andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2011 andrew_gelman_stats-2011-515 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: A student in my intro class came by the other day with a lot of questions. It soon became clear that he was confused about a lot of things, going back several weeks in the course. What this means is that we did not do a good job of monitoring his performance earlier during the semester. But the question now is: what do do next? I’ll sign the drop form any time during the semester, but he didn’t want to drop the class (the usual scheduling issues). And he doesn’t want to get a C or a D. He’s in big trouble and at this point is basically rolling the dice that he’ll do well enough on the final to eke out a B in the course. (Yes, he goes to section meetings and office hours, and he even tried hiring a tutor. But it’s tough–if you’ve already been going to class and still don’t know what’s going on, it’s not so easy to pull yourself out of the hole, even if you have a big pile of practice problems ahead of you.) What we really need for this student, and others like him, is a road
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1 A student in my intro class came by the other day with a lot of questions. [sent-1, score-0.535]
2 It soon became clear that he was confused about a lot of things, going back several weeks in the course. [sent-2, score-0.525]
3 What this means is that we did not do a good job of monitoring his performance earlier during the semester. [sent-3, score-0.135]
4 I’ll sign the drop form any time during the semester, but he didn’t want to drop the class (the usual scheduling issues). [sent-5, score-1.005]
5 He’s in big trouble and at this point is basically rolling the dice that he’ll do well enough on the final to eke out a B in the course. [sent-7, score-0.688]
6 (Yes, he goes to section meetings and office hours, and he even tried hiring a tutor. [sent-8, score-0.344]
7 But it’s tough–if you’ve already been going to class and still don’t know what’s going on, it’s not so easy to pull yourself out of the hole, even if you have a big pile of practice problems ahead of you. [sent-9, score-1.168]
8 ) What we really need for this student, and others like him, is a road to a B: a plan by which a student can get by and attain partial mastery of the material. [sent-10, score-1.27]
9 The way that this, and other courses, is set up, is that if you do everything right you get an A, and you get a B if you make some mistakes and miss some things along the way. [sent-11, score-0.47]
10 That’s ok, but if you’re really stuck, you want some sort of plan that will take you forward. [sent-12, score-0.455]
11 And the existing plan (try lots of practice problems) won’t cut it. [sent-13, score-0.594]
12 What you need is some sort of triage, so you can nail down topics one at a time and do what it takes to get that B. [sent-14, score-0.55]
13 I think it needs to be a formal part of the course, in some way. [sent-16, score-0.188]
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Introduction: A student in my intro class came by the other day with a lot of questions. It soon became clear that he was confused about a lot of things, going back several weeks in the course. What this means is that we did not do a good job of monitoring his performance earlier during the semester. But the question now is: what do do next? I’ll sign the drop form any time during the semester, but he didn’t want to drop the class (the usual scheduling issues). And he doesn’t want to get a C or a D. He’s in big trouble and at this point is basically rolling the dice that he’ll do well enough on the final to eke out a B in the course. (Yes, he goes to section meetings and office hours, and he even tried hiring a tutor. But it’s tough–if you’ve already been going to class and still don’t know what’s going on, it’s not so easy to pull yourself out of the hole, even if you have a big pile of practice problems ahead of you.) What we really need for this student, and others like him, is a road
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