Attitudes

What is your outlook on learning? Do you study for a grade, or for knowledge to enrich your life?  It's normal and healthy to want high grades, but if you don't appreciate learning for its own sake, high grades will be of little value to you.

There are observable differences between many successful students and many struggling students in their attitudes toward learning.  These include the following:

Foresight manifests itself in other ways. Part of being a college student is learning to work within a complex system. In planning for the next semester, some students wait to be told by a faculty advisor which courses to take; others take enough ownership of their education to map out a (possibly tentative) list of courses.  It's OK to learn you've made inappropriate choices, or to have questions, but the student who makes even a tentative effort at planning a schedule is learning how to make decisions and plans within a complex system.
Foresight is also an important issue in a student's choice of major.  As a professor, I evaluate students' work.  Occasionally, it is obvious that a student is never going to be successful in my field, and I will advise the student accordingly.  Several students have resisted such advice on the grounds that they are too close to graduation to find new majors - they want to get their degrees as quickly as possible. I  advise such students to think about what their degrees will mean in their lives; following graduation, they may have 50-year careers for which they want their degrees to prepare them. A short-sighted decision to ignore one's shortcomings in a chosen field is likely to defer facing up to these shortcomings until a time when the stakes are higher.  It's better to find a different field, even if it means taking more time to get your degree, in which you have prospects for success when you're still a 20-year old student than when you're 30 or 35, still young but perhaps stuck in a professional dead end to which you committed at age 20, with family and financial obligations that make it impractical to prepare for work in a new field.

• Textbook treatment: How do you treat your textbooks? If you mark them up, do you do so in order to help you study, or do you use your books as doodle pads? Do you toss them around casually, or do you handle your books gently? The respect you show your learning tools is often reflected in and by the respect you have for learning, itself.
  Do you automatically sell all your textbooks at the end of the semester? At least for the courses in your major and its related fields, you ought to keep your books for professional references. (Full disclosure: as a textbook author, I have an interest in this advice, since authors receive no royalties on resold used books.)

• Rigidity
  - Are you too compartmentalized in your thinking?  Do you believe that the only place to learn spelling and grammar is in an English course, or the only place to learn mathematics is in a math course?
  I often point out spelling and grammatical errors to my students; in my end-of-semester student evaluations, I'm often criticized for doing so (usually, in misspelled or incorrectly worded complaints). Some students are upset that anyone other than an English professor would care; others realize the corrections can help make them better writers. It won't hurt you to learn some writing techniques from a computer scientist. Successful professionals generally need to express themselves clearly and correctly, and take pride in doing so. If you are unable to meet the standards of such peers, you will appear to be less competent; this could cost you a job (why would an employer want you to represent his/her company if your writing quality is substandard for a college graduate?), contract (why would a potential client place confidence in your abilities if you communicate as a semi-literate?), promotion, or other professional asset.
  In some of my classes, we use mathematics that the students didn't learn in previous courses, or haven't used in years.  If necessary, I go over the mathematical theory before proceeding with its use.  Some students have protested that it's unfair for me to teach them math, since my department isn't named "Mathematics;" others realize that in computer science, we learn to use whatever tools are useful. You can't do much computer graphics without algebra and trigonometry; you can't do much analysis of algorithms without certain tools of calculus and foundations of mathematics; you can't do much scientific computing without significant helpings of calculus, statistics, or linear algebra. It won't hurt you to learn some mathematics from a computer scientist.
  - Do you believe that you have a learning style compatible with only one instructional style? Some students complain that they don't like an instructor's teaching style.  But different students have different preferred learning styles, and an instructor can only present material one way at a time. While review from a different approach is often useful, it is wasteful to spend too much class time in review, even if a different presentation is made of the reviewed material.  Successful students learn to learn from a variety of presentation styles, including that of their current instructor.
  - Do you use an instructor's accent as an excuse for your disappointing achievements? Success in today's professional world requires compatibility with people from around the country and around the world. A student whose instructor speaks with a foreign accent would be wise to get used to it and enjoy the cultural diversity; probably, the instructor has been chosen as the best available person to teach the course, regardless of accent.

• Thoughtfulness: Being thoughtful and courteous towards others is not only admirable, but can have very practical benefits to students; conducting oneself thoughtlessly and with discourtesy towards others can do one considerable harm.
  This is particularly true in a student's relations with faculty. While there exist faculty who are less diligent, inspiring, or effective than they should be, faculty are paid for their expertise - both their knowledge of their fields and their knowledge of pedagogy - thus, most faculty know their fields and what should be expected of their students incomparably better than their students do. Faculty are charged with evaluating their students' work and passing on their judgments, not only in the form of grades but also in letters of recommendation, advisement, committee discussions, and other forms sometimes not considered by students.  Even if you don't think highly of a professor, you're unwise to conduct yourself in a fashion likely to offend or to inconvenience unnecessarily that individual.  Examples:

  • It's unwise to assume that you're free to skip an exam and take a makeup without penalty.  Most faculty will give a makeup without penalty if convinced there's a good reason (such as a family emergency or a severe illness) for doing so.  However, the student who thinks faculty members have nothing better to do with their time than to write makeup exams for students who didn't feel like taking the scheduled exam is likely to find that the faculty member feels abused.  Further, this is thoughtless of the student's classmates, as the student is requesting an unfair advantage in time for preparation.

  • It's reasonable to discuss your grade with your professor; it's, sometimes, reasonable to disagree with your professor about your grade. It's unreasonable to demand a higher grade on the alleged basis that your tuition pays the professor's salary, thereby making you the customer who's always right. There are many reasons for faculty not to think of students as customers (customers want their money's worth; students demanding higher grades based on tuition rather than on academic achievements, don't - see "Appreciation of your education," below). There are many reasons for faculty to consider reasoned discussion, but few reasons to consider demands, concerning grades.

• Thoughtlessness toward fellow students may make it difficult for you to work on group projects, which have gained much popularity in many academic fields. Further, such conduct may be noted by faculty, which could affect recommendations for internships, academic honors, and post-graduate goals (jobs or graduate or professional schools).
  
  

• Appreciation of your education: I sometime tell students that they're the world's worst consumers, because they don't want what tuition pays for.

Of course, this doesn't apply to all students.  The students who are terrible consumers are those who want to be let out of class early or have class cancelled because "it's nice out today," don't want to be assigned homework, don't want to be held to high academic standards, want to be treated as adults with respect to alcohol consumption but not with respect to academic responsibilities, etc.  Most students don't get a second chance at the wonderful investment in their own futures that is college education; why trivialize it, or pressure your faculty to degrade it?

• It appears that Y took advantage of a policy of dropping the low score and snoozed through the portion of the course covered by the third exam. How is it fair that in computing the average for these students who have the same overall average, Y comes out 14 points better than X when the low grade is dropped?  Relative to each other, X is penalized for consistency, and Y is rewarded for inconsistency.  How is that fair or appropriate?
  A good friend of mine teaches in a medical school.  When students ask him what they need to know for their final exam, he tells them:  Everything.  If they react by moaning about alleged unfairness or difficulty, he continues:  Do you want to tell a patient you can't help because Dr. S. said you didn't have to learn about his or her condition?  By contrast, I will occasionally introduce advanced features that I don't grade, as they're beyond the level of my course, but that students should know about for future study - but I will not exempt students from large sections of the syllabus by dropping a low grade.

• The student is not the only person who uses a course grade. Potential employers and admissions committees for graduate and professional schools need to have accurate, honest judgments of students' achievements in order to make their decisions.  Probably the most common form of inaccurate grading today is "grade inflation."  A school, department, or professor with a reputation for grade inflation hurts its best students, because good grades honestly earned will be discounted by the potential employers and admissions committees that know of the reputation. My assessment of a student's work puts my reputation for judgment on the line. If I get a reputation for poor judgment, then the recommendations I write for my best students won't do them any good. Of course, grading that's too hard also has harmful effects, but that's a less common problem; further, students never demand tougher grades, but they often press for easier grades.

• Do you expect a high grade because you worked hard? There's generally no fair way to consider effort in grading, since it's generally impossible for the instructor to know how hard every student has worked. Hence, the instructor will care about your effort when thinking of you subjectively but not while grading. You should work hard because hard work bestows its own rewards - it usually yields better results than slacking off. Most graders will grade your achievements, not your effort. This reflects the world beyond the university - if you perform badly on the job, it won't matter if you work hard.

It's nice to be popular with one's students, but not at the expense of honesty in grading. I try to be a nice guy, but my fundamental obligations to my students are:

1. to make my best possible contribution to their education in my teaching, and

2. to give an honest evaluation of their work.

If fulfilling the second of these obligations causes me to displease a student, then the student's displeasure is part of the price I have to pay for the privilege of being a faculty member. 

• Reaction to constructive criticism: Grading a student's work is not only a matter of assessment. It is also an opportunity for the instructor to give the student constructive criticism, so that the student can learn to do better work. Successful students generally "get" this point. Unsuccessful students often don't, and often react badly to constructive criticism. When I point out a flaw in your work, it's not because I want to embarrass you and it's not because I want you to think I'm tough; rather, it's because I care enough about you to spend my time showing you how to do better. It's because I want to show you what you have failed to learn, or how you were careless with something that you learned but expressed incorrectly, or how you neglected to satisfy project requirements, or how you might improve your writing, or how you might make your document more attractive. Read your instructor's comments; learn from your instructor's experience and wisdom; learn from your mistakes.

• Learn from failure: Most successful people have had significant failures from which they have derived valuable lessons.  You can, too.  Did you do badly on a homework assignment, exam, or final grade? Your world won't come to an end as a result. Learn from the experience so that you can improve your performance. If it was because you didn't work hard enough or intelligently enough, learn to remedy those flaws. If it's because you attempted a course that's beyond your ability, be proud of having tried something difficult but also realize you should be directing your efforts in a direction more likely to yield success.

Be a problem solver. Would an employer be interested in hiring you if it were known that you don't solve problems?

• Stumped by a word? Don't assume it doesn't matter - get thee to a dictionary!  Aren't you in college to learn?

• Did your computer or printer break down? Why would you think that's an excuse? Most universities (including mine) have computer laboratories equipped with the software you need, that are available to all students. Except in rare and limited circumstances, your instructor doesn't care what computer or printer you use.  Further, the possibility of hardware failure should be anticipated, so it's unwise to leave your printing to the last minute.

• Need help understanding homework instructions? E-mail, phone, or visit the instructor during office hours - that's what they're for.

• Ask for help if you need it.  Sometimes, that's the best problem-solving strategy.  Most universities (including mine) have help available for students in the form of faculty office hours and tutoring services.  Asking a classmate for clarification can be valuable, provided the help doesn't cross the line into cheating.  The student who fails to ask for help is often the student who sits paralyzed for weeks before noticing that he/she is hopelessly behind schedule.

Attendance

Absences:  Do you take a cavalier approach to attendance? In many subjects (including the one I teach), almost every class builds on the material presented in the previous class.  This means you can't afford to have poor attendance, and you should try to have perfect attendance.  Even getting a classmate's notes is not as good as being in class:

• Your classmate's notes are taken according to his/her learning and note-taking style, not according to yours.

• Your classmate's notes may be missing material your classmate didn't feel necessary to make note of, but you would have.

• By missing class, you're a class late asking for clarification of any point you could have asked about had you been present.

Most veteran faculty members will tell you there is a strong correlation between poor attendance and student underachievement. Further, most students are young enough that they are still establishing life patterns.  Poor class attendance becomes a pattern for poor work attendance and other forms of unreliability.

Tardiness:  How can a student can appear 10 or 15 minutes late to every class, then ask me in all innocence how s/he can get better grades in my class?  If you appear late to my class, you'll fall behind in your notes and in the demonstrations we are building, and you'll likely never catch up.  Show up on time.  Similar remarks apply to students who think nothing of leaving long before class is over.

Leaving early for an academic break:  Most universities, including mine, schedule travel days for academic breaks.

• E.g., there are no classes on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. So why skip your classes on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving?  This is a practice very likely to hurt your grade, let alone the learning you get from a course, as you're unlikely even to attempt catching up until after returning to campus.  Thus, you lose out on, typically, a week's mastery of material necessary for your current homework assignment, or your final project, with final exams following shortly.

• A student once told me she had to skip her late-afternoon class before a holiday break because a requirement to be out of her dormitory by 10:00 a.m. the next day made the arrangement of transportation difficult. I am informed that a Niagara student may request a few extra hours from the Residence Life office before leaving the dorm for a break.

Scheduling conflicts: Do you schedule appointments to conflict with your classes? Do you think this is an excuse for missing class? For most students, being in class should be the number one priority. If your time slot for advisement/registration/interview/etc., happens to fall during a class period, the advisement/registration/interview/etc., should be done at another time.

Would a business or professional person refuse an appointment to one client just because another client is already scheduled for the requested time slot? How long would the business last under such a practice? When you have a problem, solve the problem; if the problem is that you have two obligations, meet both of them. Schedule appointments so they don't conflict with  previous appointments, your classes.

Do not let yourself be intimidated by the suggestion from a dean, academic advisor, or other influential person, of an appointment at a time that conflicts with one of your classes.  Explain to that person that you have a class at the suggested time, and that you therefore need to make the appointment at another time.

Read the book AND take notes

My lectures are usually based on the assigned textbook. However, I rarely present material as it is presented in the textbook.  Students benefit from alternate presentations of the same material.  Often, a different presentation or a different set of examples will clarify a point or enrich a student's understanding. The wise student, therefore, both reads the textbook and takes notes in class.

It is also wise to read the textbook ahead of the instructor's presentation of its material.  That way, you can anticipate difficult points and know what questions would be useful to ask.  Also, this practice is part of a process of orderly review through which a lot of learning takes place; failure to engage in this process may cause failure to master material you're expected to learn.

Students shouldn't wait to be told which sections of the book to read.  If I neglect to mention which sections are currently being discussed, I should still be able to assume that my students can use a table of contents and an index, and therefore that they will do their reading.

Pace of a Course

This item is particularly directed at freshmen, but all students should be aware of the following. You should expect to learn more independently, and at a much faster pace, than in high school.   There are several reasons for this, including:

• Knowledge in all academic fields is expanding rapidly. College students must learn rapidly in order to keep up with the frontiers of their fields.  If college students don't do this, then there won't be future researchers to build cultural and scientific progress; there won't be technicians capable of applying recent discoveries to today's problems; there won't be qualified teachers for the next generation of students.

• Look around your classroom and notice who's not there - your high school classmates whose academic and disciplinary weaknesses slowed the pace of your classes. You're now in a more elite institution of learning - a university rather than a high school - and your faculty will take advantage of that to cover material more rapidly.

• You're more mature, a faster reader, a faster writer, a faster computer user (and a user of faster computers), a faster thinker with greater understanding, than you were when you entered high school. You spend fewer hours in class (most full-time university students average about 3 hours per day Monday through Friday, during shorter semesters) than you did in high school.  You have a better library available to you, better computers, better science laboratories, and better-educated friends.  You make faster and better decisions and evaluate ideas faster and better than you did when you entered high school. You've traveled more and experienced more of the world than you had in high school. These are all factors that make it possible and desirable for you to learn independently - that is, outside the classroom.

These remarks are not meant to intimidate you.  Your faculty are professional educators who, for the most part, have learned a lot about learning and teaching. They know what's reasonable to expect of their students.  But you should realize that you're capable of much more than you were expected to achieve in high school, and your faculty will expect you to learn at a much higher pace than in high school.

Use reference books

Most veteran teachers recall some student whose response to a question was a dull look of non-comprehension. If the dialog took place privately, the instructor may have probed the non-comprehension and found that the student didn't have the vocabulary to understand the question.

The Internet isn't always the best research tool. I recommend that every student have a modern dictionary, and use it regularly. When you hear or read a new word, look it up and learn its spelling and meaning. Similarly, a hardcopy thesaurus is likely to be a useful reference. Even though a modern word processor has an online thesaurus, it's often less complete than Roget's in hardcopy. Other recommended references include writing style guidebooks, sources of help in the rules of grammar, textbooks from previous courses, and discipline-specific references. If for financial or other reasons it's inconvenient for you to have your own copies of such references, use the University library.

Advice for Exams

• Read and understand instructions.  One of the most important sources of lost points is failure to follow instructions; this is seen when a student submits an "answer" that has little to do with the question/problem.

• I usually give open-book, open-note exams, on the theory that in my discipline, problem-solving through the use of available resources is more important than memorization.  For students whose performance on my exams is below expectations, one often observes the following. A key word or phrase in the statement of an exam problem triggers an association with something discussed in the student's notes or textbook.  Some students stop thinking, instead proceeding to copy from the notes/textbook to the exam document.  This is often a good way to get a score of 0 for the problem, since while there may be a related idea in the notes/textbook, the exam problem and the problem discussed in the notes/textbook are not identical; a student following this strategy often ends up off on a tangent that has little to do with the exam problem's statement.  See the previous bullet.

• Perhaps most importantly, think logically about the problems you are asked to solve.  This is especially important for programming students and those asked to express a process or algorithm.  Your first reaction to reading a problem should not be "where can I find this in my notes or textbook?", but "what steps are necessary to solve this problem?"

• If you wait until the final exam to collect your graded last homework submission, you won't be able to benefit on the final from your professor's comments and corrections of your work. Stop by your professor's office, if necessary, to collect your graded work in time to benefit from the grading at the final exam.

• The final exam should also be a learning experience. Make an appointment with your professor to review the exam after it's over. Unless you got a perfect score, there's something on the exam that's worth your while to review with your professor.

Links

By Prof. Roger Freedman, Dept. of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara: Advice for Freshmen (non-freshmen could benefit by reviewing this periodically)

By Denise Jewell Gee, "A few tips for the incoming freshmen," Buffalo News, August 29, 2011, B1

By Prof. David A. Padgett, Dept. of Geography, Middle Tennessee State University, "A Message to the Students"

By Prof. William Rapaport, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, SUNY - Buffalo: How to Study

By Prof. Patrick Sullivan, Dept. of English, Manchester Community College:
            An Open Letter to Ninth Graders - ostensibly written for 9th graders, this essay has a lot to say to college students about traits and practices that can make the difference between success and failure in college.
            An Open Letter to High School Students about Reading - on the importance of reading in college

By Prof. Lisa Wade, Dept. of Sociology, Occidental College: 10 Things Every College Professor Hates

"I Shall Not Pass This Way Again" - commentary on exam preparation

40 Characteristics of Successful Students

A College Student's Guide to Test Preparation - actually, a resource for a wide range of age groups (thanks for the tip, Alexa!)