers," Journal of Marketing Education, 21 (August), 118-130. Piotrowski, Chris and Stephen J. Vodanovich (2000), "Are the Reported Barriers to Internet-Based Instruction Warranteed?: A Synthesis of Recent Research," Education, 121 (Fall), 48-53. Schulman, Allan H. and Randi L. Sims (1999), "Learning in an Online Format versus an In-class Format: An Experimental Study," T.H.E. Journal, 26 (June), 54-56. Scrabec, Jr., Quentin (2000), "A Quality Education is not Customer Driven," Journal of Education for Business, 75 (5), 298-300. f ile:///F:/My Stuf f /My Files/OldDocs/Published/Stingy /Hy man_TimeEf f ortStingy .htm
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Sonner, Brenda S. (1999), "Success in the Capstone Business Course-Assessing the Effectiveness of Distance Learning," Journal of Education for Business, 74 (4), 243-248. Swenson, Craig (1998), "Customers & Markets: The Cuss Words of Academe," Change, 30 (September/October), 3439. Vachris, Michelle A. (1999), "Teaching Principles of Economics without "Chalk and Talk": The Experience of CNS Online," Journal of Economic Education, 30 (3), 292-308.
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