How Does One Measure Learning?

Teaching is both highly fulfilling and utterly frustrating. The former comes from the fact it is a noble profession. As they say you are touching lives forever. The latter arises from the reality that its particular impact is hard to measure. How could one assess growth in their knowledge or in their overall journey to getting to whatever your goals are for them to reach? But like everything else in life sometimes that revelation does come and when least expected and usually when you are just about to give up.

Several months ago I forged into ambitious moves in teaching two different levels of students. One group consists of sophomore college organic chemistry lab students while the other, 3rd grade CCD religion kids. What could be more diverse and yet I decided I will push them to whatever it takes to make them learn. I will be honest though. I did have concerns that I might be expecting too much of them with the approaches I would take. In this essay I will talk about my experience with the college age students.

I obtained an emergency appointment last fall to teach an organic chem lab using the inductive approach not the usual so called cookbook way that was utilized in the past by the department. Students are not spoonfed the concepts but instead are to learn them as they go along with the questions and experiments in the lab.  In the opposite method called deductive approach used previously the principles were presented before hand and the students applied them in the lab experiment.  

The inductive approach was not easy for both the students as well as the teachers to use. The greatest challenge for me was how much to give at the prelab so as not to prevent the students from inducing the principles to be learned in the lab itself. What I decided to rely on was thoughtfully crafted quizzes on what they learned in the past experiment as well as on what they are supposed to learn in that day's experiment. The latter part was more difficult to prepare since I had to consider how much I could expect them to know by just reading ahead of time. What I used this part of the quiz for was to introduce the principles to be learned in that day's lab experiment during the discussion of the answers to the quiz questions without taking away from the inductive stage during the lab.  I could hear moans from the class as well as frustrated looks in their faces every time this was done in the prelab. The sighs and at times anger were palpable.

It was almost the end of the semester and I still was not sure from the low grades in the quizzes if the approach was working. I went to the university to return back a lab book lent to me by the lab coordinator. I also brought him a thank you gift for proctoring my sections' lab  final exam so I did not have to make the one hour plus drive home at night. I caught him coming out of his office that day.  The first thing he greeted me with was "Congratulations! Your section out of the five got the highest average in one part of the two part exam". I was stunned since my section was the so called control group. (The university was part of a multi group research grant with another institution). My students were not given two additional worksheets that were distributed to the other four sections that were supposed to enhance the comprehension of concepts. The expectation was that my section would be at a disadvantage. It seemingly was not the case. Now how does one explain that?

I wonder, "Could it be those challenging quizzes that were so difficult they depressed and frustrated my students and made them complain endlessly ?. I am not sure since there are other factors to consider.

I do remember one thing I learned taking a course on teaching pedagogy or was it psychology. One teaches above what the students need to learn to deepen their thinking. For example teaching calculus beyond algebra in high school will help them think though the principles they learn might not even be necessary for them to know.

Another favorite quip in education comes to mind as I figure the performance of my students, namely, using the tool of a question or in this case questions in the quizzes.. Could that be the factor? I am not really sure.  I always say, teaching is research as research is teaching.  I would just say I ended the semester really happy but still perplexed.  Perhaps that is why I love teaching. It is a challenge and an unending journey.