Troy Thomas

Course Policies and Student Accountability

Rather than try to make individual responses to the multiple interesting topics on this forum, I have decided to try and summarize my thoughts in this space.

One of the main themes I see in reading the forum threads is that of student accountability, especially as it relates to fairness. For what should students be held accountable? How should students be held accountable? Why should students be held accountable? What “extenuating” circumstances would release a student from being accountable? The list of questions could go on and on.

These are difficult and frustrating questions to answer, and I certainly don’t claim to have good answers. I do think that it is important for each instructor to evaluate his / her personal educational philosophies, biases, etc. I will use some of my personal ramblings below to hopefully illustrate what I mean.

Trial-and-error is a basic tenet of learning. Take the example of an infant learning to walk. My son is a little over a year old. He took his first steps at 10 months. He has spent the first 14 months of his life learning that gravity is a cruel taskmaster. He has several bumps and bruises as a testimony to that fact. However, the body systems responsible for walking are learning to successfully manage the task of walking through his series of failures and successes. Errors are important to learning because they teach us what does not work. My son has not been irreparably harmed psychologically, emotionally or physically by falling on his butt (and face unfortunately) multiple times. As a father, I try to keep him away from coffee tables, cliffs, and shark tanks. When he falls on the pavement outside, I don’t overreact. I am sorry for him, but I help him get on his feet, encourage him to keep walking, and try to let him know that falling down (literally and figuratively) is part of life. Getting up again, although, cliché is the important thing.

IMO, we live in a culture that cannot stand error, failure, or imperfection. “Everybody is a winner”, because we hate losers. We have “minimum performance tests” to make sure that everybody passes. Everybody gets a trophy. If a kid’s team is losing, we turn off the scoreboard so they don’t feel bad. The list goes on, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. But gravity is always there. Life doesn’t care about our circumstances (think - tanks in Tiananmen Square). We do people a disservice if we fail to challenge them, fail to prepare them, fail to let them fail, or fail to let them fall and get back up.

Many of our “adult learners” are neither adults nor learners. They have not been required to meet a set of unchanging, rigorous standards or expectations. They have not been allowed to fall down and made to get back up. As a result, they lack the confidence and internal fortitude to recover from setbacks in the “real” world.

As educators, I believe that we have an unfortunate privilege and responsibility to provide students with an environment in which they can experience “controlled failure” (hopefully followed by eventual recovery). In my course design, I try to accomplish this. I try to create policies that reflect real world life expectations and situations. The challenge is to avoid personal biases / prejudices in those policies. For example, some teachers don’t allow late work because they just don’t want the hassle. That is more of a personal preference. I find that the more my policies reflect the expectations of the job environment, the less trouble I have from the students. I do believe in “extenuating circumstances” (getting hit by a meteor, rogue land shark attack, etc.); however, once students perceive that policies are unfair, unclear, or inconsistently enforced, the battle is all but lost.

My point, if I ever had one, is to closely examine how you view the roles of the school, the student, the instructor, etc. Look carefully at your educational philosophy and personal biases. Attempt to construct an environment that is focused on producing graduates that not only possess the requisite knowledge and skills for your program, but also the confidence and fortitude to face life’s challenges.