Information on Clickers is here: https://www.turningtechnologies.com/best-practices-higher-education Yes, they can be used for attendance and quizzes but also are used to engage the class. Clickers integrate with Powerpoint so the professor can use them to see if the class is getting a concept, for example. Used well (i.e. not to just take attendance) they can be an effective tool.
Clickers are used in large classes to make them somewhat more interactive than they otherwise would be, and to give instructors real-time feedback on how well the students are understanding the material.
http://oracle-www.dartmouth.edu/dart/groucho/timetable.subject_search (search fall 2014 religion classes) indicates that the course in question had 272 students. The learning objectives are described as:
Thank you to all who shared info on the clickers!
My daughter was in a summer class that had a lot of football players. They had, for want of a better word, “minders” who came by to check they were attending class. ( the class was American sign language which she took because she found it very interesting and it met some elective requirements. Not sure why the athletes took it. It’s not a particularly easy class). ( high, and this was a State U)
Large lecture classes. Gut courses. Dumb jocks. Cheaters.
This is Ivy League?
No thanks.
Well, at least at Dartmouth the class actually existed. That’s something.
This particular professor set an attendance requirement. Most college professors do not have an attendance requirement, but some do. Obvious for some courses like music or dance, and my daughter got credit for the discussion sessions of her big lecture classes.
I had one professor in law school who took attendance and all the rest who didn’t.
Yes, as Hunt pointed out, at North Carolina the classes didn’t even exist!
I am a fan and a supporter of college athletics and athletes, but it is no secret that admission requirements are adjusted for athletes- mainly in the top revenue sports. Ohio State’s latest quarterback tweeted recently that he didn’t see why they had to go to class! On the flip side, Vanderbilt’s women’s golf team just won an award for their collective 3.67 GPA. It really varies from team to team, school to school and athlete to athlete. Vanderbilt’s big center on the basketball team is an electrical engineering major. Another Vandy player got his undergraduate degree in 3 years while being a D1 basketball player and is now in graduate school and still playing. We did lose two players last year- one for academic issues and the other for a minor legal issue (shoplifting). It happens. I don’t begrudge the kids the bump in admissions. I assure you they earn their keep for the most part. It bothers me when they don’t appreciate the opportunity they are getting and I hate to see them not finish up and get the degree.
I witnessed some interviews with some Xavier (Ohio) players a few years ago after a brawl between their team and the Cincy basketball team. One of the Xavier players could barely construct a spoken sentence. That bothers me.
I’m not faulting Dartmouth for this, or indicting athletes in general. I think parents need to make it crystal clear to kids that you have to avoid anything that could be remotely construed as unethical. This scandal basically amounts to having a friend sign you in for class. It’s wrong. It wasn’t stealing a test, copying answers or hacking a computer - but it was still wrong.
I had to have a talk with my kid that letting a friend read a HS paper that she had written the previous year was wrong. If that kid chose to plagiarize part of it, my kid would have been implicated. When you’re 18 or 19, you don’t always realize that doing a favor for a friend, even if it’s “hey could you click me in at Balmer’s class? I have a paper to write.” can have far-reaching implication. Even making the national news.
If Dartmouth is admitting students who can’t keep up because of their athletic responsibilities, then it is Dartmouth’s issue to fix.
Dartmouth seems to be dealing with its cheaters as well as can be expected.
However, it is disturbing a Professor admitted to designing a course specifically for athletes because they may feel academically intimidated and need a boost of confidence to build on. That’s not a vote of confidence in the academic bona-fides of Dartmouth athletes.
BTW, Dartmouth’s academic calender is based on ~10 week quarters, not 14-15 week semesters with 3 terms in a normal academic year excluding the summer term. One other interesting twist is that a portion of undergrads must spend at least one summer term in classes during their undergrad career. In that context, the one term suspension is a bit lighter than it would be in a school based on semesters.
This is more of a worry now with the widespread emailing and sending of digital papers as opposed to hard copy which was still prevalent during my HS and most of my undergrad years.
One thing I didn’t have to worry as much about when I was in college. Especially considering some of my advanced courses MANDATED I submitted copies of seminar/colloquium paper drafts to classmates and Prof for comments and feedback a few times before writing the final draft to be turned in.
If Balmer’s intent was to teach ethics - this was certainly a lesson that won’t be forgotten
This is the “D plan”, which is apparently a load-balancing scheme to avoid overflowing the fall quarter and make use of some otherwise-unused capacity in the summer quarter.
Athletes go to school in the summers anyway- for at least one summer session most of the years. This allows a lighter load during the season.
True though at D, it’s mandatory of ALL students to take at least one full summer term and switch off with one of the other quarters like fall.
Also, one effect of a shorter 10 week quarter is that taking 3 courses per term is considered a full load.
Understandable considering how it felt to take one course during a 6 week summer term. Very rushed and heavy workload each week to compensate for covering a semester’s worth of material in such a short time period. Quite a few students dropped within the first week because the workload/pace or other priorities became too much to handle.
This is only true if the quarter system school’s courses cover similar content as the courses at a semester system school where students normally take four courses per semester. At some quarter system schools, four courses per quarter is the norm, but each course covers about two thirds the material of a typical course at a semester system school where students normally take four courses per semester.
For example, here are degree flowcharts at a quarter system school where four courses per quarter is supposed to be the norm:
http://flowcharts.calpoly.edu/downloads/mymap/13-15.76MATHBSU.PUMMATHU.pdf
http://flowcharts.calpoly.edu/downloads/mymap/13-15.48ENGLBAU.pdf