I'm Not a Big Fan of Memorization

I let my students bring notes to their exams. I'm more interested in what they can do than in what they can write from memory. One year I tried letting my exams be open notes, but the grades went down so badly as a result of students not preparing for the exams that I backed away and settled on letting them bring one page of notes. That way I can reward good preparation, and the students have to consider the topics and what formulas they need to have.

I memorize a lot of things related to my discipline. Memorization makes it easier for me to perform, as well as quicker. Ease and speed though are not what I want to assess. It took me a while to realize that.

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Betrayal

I caught a student cheating on a final exam this morning. I had a line of sight on them and watched for ten minutes as they took their cellphone out of their pocket, kept it below their table, typed into it, read it, put it away, then wrote on the exam, repeating this cycle over and over again. I was a bit surprised as the exam was open notes but this student had not attended many of our classes, just stopping by for exams, and I conjecture that they had no notes to open. I confronted the student who admitted that they had done wrong in an inarticulate non-confessional way. By the afternoon they had signed off on the honor code violation report to avoid further investigation and possible sanctions beyond failing the exam. Is anger the right emotion to feel now? I had a working relationship with the student, although they had not contributed much to it. They had deceived me in order to gain unwarranted advantage over their peers in the class and that is not right. I don't wan...

Holiday Break

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Collective

Something good happened this week; I was informed of it yesterday when a colleague forwarded an email to me announcing it. The announcement had to do with our university administration committing resources to something that needed doing; the fact that it had not been done had threatened the safety and work environment of dozens of my colleagues. I was clueless about it until in my job as ombudsperson I heard about it from multiple individuals. 95% of my job as ombudsperson (roughly) is focused on the individuals who come to me, brainstorming about their options and weighing the advantages and disadvantages of each. I've been around my university for over 36 years so I've picked up some knowledge of our system and as a mathematician I have a lot of training and experience in problem-solving. I'm not bad at counseling stressed individuals; professional development at ombuds meetings has helped me a lot with that. 5% of my job as ombudsperson (roughly) is managing upward. The...

Thoughts and Interesting Stories---Jeff Clark

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