Max. Classroom Capacity: A Spooky Halloween Special!

Dear readers,

Did you know that in ancient Celtic traditions, on Samhain,¹ the new year’s day harvest festival, people wore costumes and left food out to appease wandering spirits? Did you also know that the Halloween tradition of carving pumpkins likely originated in Ireland where people would carve demonic faces into turnips² to frighten and chase away evil spirits such as that of Stingy Jack, a blacksmith who was too evil to go to heaven but tricked the Devil into rejecting him from Hell as well, leaving him wandering the earth for eternity as a ghost?!?

For some, pursuing a graduate degree can sometimes feel like being consigned to wander the earth for eternity as a ghost! And thinking back, some of those lingering 8^th year+ doctoral students would start to look a little transparent around the edges, shuffling about the department with a haunted look in their eyes. (Whispered conversation among first-year students: “They started in WHAT year?” “They’re still collecting data!?!”) I can also remember grad school ghost stories being told during late-night “study sessions” (usually over drinks). A few haunted souls out there may remember experiencing certain “hot seat” in-class interrogations that ended in tears, in a program that will not be named…. Zoinks!

Image generated by ChatGPT based on the beloved Hanna-Barbera Scooby-Doo, Where Are You cartoon, 1969–1971, after being explicitly instructed NOT to violate copyright…

Grad school can be scary, and we instructors can be part of the problem! In the April 2017 Max. Classroom Capacity column, I wrote about how pop quizzes are feared and loathed by some students. In the tradition of sharing spooky ghost stories at Halloween, I asked some current and recently finished I-O grad students to tell me what they feared most about grad school. Here are the top five fears that came up, in no particular order…

1. Like, wow, Scoob, I don’t think we belong here!

The first common fear of grad students is… imposter syndrome! The fear of not living up to lofty expectations was most prevalent in the early years of grad school and came up most in connection to students’ statistics classes. In true MCC style, one respondent created an AI-generated picture of a terrified student with the caption “when you’re more afraid of someone finding out that you don’t know how to calculate r than you are of failing the class…” Loved it! Some mentioned not wanting to ask questions in class out of fear that their questions would make them look lazy, ignorant, or stupid to their peers and professors. Others described asking questions to only certain peers out of fear that others would make fun of their poor math skills. Imposter syndrome can be even worse for international students who may be adjusting to new social norms and customs both inside and outside the classroom.

There are a few things that we can do as instructors to allay students’ fears based on imposter syndrome. First, we can reiterate that learning statistics (or any subject) requires effort and practice. Practice makes permanent! We can also support students by telling them that it’s normal to experience challenges and setbacks in the classroom, that such experiences do NOT suggest a lack of necessary ability, and that they DO belong. One nice way to start a new course is to congratulate students on being accepted into the undergraduate/graduate program and enthusiastically express your positive expectations for their effort and performance ahead. It’s amazing how far a little positivity can go (e.g., 15 years ago I had a dentist who told me that I had a nice set of teeth—I’ve never forgotten that, even though I’m certain that it is NOT true!). It’s free and easy to express positive expectations. On the other hand, how demoralizing would it be to hear your instructor talk about how difficult their class is and how many students will drop or fail?

Second, we can frequently “touch base” with our students and try to build trusting relationships in which they feel comfortable approaching us if they experience a significant academic or personal challenge. When students feel less intimidated by their instructors, they may be less likely to feel like an imposter and more likely to seek out help when they need it. Office hours are one venue for student–instructor conversation, but student attendance at office hours can vary greatly. I usually arrive at my classes 10–15 minutes before the start time to informally chat with students. I try to be available to students a few minutes after class ends as well. This lets me quickly reach out to students who I think may be struggling. I think it also helps to break down barriers between students and myself.

Third, we can create opportunities for students to form strong and supportive peer groups. In-class group activities can be a great way for students to meet and practice working together, without the pressure of a graded group assignment. Asking students to participate in short ungraded dyadic or small group discussions around specific questions, theories, findings, or practices can provide similar benefits.

2. Like, don’t look at me, teach—I’m totally blanking out!

A second common fear of grad students was the expectation or requirement that they answer instructors’ questions in class! Students were especially afraid of participation that was graded. Grading student verbal participation can be a dicey proposition, as discussed in the April 2022 MCC column. In that one, a brilliant and lovely associate professor of education (to whom I happen to be married) argued that we should only grade verbal in-class participation when it is itself a course learning objective and when we provide students with a rubric with clear guidelines and expectations around how they are being evaluated for participation. Yet, even under those circumstances, it is difficult to grade participation in an unbiased and equitable way.

Students also feared being asked questions about material for which they had not prepared. This sounds like a variant of students’ fear of pop quizzes—nobody likes unpleasant surprises! A great example of this was provided by an international student who described being asked to share a “fun fact” about themselves as part of an ice-breaker self-introduction. This provoked considerable anxiety in the student as disclosing “fun facts” was not a common practice in their home country, and it wasn’t clear to the student what personal fact would be considered “fun” as opposed to “strange”! I love this anecdote because it (a) highlights how disorienting it can be to experience a different culture, and (b) made me realize how weird and specific the practice of sharing a fun personal fact is (and many other such ice breakers): We want to connect with each other, but only superficially, at least at first! That students may, in general, fear spontaneity on the part of their instructors was also eye-opening because I assumed that students would generally want their instructors to be fun and creative (i.e., spontaneous) rather than predictable and boring, but that’s probably not the right way to think of this. It’s helpful to be reminded that the power dynamics involved in the classroom may make what we think of as asking “fun” and “spontaneous” questions into scary and anxiety-provoking experiences for our students.

3. Quick, Velma, hide behind that suit of armor!

A third, closely related fear was the fear of being anonymous in class. Students described the anxiety they experienced when instructors asked a question and they were unable to generate an answer quickly enough to respond before other students answered. As a result, students feared that they would be perceived as disengaged or unintelligent compared to their peers. This is a classic problem in managing student discussions and verbal participation in the classroom, for which, fortunately, there exist effective solutions. Here’s one that I try to use:

1. Tell students that you are about to ask them a question and that you are going to pause for a few moments to let them think of an answer (or ask students to jot down their answer).
2. Ask students to raise their hands if they were able to generate an answer to the question and to keep their hands raised.
3. Ask those students who have their hands up to keep them up if they are willing to share their answer with the class.
4. From among the students who still have their hands raised, call on the student who answers questions the least frequently.

There are tech-related solutions to this problem as well (e.g., Kahoot poll, Zoom polling, etc.), and I’m sure that many of you have come up with creative ways of bringing students out of their shells.

4. Let’s split up, gang!

The fourth fear of students was… competition! Students identified different circumstances that led to competition, including grade curving schemes that pitted students against each other. One student even listed ranked grades that were displayed publicly as an example—a clear violation of FERPA in the USA but a fairly common practice when I was an undergraduate student at McGill University in Canada! These and other practices that promote competition between students are likely to induce performance avoidance achievement goals, which tend to undermine learning in academic settings (e.g., Huang, 20123; Payne et al., 20074). So as instructors, I think it’s important to try to reduce students’ inclinations to engage in or worry about competition. One example is not to provide students with the average class grade on assessments. Another is to refrain from speaking about individual differences in grades or grade distributions (e.g., disclosing how many students got As, Bs, etc.). When students ask me what the average grade on an exam was, I don’t usually share that information (I also turn off that feature on the Canvas learning platform). When I speak about class performance on an exam or other assessment, I approach it like I would as a sports coach in talking with one of my kids’ teams after a game or practice: How did we perform as a team, what did we get better at, and how do we continue to improve the next time? After all, in the classroom, we are all pursuing the goal of maximizing our individual and collective learning.

5. Shaggy, wait here with Scooby while I check out this secret passage…

The fifth and final student fear was waiting! I wouldn’t have thought of this, but it makes perfect sense. Waiting for your turn to give a presentation: scary! Waiting for the instructor to ask you a question that you don’t know the answer to: scary! Waiting to know how poorly you did on an exam: scary! Although I feel pretty good about coming up with solutions to Fears 1–4, this one stumped me! I almost got through the entire column pretending that I could solve all student fears! And I would have been able to do it, if it weren’t for you meddling kids!

But seriously, my sincere and heartfelt thanks to all of you who responded to my email and shared your deepest, darkest fears about grad school classrooms!

Please email me to share your spooky grad school student/teaching stories or to just say hi: Loren.Naidoo@csun.edu

Happy Halloween!

 

Notes

1 https://daily.jstor.org/from-samhain-to-halloween/

2 https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2021/10/the-origins-of-halloween-traditions/

3 Huang, C. (2012). Discriminant and criterion-related validity of achievement goals in predicting academic achievement: A meta-analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104, 48–73.

4 Payne, S. C., Youngcourt, S. S., & Beaubien, J. M. (2007). A meta-analytic examination of the goal orientation nomological net. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 128–150.