Don’t Do Your Homework!!

Within days, close to a million students will attend their first class in some developmental math course; some have already started. The vast majority of their teachers want every student to succeed, though this may not be the students’ perception. Therefore, one phrase is likely to be heard by close to a million students in a short period of time: “Do your homework!”

I do not tell my students to do their homework. Why? Well, think of this metaphor:

My cousin Alfred walks in to his doctor’s office; being astute, the doctor notices that Alfred is obese (the only question is ‘how obese’).
After letting Alfred share his health concerns, the doctor makes two statements to him:
1) Do you think that you are overweight or obese?
Alfred’s answer: Well, yes … that is kind of obvious.
2) Okay, your first step is to eat right and exercise?
Alfred’s response: Yes, I’d like that.

What do you think Alfred is going to do? Will he eat right? Will he exercise?

Our students, especially in developmental math courses, do not know how to operationalize “do your homework”. The vast majority of students believe that ‘doing homework’ means completing the assigned exercises, whether online or on paper. We sometimes reinforce this perception by “collecting homework”, where we make sure that the student has ‘done it’. However, the basic purpose of homework is to learn the most possible for that content for that student.

Instead of telling my students to ‘do homework’, I tell them to follow the learning cycles. These ‘learning cycles’ are simply stated components of doing homework with a focus on the purpose (learning). Here are the phrases I am using for the 3 cycles I talk about with my students:

Study and Learn
Read the explanations and information, study the examples, re-work the examples.
Practice
Try every problem assigned, and check your answer. Look at what is going well for you, and look for areas that you did not understand yet; figure those out.
Get Help
After you examine areas you did not understand, get help on anything you still don’t get.

You can probably come up with different phrases and a different set of ‘cycles’. I like to use the word ‘cycles’ because of the implications that the process is repeated and that cycles are related. My intent is to create an impression that learning involves deliberate work, as well as an impression that answers (right or wrong) are just a step in the process. It is likely that my students do not see most of what I am trying to say — though indications are that listing these learning cycles helps most students do a better job.

I never collect ‘homework’, because homework is something that happens in the brain while doing the learning. I would love to be able to directly measure all aspects of learning at the biological level; the world is probably a better place since I can not do so. Instead, I use assessments in class (like a simple quiz on about half of the class days) along with discussions with students.

Students should not ‘do homework’. Students should learn math, which involves discrete activities that work together to help that student do the best they can do.

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cognition, Student Success & Support | Jack Rotman | August 17, 2012 9:27 am

5 Comments

By Laura, August 17, 2012 @ 11:30 am

So, how do you change the perception that if it isn’t graded, it isn’t worth doing? Finding out by failing the first test (which they might attribute to other things anyway) is not a good option for these students.
By Jack Rotman, August 17, 2012 @ 4:11 pm

Laura:
That’s a very good question (which means, of course, that I do not know a simple answer). Here are some things I do related to this:
First, every class has an assessment (quiz, worksheet or test) … we meet twice per week. If it is a quiz, the lack of doing homework usually shows (since half of the quiz tends to be questions about ideas in the reading). If it is a worksheet, I am walking around the room helping and observing; students often make it obvious that they have not prepared, which generates a ‘conversation’ (sometimes between students).
Second, I have a required (10 point) assignment that students see an official source of help at the College (me, colleague in the help room, or a tutor) in the first week … with a homework question. This is not a perfect learning tool, but seems to help. (I posted on this earlier; see https://www.devmathrevival.net/?p=1045)
Third, I have a naive (foolish?) belief that my attitude about learning will impact my students’ attitudes about learning. This attitude pervades my teaching; I try to create a learning community within every class where we work hard to learn just because it feels good.
Hope that helps some!!
Jack
By Eliza, August 18, 2012 @ 7:21 pm

You make great points about the 3 cycles Jack. In an online environment how can one apply this and be successful?
By Jack Rotman, August 20, 2012 @ 1:04 pm

Well, faculty who work in the online environment would be best suited to answer that question. I am so invested in the F2F environment that I do not do any online classes. My guess is that the 3 cycles would be quite similar.
By Michael Wolf, August 20, 2012 @ 3:14 pm

As a F2F teacher and an online teacher, I support Jack’s comment about online being very similar to F2F. My online class includes a weekly webconference for students to aks questions about “homework” or other problems that have come up during the week. As with F2F learning, there are some online students who don’t get it or resist with all their might. Most often, I can’t reach them in a classroom or online. But man, even most, do eventually show some signs that they are beginning to take some responsibility for their own learning. Without the video-conferences, I’m not sure how I could accomplish that, but with the videoconferences supplementing the rest of the online material I have had reasonable success.

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