Facebook definitely beats Twitter in terms of getting through to young people. A whopping number of 15 students showed up, all asking solely about their grades and with zero interest towards the learning material.
They were all left with the impression that I was going to discuss their results privately with everyone, but since everyone had the same result I decided shouldn’t waste my time… nor theirs.
I gathered them all in the classroom and wrote few things on the board:
Mean result: A+
Standard error: 0.0
Standard deviation: 0.0
I told them that “These are the statistics for the quiz you took the other day. Anyone who has passed it should be able to figure out what their result is. Since this was your first quiz on the subject I will allow everyone to decide now if they want to keep their grade, or not, but I will need you to do it in the next 30 seconds, by raising your hands. If you don’t raise your hand by then OR you start talking to the people around you, I will consider that you don’t want your grade to be official… or that you have no bloody idea what it is, in which case, I would only presume you haven’t done all that well on the quiz. Time starts now.
By the end of the 30 seconds there were just four students with their hands lifted up in the air – a boy, who was one of the three that sat through my whole lecture on Tuesday, Emily and, not surprisingly – the two sitting next to her. She obviously had managed to inform them that the writings on the board mean that every single person has an A+.
Well, if she wants to do my job, I’d better let her, I thought.
“Emily”, I said, “since you’re one of the few here who actually understand what’s going on, I’d like you to give a report on Monday. The topic for the report will be ‘Examination of poor choices or Why would 11 out of 15 students refuse to get an A+’. If you’re having trouble, finding examples… just look all around you. Class dismissed.”
COLLEGE DIARIES 