Factors in Student Success

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: Many struggling students have no more foresight than the final exam. Often, they feel they can forget what they have learned following the exam. Of course, this can be disastrous in the next course of a sequence. Perhaps more importantly, it indicates an outlook that education is not to be taken seriously. Successful students generally value learning for its own sake and do not feel it is something to be discarded after a specific event such as a final exam.

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.)
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 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, contract, 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 and/or linear algebra. It won't hurt you to learn some mathematics from a computer scientist.

- Do 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 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.

- 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.

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 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. 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).

Grades and achievement: If your course syllabus doesn't state your instructor's outlook on the relation between grades and academic achievement, you might find it worthwhile to ask about it. Here's this writer's outlook:
"Grading on the curve" is lazy and often dishonest. The premise behind grading on the curve is that one has an average class whose performance has clusters that fit a bell-shaped curve. However, many classes are not average. Some are filled with students whose intellectual gifts and/or hard work yield academic success; such classes should have higher-than-average grades. Some classes are filled with students who are intellectually overmatched or lazy; such classes should have lots of poor grades. Some classes have a bimodal distribution of performance - that is, two groups, one high-achieving, the other low-achieving. Such a class should have a cluster of high grades and a cluster of low grades, perhaps with few C grades.

Grades should tell both the student and whoever reads the student's transcript how well the student has done in a course. If you're the best student in a mediocre class, it may still be the case that you haven't done very well, in which case the instructor's judgment of your work - your grade - should inform you of that fact. You need to know how you compare with the rest of the world, not just with the rest of your classmates. It's the instructor's responsibility to make that assessment in the form of a grade. If I were to give an A or a B to the best student in my class even though he/she did C work, I would be dishonest to the student and to anybody who reads his/her transcript. Similarly, if you're the least accomplished student in a high-achieving group, it may be the case that you're still pretty good; if so, justice requires that you receive a good grade.

Remember that 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 exert pressure for harder grades, but they often press for easier grades.

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.

Attendance

Do you take a cavalier approach to attendance? In many subjects (including the one I teach), each 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.

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.

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. I believe 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.

Read and understand instructions

When you get instructions for an assignment, do you read them carefully before starting work on the assignment? Or do you merely skim the instructions, convince yourself you know what to do, and proceed merrily with your work?

One of the most common sources of student underachievement is careless reading of instructions. Since one presumes a college student can read, it follows that careful attention to instructions is, for many students, an easy path to better grades.

Suppose you don't understand instructions. I encourage my students to get clarification when necessary. There's nothing dishonorable about doing so; on the contrary, it's a good idea that likely cultivates a useful professional practice, as professionals often receive initial specifications for projects that require clarification and additional details.

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, a faster thinker, 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) 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.