Social loafing (I do find this bit of jargon amusing), defined as “group members who shirk their obligations in the hopes of benefiting from the work of others. ...” (p. 256, a definition cited from previous work). It is one of the aspects of group work that students and faculty find equally distressing. This study tested six hypotheses regarding social loafing. The hypotheses and findings are listed below.

The rereading, sorting, and occasional tossing of articles on teaching and learning in my files continues. And I continue to be amazed at what I’ve missed and forgotten. Here’s my latest find.

Larry Sanger makes an interesting point about memorization. Being something of a technology Luddite, I didn’t recognize his name—he’s one of the co-founders of Wikipedia and has a Ph.D. in philosophy.

Once again I’m trying to clean out my collection of articles on teaching and learning. I’ve been collecting for years and have hundreds ... yes, hundreds. Now that everything is available online there is no reason to keep the many stacks and boxes that have filled my office to overflowing. The problem, of course, is that I run into all these wonderful articles that I have forgotten about. If I toss them, will I ever encounter them again? So much good material is so rarely referenced.

“For the most part, college students enrolled in beginning chemistry courses do not, during laboratory-based experiences, learn to follow directions. Instead they learn to depend excessively upon oral directions presented by the instructor in response to their queries.” (p. 103) When I happened on this quote (referenced in another article) it reminded me of my chemistry lab experience—I took a chemistry course with 20 beginning students as part of a first-year seminar program. The teacher, also our lab instructor, refused to answer questions in lab, and we hated him for it. Ask him a question and rather than answer he’d ask you a question back. It was infuriating—you had to figure everything out for yourself or with your lab partners.

I’ve just finished reading the second edition of Barbara Walvoord and Virginia Anderson’s book on grading Effective Grading: A Tool for Learning and Assessment in College). The book was first published in 1998, and since then it has established itself as the go-to book on grading. I see it referenced more often than any other source on this important topic.

As Barbara Walvoord and Virginia Anderson point out in their venerable book on grading (now available in a revised 2nd edition) goals can motivate students. Unfortunately, too often they are motivated only by the goal of getting grades and getting courses out of the way. Walvoord and Anderson suggest you tell student you know they have these goals but that you are (and they should) also be interested in what they want to learn in the course. Here are some of Walvoord’s and Anderson’s good ideas for making learning goals a part of the learning experience in a course.

In a 2009 editorial, John Moore lists some impressive figures about community colleges. There are almost 1,200 of them in the U.S., and they enroll 11.5 million students a year. About 60 percent of those students are attending college part time. Their average age is 29. Especially impressive is the fact that about 40 percent of them are first-generation college students. Moore who edits the Journal of Chemical Education notes that 44 percent of the recent graduates in science and engineering have taken at least one course at a two-year college. He also points out that enrollment in two-year colleges significantly increases the racial, ethnic, and gender diversity in science and engineer. I suspect that’s true for other disciplines as well.