Trick Question

Some of my professor colleagues and I were recently chatting about end-of-semester type issues, including the excellent exams we were creating to provide our students with challenging and intellectually stimulating experiences that would perfectly and fairly test their understanding of the course material. And that would be easy to grade but that would not involve going over to the dark side of multiple choice exams, except in classes with > 200 students.

We found ourselves focusing on one particular perplexing issue that we had all recently encountered -- that students seem to be having more trouble understanding what a test question is asking for. Let me restate that, in case what I wrote is ambiguous and/or makes no sense: Some students are confused about what some sentences, phrases, or words mean. They may understand the concept the question is trying to test, but they don't know what the question is asking.

It is entirely possible that some of us write poorly worded test questions, but, for the sake of discussion, let's ignore that possibility.

Example: One professor who was teaching a geometrically oriented topic said that some students in a class couldn't deal with the phrase "not all of the angles [of a particular geometric object that was shown in an image on the quiz] are at 90 degrees". They had no idea if this meant that none of the angles were at 90° or if possibly some or all of the angles were at 90° but didn't have to be or if the statement required that some be at 90° and some not be at 90°. In fact, no students asked a question about the ambiguous phrase ("not all of") during the test, which is ideally when such issues are resolved, but that's another issue.

Students in another class had trouble with the concept of at least. In fact, I noticed that many (but not all) of the examples we were discussing involved phrases such as some of, all of, or at least. My hypothesis, which I proposed to my colleagues, is that long experience with multiple-choice type tests leads some students to try to psych out answers that involve quantities or time (never, always, sometimes, often) and to look for the 'trick' of a question rather than taking the question at face value. Even when a test is not multiple-choice, but instead requires the writing of words or sentences, some students may still treat a question as if there is some trick to it.

Every once in a while, a student will ask me "Is this a trick question?" about something on a test; or, retroactively "Was that a trick question?". I do not ask trick questions on tests.

Many multiple choice tests, however, do involve tricklike questions. By definition, you have to provide several wrong answers along with the correct answer, and one way to make this challenging is to make some of the answers similar, or to ask the question in a 'tricky' way (e.g., using those ambiguous time/quantity words or phrases).

The first time my daughter took a multiple choice test at her elementary school, she came home incredulous. She told me that she had just taken an extremely stupid test. She said "They gave us the answer right there in a list and we just had to show them which one it was."

This isn't a rant against multiple choice tests. Sometimes they are the only practical choice in large classes, but I think the multiple choice test culture might be creating a generation of skeptical and suspicious students who are always (or often) looking for the trick in a question. Or maybe there are legions of professors out there who do ask trick questions. I suppose that is possible, but at least I know that not all of them are me.

Meeting the Family

When I was an undergraduate at a small liberal arts college, on various occasions my parents met some of my professors. This was fine with me. My mother still has a plant in her backyard that she grew from a cutting given to her by a former professor of mine. I have no idea how or why they ever had a conversation about plants, much less exchanged plant material, but the evidence exists in the backyard of my ancestral home.

When I was in graduate school, I don't think my parents ever met any of my professors, nor did I want them to meet. Similarly, my mother never met my postdoc supervisor, nor did I want them to meet.

When I was briefly a professor at a small liberal arts college, I met the parents of many of my students. I met some at the beginning of the year, I met some on a Parents Weekend type event during which I was expected to be in my department on a Saturday for various festivities and informal conversations, and I met even more of them at graduation in the spring. This was mostly OK with me, and even kind of fascinating. What were the parents like of the student who cried all the time? What were the parents like of the student whom I had enjoyed supervising in a research project? What were the parents like of the student who spoke openly of her relationship with her drug dealer?

Perhaps my memory is failing me, but I don't recall meeting (m)any parents at my previous research university. At my current university, however, there are graduation events in the department, and these are attended by graduating students and their families. Professors are expected to attend. We are reminded about this expectation repeatedly in the weeks leading up to the main social event, and we are lectured on proper behavior: We should not attend the event and talk only to each other or show up only to graze at the buffet. We should mingle with the parents and say nice things about their kids. We should not throw food, disconnect grandma from her oxygen tank, or mention that cheating incident.

A few years ago I had a traumatic experience at one of these events. I walked into the room, and was immediately invited to sit with the family of an undergrad who had taken two classes from me and who had spent the entire year whining, complaining, and blaming others (including me) for her poor grades and lack of effort. I found it difficult to think of nice things to say about her, but I managed to say "It's so great that Sara is graduating", which was a completely sincere statement because I was glad to see her go. I met her fiance, who expressed some doubts about the usefulness of a college degree and made disparaging comments about Ph.D.'s and cushy professor jobs (tenure, summers "off", lots of vacations). I met her mother, who asked me if I thought her daughter was too fat. I met her father, although he did not speak, and I met her wheelchair-bound grandmother, who didn't feel well but who, when she complained, was told by her family to "shut up".

Most families are not this ghastly, of course. Most are very nice, and it is great to see so many proud relatives and their happy graduating students. Even so, when I go to these events, I come prepared with excuses to leave early and/or suddenly:

- I left something running in a lab and if I don't get down there in a few minutes, the entire building might explode;

- I forgot that I have a highly contagious disease and should not be at a social gathering; and/or

- I have to go finish calculating and uploading grades so that some of the students in this room can actually graduate.

Sabbatical Dreaming

Sabbaticals can require preparation far in advance if one hopes to visit another institution/country/continent, so even though I am approximately midway between my last sabbatical and what I hope will be my next sabbatical, I have recently started thinking that I need to think about my next sabbatical. Thinking about thinking about something is not always the most effective means of getting something done, but it's a start.

In my department and in my family, sabbaticals take extra planning because my professor-spouse and I need (want? prefer? hope?) to take a sabbatical in the same year. For the last sabbatical, it took much longer than it should have for the previous department chair to agree that my husband and I could both have a sabbatical in the same year. The current chair is much more understanding about the 2-career-couple thing, but he wants at least 3 years advance notice. He has now been notified.

Now all we have to do is (1) agree on a place to go; and (2) get some funding (we are paid 50% of our salary during a sabbatical). I am not sure which one will be easier -- both have their challenges.

For the last sabbatical, my daughter was at a very portable age and was happy to have random adventures that her wise parents organized for her. It was challenging for her to be plunked into a new school in a new country, especially since she didn't know much of the language of that country, but within a few months she was speaking with some fluency in a new language, had made friends, and was very happy.

Our daughter's love of travel and adventure continues to this day, but the second-most-common sabbatical comment (after 'Where do you want to go?') that people make re. sabbaticals is that because my daughter will be a teenager for the next sabbatical, it's going to be difficult to get her to agree to go in the first place and life will be difficult once we get wherever we are going. So far, though, none of these dire predictions about going on sabbatical with a teenager have come from anyone who has done a sabbatical-avec-teen, though some have come from people who are not going to attempt a sabbatical trip because their offspring is/are of the teen species. I may have absolutely no idea what I am in for, but I can't imagine not going away for a sabbatical because my daughter will be a teenager.

As I was typing this, my department chair stopped by my office and said "I want to talk to you about your sabbatical." No, he did not want to talk about the fact that my daughter will be a teenager. He wanted to bring to my attention that it had just occurred to him that he will no longer be department chair that year, and perhaps I will be the next department chair, in which case I can't go on sabbatical.

I said: Do you mean to say that I would have to choose between being Department Chair and going on Sabbatical?

Yes, replied the Current Department Chair.

Hmm, let me think about that choice for a femtosecond, said I. And then: Sabbatical. Yes, I am pretty sure I would rather go on sabbatical than assume onerous administrative duties.

And furthermore, I thought but did not say, according to the way that my department/college does things, I would have to allow myself to be considered for the chair position, with no guarantee of attaining this lofty goal, and therefore my husband and I would have to stop all sabbatical planning in the event that I was selected, which is by no means as certain as the current chair thinks it would be. And then I might find myself with neither sabbatical nor chairpersonship. Yes, I definitely choose sabbatical*. I just don't know where it will be yet.


* As it turns out, today the Current Department Chair had the same conversation with my husband about our possibly forgoing our sabbaticals in the event that I would become Chair. I am glad I was not present for that conversation, although there is a remote possibility that my husband just laughed in a certain way he has when someone is saying something completely insane to him and he just wants them to go away. That is my hope, anyway.

Weird in a Good Way?

In the language class I am taking, my fellow students and I recently gave final oral presentations. We also did presentations in the middle of the semester, so this is the 8th presentation we have given in the past 4 semesters.

In these presentations, we get to talk about anything we want to talk about. I like to tell stories about random Professor Adventures I have had over the years, and many of these end up being about unusual situations that result from my being a FemaleScienceProfessor.

In my most recent presentation, I picked a somewhat complex story that I didn't feel I could adequately describe until now. As I was telling the story, I was very focused on the vocabulary and grammar, though I also enjoyed the storytelling aspects of the anecdote, which was about an incident that took place several years ago in a country that speaks the target language of this class.

The typical procedure is that everyone claps at the end of every presentation and then each student in the audience asks a question of the presenter. Typical questions are "What is your favorite thing to do during your summer vacation?" or "When did your grandmother teach you to sew?".

When I finished my presentation, which I ended in a very clear way by saying (in the appropriate language) "The End", there was only silence. That was unnerving. Had I been completely incomprehensible?

Then one student said "You have a strange and interesting life." And then everyone clapped.

I liked that comment a lot, especially since it was said kindly. If one's life (or the person living that life) must be strange, strange and interesting is vastly preferably to simply strange, or strange and uninteresting.

There are certain adjectives that will never be used to describe me even though it would be professionally advantageous to have these characteristics -- e.g., cool, elegant, tall, distinguished, sane, bearded -- but, given my limitations, I am quite happy with strange and interesting.

Eternal Question

Can we have class outside?

Does every student have to ask this at some point in their academic career? I am not sure if I ever asked it, but I know that I thought it at various times. There are just some days when being inside is not appealing to students or professors.

When I taught at a small liberal arts college, in some cases I answered this Eternal Question with a "yes", but I always regretted it. I have happy memories of having class outside when I was a student at a SLAC, but in that case there was an ideal space in a garden-like area, with benches curved around a central area where the professor could stand or sit. At the college where I taught, it was more of a free-form, let's-all-sit-on-the-ground in that photo-in-the-college-prospectus kind of way, and I found that I might as well have been talking to the squirrels. It was actually a relief when outdoor classes were strongly discouraged/banned owing to fears of tick-borne diseases.

Even at the Big Research U where I am now, students still ask if we can have class outside. Sometimes it is clear that they are joking -- for example, when the class has more than 100 students. Sometimes they are serious. I don't mind doing a class 'unplugged' -- I don't always project a presentation on a big screen, and am quite happy to spend a class doing an activity or having a discussion -- but there is no place where a class can easily gather outside and focus on the class and not on the nearby students playing Frisbee or whatever. Also, we have amazing squirrels on our campus, and I probably wouldn't be able to focus on the class material either if we went outside into the squirrel zone.

Maybe I am deluded to think that students in the classroom are paying attention more than they would if we were sitting outside with the squirrels, but I think I need to live with some level of delusion about that. And who knows, maybe someday I will say "OK, let's go outside." Maybe both professors and students want or need to hope that some day the stars will align and we will all go outside and sit in a circle and talk about Science, the squirrels will slowly creep closer to listen, no one will get a tick-borne disease or be hit in the head by a Frisbee, and it will be wonderful.

Letter from Europe: Here's Looking at You

In some cases when one of my colleagues feeds me a good FSP topic or anecdote, I am quite comfortable writing about it myself. Recently a colleague told me about an incident that I thought would be best told by the original source. So, today there is a guest writer for FSP:

****************************************

I am a European Science Professor. Recently I was asked to write letters of recommendation for two aspiring FSPs (FSP1 and FSP2) who both applied to the same tenure-track position at a European university. I know both women well because I have collaborated with both on various research projects. FSP1 just came back from an “informal” seminar she gave at the university, in preparation for the formal interviews that will seal their fate. FSP2 had also visited “informally” a few weeks before.

FSP1 said to me that she felt very good about her visit because there is an excellent academic fit between her field of expertise and where the institution wants to go. Something worried her though. She was told that FSP2, who is also an excellent young scientist, had the preference of a fraction of the (male) faculty because of her looks. FSP1 has never met FSP2 in person and asked me, somewhat nervously, what I think of FSP2’s stunning looks. I am not used to taking these criteria into consideration, and the overall story gave me pause. It is bad enough for these men to make comments on FSP2’s appearance and use this in a hiring decision, but it is quite incredible to tell FSP1 about it.

This is an extreme situation perhaps, although I don’t think it is isolated in our male-dominated fields, but it made me wonder, beyond the fact that the men at this institution are pigs, what is the effect of looks in the hiring process. Here in Europe it is common, and often required, for candidates to include a picture ID in their application file. It is also common, as I did a while ago on a search committee, to hear comments made on the physical appearance of women applicants.

So, here is a simple survey:

Statement: Men are more likely to be hired if they are good-looking
	Yes, they are more likely to be hired
	No, it doesn't matter for men
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Statement: Women are more likely to be hired if they are good-looking
	Yes, they are more likely to be hired
	No, it doesn't matter for women
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Out-Of-Class Experience

For various reasons, I recently spent a lot of time outside regularly scheduled class time with some of the undergrads in the class I've been teaching. Spending time with undergrads in close proximity to major end-of-term activities such as final exams might not sound enjoyable, and in fact in some cases it is not, but this particular time was fun because I have had a great group of students in my class this term. Sometimes these experiences can be one long "Do we have to know X" (for the test) type conversations, but in the best cases, such as this recent one, the students used the opportunity to ask things that went beyond what they learned in class. I was peppered with questions about how the class material relates to other classes and topics and life and the world and everything. It was very cool.

Providing optional outside-of-class time tends to attract students who are most enthusiastic about a class. Of course, some students can't participate because they have other commitments (work, family, sports). I make sure that those students have other options if they want or need to spend some extra review time with me before their exam. Perhaps it is unfair to provide an opportunity in which not everyone can participate, but so many students benefit from it and seem to enjoy it, that I can't imagine not providing this out-of-class time. I schedule the extra end-of-term time far in advance (in fact, it is on the syllabus), so most students have sufficient warning to adjust their schedule to participate if they wish.

During some of these out-of-class experiences, some students want to chat about topics other than the course material. These conversations range from the kind that convince them that I am from the outer solar system owing to my lack of knowledge of Mainstream Culture (TV, music, video games, sports..), to the intense kind about their hopes and dreams for the future.

For example, I ended up having a long conversation with one student who is a bit older than the others -- a student who already has a degree but ended up in an unsatisfying job and is now going to try again with another degree in a different field of science. I asked her how she had come to her decision to change fields and why she had chosen to switch from Science X to Science Y and how she managed to balance all this with raising her kids. It was fascinating.

This student told me that in her previous job, she sort of liked what she was doing, but she didn't love it. She met people who were truly passionate about their work, and she knew that she was missing something. She always wondered what could make her feel that way about her work, and eventually decided to go back to school and change careers entirely. She said to me "You obviously have it -- a passion for your work. It is obvious every day in class that you love what you are doing."

I don't know exactly what her antennae are picking up on. It's not as if I bound into the classroom every day and say "Hi Students! Let's talk about Cool Science Stuff again today, and by the way, I love my job!". I also don't slouch into class, sigh in a sad and hopeless way, and say "I guess we have to talk about some more of this Science Stuff again today, so let's just get it over with." I am glad, though, that somewhere in the large middle ground between being an in-your-face happy professor and a going-through-the-motions unhappy professor, I somehow convey to at least some of my students that I am passionate about my work.

This student wanted to know how I figured out exactly what I wanted to do. How did I know that this was the right field of science for me, that being a professor was the right job for me, and that being a professor at a research university was the best place for me to be? The answers are, respectively (1) see below; (2) luck, and (3) trial-and-error and luck.

The first question is the easiest to answer: I still remember flipping through a course listing during the fall term of my first year in college and coming across the listing for a certain Science Department. I was not planning to major in any science in college -- I was more interested, I thought, in ancient things (history, literature, languages, culture) -- and was just looking through the catalog to see what other courses I might take. When I came to the page for this particular Science Department, the mythical light bulb went off over my head. It is hard to explain how looking at the name of an academic department in a course catalog can be an intense experience, but it was for me. I went to the college bookstore and bought a textbook for the introductory course in that Science Department, and sat down and started reading it. There have been a few bumps and detours in the road between that moment and where I am now, but that was the start of it for me.

That's how I discovered that I loved this particular Science, but that light bulb flash did not, however, involve the further thought ".. and I want to be a professor at an R1 university." That came later -- much later -- in part by trial-and-error. My student seems to be on a trial-and-error kind of career path as well, although perhaps with more dramatic turns in the path. She says she thinks she has finally found it, though, and from what I can see, she has indeed. In her case, she is going to teach Science at the K-12 level, and it is quite thrilling for me to think that I have helped her in some way on her route to that goal.

In the day or two before this recent out-of-class experience, I must admit that I was feeling some regret for scheduling this time that I could be spending doing other things, none of which would involve students, but once the students showed up and we started chatting, it was great. Loving your job doesn't mean you love it every second and have a 100% optimistic attitude, but for me it means that I am very often reminded of why I love my job. Sometimes I am reminded by my research and sometimes I am reminded by my students, and that's probably why working at a place that lets me do both research and teaching is the best place for me, however it is that I got here.