Lack Of Independence
Every now and then I meet a student that seems allergic to trying things on their own. I am probably in the minority of instructors that believe that there are bad questions out there. What I consider a bad question is something that stems from a lack of initiative. So what are some examples of bad questions? If the question could easily be looked up, then it is a bad question. If the question was clearly answered in prerequisite readings or lectures, then that is a bad question. If the question was just asked in a question forum, then that is a bad question. In general a question is bad if answering it robs your student of their independence and does not serve in enabling them in become lifelong learners. I think every time you have a problem you should ask yourself “Am I the first one to run into this problem?” and if the answer is “Probably not”, then you should try and find the answer yourself. I have also seen students who will only work on their assignments exclusively in office hours. This usually leads to the student getting spoon fed the answers to the point where the instructor was the one doing the assignment. Another characteristic of a lack of independence is the inability to confirm answers. An example of this is when a student is asking questions on a discussion form, receives a response from another student, and then states that they won’t ponder on the solution unless an authority figure confirms the answer. This is a bit ridiculous especially if the question is “How do I dereference a pointer”. The student could have written a snippet of code and tried it out. They could have even typed that question into google verbatim and get the answer framed on a card (seriously try this out). When I was first started teaching I used to wonder “Why are these students, so helpless?”. After seeing patterns in students I realized that those students were helpless, because they learned to be.
The Elephant In The Circus
Have you ever wondered how a circus restricts a 13,000lb elephant? You probably think that they have a big cage of reinforced steel that needs to be bolted to the floor and reinforced with outer layers of adamantium and vibranium. That’s what I imagined at least. The answer is that a circus restricts an elephant by tying it down to a wooden stump in the ground with a rope from Home Depot. Unbelievable right? Well I left some details out :)
The circus doesn’t just tie a 13,000lb elephant to the wooden stump and expect it to stay tied down. The circus tied down a baby elephant to a wooden stump and expected it to stay down for when it grows to be a 13,000lb elephant. The baby elephant will struggle for days to break free, but can never break the rope. When the elephant grows up it does not even attempt to break free, because it has had negative experiences trying to break the rope. The elephant has converged to the solution of just not trying even though it can clearly break the rope now. This elephant has learned to be helpless.
The reason why some students seem so helpless is that they learned to be. They have gone through many years of schooling learning that they are being measured solely on their ability to generate the right answer and that it never really mattered how or where they got that answer. They are rewarded for being correct and punished for struggling. They have converged to the route of relying on others when they are capable of achieving more themselves. They have learned to be helpless.
I like the Wikipedia definition of learned helplessness, since it relates well to student when they are struggling to learn material. “Learned helplessness is behavior typical of an organism (human or animal) that has endured repeated painful or otherwise aversive stimuli which it was unable to escape or avoid. After such experience, the organism often fails to learn escape or avoidance in new situations where such behavior would be effective. In other words, the organism seems to have learned that it is helpless in aversive situations, that it has lost control, and so it gives up trying. Such an organism is said to have acquired learned helplessness.” – Wikipedia
The Problem is “you”
If I had to succinctly diagnose the cause of learned helplessness in students, then I would say it is whenever an instructor fails to teach their learning objectives or fails to set the right learning objectives. The reason that some students are helpless is because at some point their instructor taught them to be that way. Yes I am saying that this is a problem with instructors and not students. Students will always try to take the path of least resistance and when you let them they will learn to be helpless. Now you could just say that every student should be responsible for their education and that would be the end of the story. However that just doesn’t add up. If you argue that your job as a teacher is only to teach, then why do your students go to school to learn from you? They could just watch a bunch of lecture recordings if all they wanted was to watch someone teaching things. The reality is that people are going to school, because they want an environment that motivates them to learns: structured education.
Because You Held Their Hand
I will give a personal example of how I learned to be helpless early in my college career. I was taking a programming course and I struggled with the assignments. I ended up getting my first C in college and thought I would have to drop out and find something more suitable for me. I went to office hours, which was quite a pain, since I lived 30 minutes away. By the time I got there I was faced with a really long queue that did not progress really well. For the next assignment I decided to go to office hours the day the assignment was assigned, since I heard the queue would be shorter. When I got to those office hours I was one of 6 people on the queue and there were 4 TAs on duty. During those office hours I met very enthusiastic instructors. Every time I was up on the queue an instructor would in great detail explain to me how to implement the next function. They drew out the solution in what was basically pseudocode and diagrams. When they were done I would compile pseudo code to whatever programming language the assignment wanted and wait for my turn on the queue again. If I finished before another instructor came back I would just work on my linear algebra homework in the meantime. Rinse and repeat and I would have the assignment done in no time.
Now I wish the story ended there. When I get the grade back for the assignment I ended up getting a perfect score. I decided that this was the way all my assignments should be done. I learned that by being helpless my instructors would just give me the solutions to my assignments. I was getting a higher score for less effort, so I thought that I must be doing something right. I learned that I should just not try when I am assigned a tough assignment; in fact I was rewarded for that behavior. I wasn’t thinking about the long run consequences. The only form of feedback I was getting was my assignment grades and clearly I was being told that I was doing something right there. However it wasn’t until I took the next programming course that I learned that what I did was very wrong. I failed to grasp the course’s learning objectives and I ended up in a low level programming course without having a clue to what a pointer was.
Now was that my fault? Not really. I did what I was told and took advantage of the resources that the course gave. And all the feedback I ever got said that what I was doing was right. At the end of the day I would done better if I have taken more responsibility for my own education, but there is still a moral to the study. My instructors could have helped me learn more by not holding both my hands during my assignments. Would I say they were bad instructors? Yes, but they were by no means bad people. They were eager to be helpful, but it was exactly that helpfulness that made me helpless. You should always choose to help your students learn to do their assignments on their own over doing their assignment for them.
Because You Aren’t Rewarding Learning
Have you ever taken a course where most of the grades just came from busy work or exams where all you had to do was memorize a bunch of factoids? Probably. And if you are an instructor that runs a course like this, then I would encourage you to take a step back. I understand that a lot of teachers go into teaching to accomplish one thing: teaching. Teachers love the thrill of lecturing or helping students one on one in office hours, but almost no teacher likes having to assign grades. Teachers see grades as something that they are expected to assign, but don’t really care how they are assigned. I knew some teachers who would probably be happy just rolling a dice to determine a student’s grade and would do exactly that if they could get away with it. But they can’t just roll a dice, so to add legitimacy to their course they assign busy work assignments. When you construct an assignment without a learning objective in mind you are basically a parent who makes a meal with empty calories for their kids. Assignments are like food for the mind and you need to think of yourself as the chef of academia. The only thing you get from your students by assigning busy work is figuring out which of your students are willing to jump through more hoops to get a letter grade. This would not be that bad if your course existed in a vacuum, but the reality is that your course is just a prerequisite for another course and it’s probably something your students need to know in the workforce. When you aren’t rewarding learning you are not preparing your students for the rest of their endeavors; you are preparing them to be helpless.
Because You Thought It Was Easy
I think one of the main misconception of teaching is that it is easy. Sure it is very fun and rewarding to sit center stage in front of that whiteboard, but it is not easy. When I first started off teaching I was very well liked by my students. I was “helpful” and just wanted everyone to get good grades. This is probably the first trap that an instructor can fall for. They receive closure from their students who like them for being an easy instructor. I have taken several classes where the students were happy simply because everyone was going to get a good grade. They loved the instructor, because they would always be showered with extra credit, second chance testing, assignments being dropped, and generous curves. However these instructors are taking the easy way out. They are essentially bribing their students for affection. They are not teaching their students to be independent and in the long run teaching them to be helpless. These instructors forget they are still part of a larger pipeline.
When I transitioned from office hours to course development I initially went through all five stages of grief. The sad part of a behind the curtain teaching position is that nobody knows that you are doing your job until something goes wrong; there is no appreciation. It’s like the difference between being a frontend and backend web developer. As a front end web developer everyone is seeing your work the moment they open the webpage, but as a backend web developer nobody notices you unless the server stops handling http requests. As a behind the curtain course staff member, I no longer had the external validation from my students that I got when I ran office hours. I didn’t receive the same level of appreciation even though I was putting in even more hours for my students. I soon was known as the tough instructor and didn’t receive the same affection. But I remembered why I did my job which was to help students become the strongest version of themselves. Instead of student affection I was motivated by my former students thanking me when they were more than prepared for their 400 level classes. I lived on the satisfaction that my students would thrive in the workplace.
Now this is not to say that being a good instructor means being hated by your students. In fact every student is different and I know that some students shine when you give them infinite nurture and patience. But the reality is that most students abide by the laws of motion which is to say that “A student at rest will stay at rest unless acted upon by an unbalanced force”. I happen to not be liked by my students due to circumstances and the fact that I am still learning to be a better teacher. One of my favorite teachers was my calculus teacher from high school. To this day I love, fear, and respect this teacher for pushing me past my limits. They would not compromise on their standards and expected everyone to get a 5 on the AP. But this is actually part of what makes them an amazing teacher!
As long as you have empathy for your students then you can remain a good person. I understand that I put my students to hell and back. I understand why they want to cheat and have me drop assignments, but I will never agree that is what is best for them.
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Email: bschong2@illinois.edu