What makes a course hard?

The Feb 2^nd post (Easy A?) ended with a series of questions about grades, learning and instructional strategies. I fully intended to begin addressing them here. But as I dug into the literature I realized other issues need exploring.

When students report my courses are “hard,” my first instinct is to write them off as whining complaints. Then I look at grade distributions and review the number and type of assessments to try to discredit the feedback. I usually succeed, but nagging questions remain. What do students mean when they say my course is hard? What if our definitions are different? Does it matter?

What makes a course hard? Draeger, del Prado Hill & Mahler (2015) find “faculty perceived learning to be most rigorous when students are actively learning meaningful content with higher-order thinking at the appropriate level of expectation within a given context” (p. 216). Interactive, collaborative, engaging, synthesizing, interpreting, predicting, and increasing levels of challenge are a small sample of the ways faculty describe rigor. In contrast, “students explained academic rigor in terms of workload, grading standards, level of difficulty, level of interest, and perceived relevance to future goals” (p.215) and course quality is “a function of their ability to meet reasonable faculty expectations rather than as a function of mastery of learning outcomes” (p.216). Their findings are consistent with previous research, match my views of what makes a course challenging, and reflect the comments my students made.

It’s clear.

We are not on the same page about what makes a course rigorous.

Does it matter? I think it does for two reasons. Clearly, if you’re concerned about course evaluations, the scores will be lower if students’ and teachers’ definitions and aims are not aligned. Beyond the ratings, the mismatched definitions, expectations, and criteria have significant implications for learning. Consider this analogy.

Monique wants to lose weight. She plans to eat fewer calories and exercise more. She hires a personal trainer to set up a cardio program. Monique isn’t very knowledgeable about weight loss physiology; she thinks less food and more cardio are all she needs. And for the short term, she has a point. Thus, she’s surprised when the trainer starts the session with ten minutes of cardio and then tells her to head over to the weight machines. Monique, despite her limited background in exercise science, says she’s only interested in cardio: treadmill, elliptical, climber, and spinning. The trainer persists and Monique begrudgingly complies. But, Monique’s enthusiasm for the program is diminished and she leaves without knowing why weight training is a hard but necessary component of the trainer’s plan.

Many students are like Monique. She’s paid good money for the trainer’s services. She knows she’s going to sweat on the cardio machines. She’s willing to work. But her expectations and understanding about exercise are incomplete. Because of this, she may not realize the trainer’s program will do more to help achieve her goals in the short- and long-term than cardio alone.  Or, she might comprehend what the trainer is trying to help her achieve, but Monique may only care about the short-term fix. Monique may not have the time (or may not value time at the gym enough) to devote an hour when 20 minutes of cardio would seem to be enough, at least for now. Monique’s goals and understanding of the process do not match the trainer’s.

Similarly, many teachers are like the trainer. The trainer assumed Monique would accept, on faith, that she has her client’s best interest in mind. The trainer believes she knows what’s best for her client. The trainer assumes Monique knows what a comprehensive exercise program looks like so she didn’t take time to explain why weight training is necessary. Notice that the story discusses the trainer’s plan, not a plan they developed together. Notice this too- the trainer is thinking like an expert, forgetting that novices see and approach things very differently.

As long as the trainer/trainee and teacher/student hold different definitions and expectations, the working relationship will produce less than optimal results and “satisfaction surveys” will reflect the mismatched priorities.

What can we do about it? Martin, et al., (2008) investigate students’ perceptions of hard and easy courses across engineering programs. Two of their strategies have broad application.

• Consider student characteristics. Student differences with respect to semester standing, level of academic preparation, in-major v. general education course, and student major affect perceptions of course difficulty. The more teachers know their students, the better equipped we are to determine where students are in the learning maturation process. “The key is determining what an appropriate challenge is for a course and for a particular group of students. The more an instructor interacts with students, the more likely the instructor is to notice the overwhelmed or bored students” (p. 112).
• Emphasize content connections. Applicability of content is an important filter students use to gauge course rigor. “Real” and “relevant” are the levers that push students to work harder and longer. Content needs to matter to students personally or professionally.  Teachers need to keep that in mind.

The more I read and think about what makes a course “hard,” the more it feels like we’re trying to nail jello to the wall. When we meet the needs of some, the rest may feel squished. It may not be possible to get it right, all the time, for every student. But I do believe, and the research on learning bears this out, there is value in initiating conversations with students about learning. We can’t dispel misperceptions if we’re unaware. The goal of the conversations isn’t to negotiate watering down the course, making grading easier, or lowering expectations. It’s to give students a voice and share ownership so that learning becomes more than a series of assignments reflecting only the teacher’s goals.

References:

Draeger, J., P. del Prado Hill, & R. Mahler. (2015). Developing a Student Concept of Academic Rigor. Innovation in Higher Education, 40: 215-228.

Martin, J.H.,  Hands, K.B., Lancaster, S.M., Trytten, D.A.,  & Murphy, T.J. (2008). Hard But Not Too Hard: Challenging Courses and Engineering Students, College Teaching, 56(2): 107-113.

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