Editor's Note

Students come to the fore in this issue. They always occupy the center of any teaching activity, but from time to time we almost forget about them. We think about what we're doing and how to do it better, but we turn to our colleagues more often than to our staunchest critics for advice. If students don't learn, we've failed to reach our goal. That they haven't learned may not be our fault. Our teaching may have been excellent, but as with the surgeon who performs flawlessly only to have the patient die, we've failed. Accepting failure has never been easy. Accepting the full challenge of teaching is just as hard. We know, and we don't like knowing, that the full challenge of teaching involves aspects of an almost parental relationship we'd rather not have. We would be more comfortable if everything depended simply on how well our material was organized and presented and not on such irksome factors as student behavior and student attitudes. We don't want to be in the business of trying to get students to study; we want them to accept adult responsibility, understand the importance of reading (and extra reading), reviewing their notes, looking at alternate points of view, and so on. But just as most children have to be reminded endlessly to hang up their coats, most students have to be prompted to become good students.

The good news, perhaps, is that some simple pedagogical shifts can take on these seemingly parental roles with some dignity and can embed a culture of reflection and assessment in students' studying and learning. Three articles in this edition of the FORUM pursue this attitude toward teaching. The first two address the long-standing teaching tool, quizzes. The third looks at grades and grading from an enlightened student's point of view. Jan Andersen of California State University, Sacramento, examines the role weekly quizzes have come to play in his teaching. Were quizzes "formative" or "evaluative"? he asked himself. More importantly, he faced these questions: "How do I want students to behave?" and "How will quizzes facilitate that behavior?" He found ways to give meaningful, learning-oriented answers to both with the help of course management software. Neil Williams of Eastern Connecticut State University considered the same questions and has found important answers in combining daily quizzes with a cooperative learning approach. Letting students work together on a quiz? Unheard of, but it works. They learn.

James Sheldon, student representative to the committee on teaching at the University of California-Santa Cruz asks if there isn't a way to grade students without making classes all about grades. He's aware of the long ignored research indicating that in many ways grading discourages learning, and he offers a positive example of a class surmounting the challenge.

Our intrepid TECHPED trio David Starrett, Michael Rodgers, and Thomas Laughner look at how student excuses have changed for not doing their reading (a behavior Jan Andersen sought to address with quizzes) and how they haven't changed in the online world. In some ways the things that technology makes possible—streaming video, database searching—pander to the eternal wish that learning were always easy and fun. Only in retrospect do they underline the necessity of reading, double-checking, and critical thinking. So in some ways teaching with technology hasn't gotten easier or harder; it's just gotten different. The challenges (like the excuses) haven't changed much.

If faculty life seems hard since so much has changed and so little has, Mary Deane Sorcinelli gives faculty a hopeful picture: 10 things to tell yourself if your chair hasn't been farsighted enough to tell you. Teaching is a good life after all. If it weren't, our old friend Linc. Fisch couldn't have stayed so interested in it for so long. We end with his wise words on starting off right.

-- James Rhem