STEM Course Design Series: Pre-Class

So I always hear when I go around the country, I hear workshops-- uh, when I do workshops for faculty, I hear them say, "Yeah, I tell my students to read before class, but they don't do it.

I, I tell them to watch these videos, and they don't do it." Uh, it's a very common refrain.

I get it.

Happens to me too, I understand, but I think it happens to me a lot less than other people, and I'll tell you why in a little bit.

There is a lot of literature on pre-class reading completion rates, and they can be pretty low.

You know, thirty percent, twenty percent.

The lowest I found was from a finance class.

They reported eight percent of students.

That's right, eight.

You know, the number eight, like seven, eight, nine.

That eight, not eighty.

Eight.

Eight percent of students regularly read before class.

But my joke is when I show that in a workshop is that, you know, they're the smartest ones because they're reading the le-least, and they're making the most money.

They're finance majors, right? [chuckles] So they got something figured out.

But yeah, reading is low.

You've seen a lot of articles recently from Beth McMurtry in The Chronicle about reading and lack of reading skills and lack of reading comprehension, and faculty are, you know, really, really worried about how to get students to read and do work before class.

Do you move reading during class? Do you change the reading? Do you make it easier, right? There's all these different strategies people are trying, and, uh, this is not just in the humanities, right? Because reading is super important for STEM.

I did a study years ago with Julie Ferguson at Cameron Dinero at UC Irvine, and we found that the number one predictor for student success on a scientific literacy skills assessment was SAT reading score.

It was not math.

It was reading.

So your reading comprehension is absolutely critical to understanding technical passages, to pulling out information from a, uh, from a question.

Whether that question's about physics, chemistry, geology, doesn't matter.

You have to be able to read it well.

So reading is, is nothing to sneeze at, and we gotta think about how do we help our students read? How do we help our students prepare before class with reading so that they can actually do it, want to do it, and then we can build on that during class? So that's what this episode's going to be about.

So I always hear when I go around the country, I hear workshops-- uh, when I do workshops for faculty, I hear them say, "Yeah, I tell my students to read before class, but they don't do it.

I, I tell them to watch these videos, and they don't do it." Uh, it's a very common refrain.

I get it.

Happens to me too, I understand, but I think it happens to me a lot less than other people, and I'll tell you why in a little bit.

There is a lot of literature on pre-class reading completion rates, and they can be pretty low.

You know, thirty percent, twenty percent.

The lowest I found was from a finance class.

They reported eight percent of students.

That's right, eight.

You know, the number eight, like seven, eight, nine.

That eight, not eighty.

Eight.

Eight percent of students regularly read before class.

But my joke is when I show that in a workshop is that, you know, they're the smartest ones because they're reading the le-least, and they're making the most money.

They're finance majors, right? [chuckles] So they got something figured out.

But yeah, reading is low.

You've seen a lot of articles recently from Beth McMurtry in The Chronicle about reading and lack of reading skills and lack of reading comprehension, and faculty are, you know, really, really worried about how to get students to read and do work before class.

Do you move reading during class? Do you change the reading? Do you make it easier, right? There's all these different strategies people are trying, and, uh, this is not just in the humanities, right? Because reading is super important for STEM.

I did a study years ago with Julie Ferguson at Cameron Dinero at UC Irvine, and we found that the number one predictor for student success on a scientific literacy skills assessment was SAT reading score.

It was not math.

It was reading.

So your reading comprehension is absolutely critical to understanding technical passages, to pulling out information from a, uh, from a question.

Whether that question's about physics, chemistry, geology, doesn't matter.

You have to be able to read it well.

So reading is, is nothing to sneeze at, and we gotta think about how do we help our students read? How do we help our students prepare before class with reading so that they can actually do it, want to do it, and then we can build on that during class? So that's what this episode's going to be about.