Giving a Gentle Nudge to Colleagues Who Demand Too Little of Students

In this Chronicle of Higher Education article, New York University professor Jonathan Zimmerman comments on a recent study showing that 45 percent of college students don’t improve their reasoning and writing skills in their freshman and sophomore years – and 36 percent don’t improve in these areas by graduation. 

The study (Academically Adrift by University of Virginia researchers Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa) used the Collegiate Learning Assessment, an essay-only test that measures higher-level thinking and expression. Here are two sample items:

• Students are given a set of documents on an airplane that recently crashed and asked to advise an executive on whether his company should buy this kind of plane.
• Students are presented with data about a city’s crime-reduction program and asked to advise the mayor on how to respond to criticisms of the program.

The study tracked more than 2,300 students in 24 colleges, including selective liberal-arts institutions, big land-grant universities, and historically African-American and Hispanic institutions.

Why did so few students get better at writing and reasoning? “The reason isn’t hard to find,” says Zimmerman. “Most students don’t read and write very much. And the reason for that isn’t a mystery, either: We don’t ask them to.” More than half of the students in the study had not been asked to do more than 20 pages of writing in the previous semester. Seventeen percent of students hadn’t met with a faculty member outside of class during the first year of college, and nine percent had never talked to a professor outside of class. “Most students simply ignore us,” says Zimmerman, “and we return the favor. It’s mutual.” 

The study did contain some good news: students whose professors asked them to do more than 40 pages of reading each week and more than 20 pages of writing each semester did markedly better on the Collegiate Learning Assessment. “If we want them to learn more,” says Zimmerman, we’ll have to ask more of them – and of ourselves.” 

Zimmerman then turns to the question of how, in the loosely-coupled, herding-cats culture of a university, professors could be held accountable for asking more of their students. Zimmerman concedes that most accountability systems could be gamed by resourceful academics, but he thinks there’s a way to get to the laggards – a way that’s been pioneered in the medical field. Since the late 1990s, doctors at Vanderbilt University who are the subject of complaints from patients about rude behavior are invited to have a cup of coffee with a colleague. Here’s how these conversations go: 

“Bob, for whatever reason, you seem to be associated with more complaints than the vast majority of your colleagues. I’m not here to find out why. I’m not here to tell you what to do. I just want to suggest that you review the material I am sharing with you and reflect on what families are saying about your practice.” The “peer messengers” receive training on how to approach their colleagues and not make it feel like they’re being taken to the woodshed. It’s more like a gentle wake-up call.

This approach has been remarkably effective. About 60 percent of problem doctors received fewer complaints from patients after a single coffee conversation. Many were unaware of how they were perceived by patients; others knew but had never been told about it by a peer and confronted with hard data.

What about the 40 percent of doctors who didn’t change their behavior after a low-key chat? About half eventually left the medical practice for another one. The other half received an “authority intervention” from a dean or other administrator, including an improvement and evaluation plan.

Zimmerman imagines what a cup-of-coffee conversation might sound like with a professor who isn’t demanding enough of students. “Joe, the average course in our college requires 50 pages of reading per week and three 10-page papers. Your course is in the bottom 10 percent on that metric. And only 20 percent of your students report meeting with you outside of class, compared with 60 percent in the university. The evidence is that if you assign more, students will learn more.” Zimmerman thinks that many professors would respond to this approach. At heart, they care about learning, and they also care about what their peers think of them.

Would this work in the world of K-12 schools? Something to ponder.

“A Little Shame Goes a Long Way” by Jonathan Zimmerman in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Feb. 18, 2011 (Vol. LVII, #24, p. A72), no e-link available 

From the Marshall Memo #374