I did another presentation on campus yesterday talking about what it means that students can now generate answers to assignment questions. I often find that writing out some concepts before a presentation helps me focus on what might be important. My pre-writing turned into a bit of a collection of the things that I’ve been pulling together for my session next week on adapting your syllabus.

I’m going to keep working on it, but I figured I would post it on my lonely blog, just to let it know that I still love it.

Here’s the deck

Introduction

The release of ChatGPT on the 30th of November, 2022 has brought into focus a change that has been coming to higher education since the advent of the Internet. Our students have increasing access to people and services on the Internet that provide them with ways to circumvent the intent of many of the assessments that have been traditionally used in higher education. 

Schinske and Tanner (2014) describe four purposes for assessments: feedback, motivation, student ranking and the objective evaluation of knowledge. Regardless of what combination of these purposes you use in your work, or what others you might add, the internet has changed the education landscape through,

1. The availability of connection to other people to support our learners with assessments. (by text-message, online chat etc…)
2. The availability of pre-created content (available through search or on sites like Chegg) that can be used to respond to our existing assessments
3. The availability of generative systems (AI systems like ChatGPT) that can create responses to assessments

This has the potential to impact the effectiveness of our assessments. This is particularly problematic where our assessments are meant as motivation for students to learn. With the plethora of options for students to circumvent the intent of our assessments this require the rethinking of the way we design our courses.

This document takes a neutral position with regards to the student decision to use these connections and tools. These tools exist and the tracking tools that have been designed to identify students who have used these tools are resource heavy, time consuming to use effectively, ethically suspect and ultimately unreliable. We believe that a combination of good strategy in our assessment choices, a focus on student engagement in our classrooms and the establishment of trust relationships with students will be the most effective way forward.

Considering the purpose of assessments

The assessments we provide in our courses each serve a purpose. It can be helpful at the start of the process of reconsidering your assessments to chart what purposes each of your current assessments serve. The following model is developed from Schinske and Tanner article. 

Description of assessments	Feedback on performance	Motivator for student effort	Scaling of students	Objective knowledge

In completing this chart, it is likely that many assessments will fall into several categories. The new tools will impact the reliability of each of these purposes, but some more than others. The biggest impact will probably be in the motivation section. 

This kind of course redesign is also an excellent time to consider overall equity in your course (see Kansman, et. al. 2020). 

Grades as feedback on student performance 

In this view grades are given to students in order to let them know how they are performing in our classes. The evaluative feedback (grades) give them a quantitative sense of how they are doing based on your measurement of performance. The descriptive feedback (comments) is the feedback that you provide students in addition to that grade in order to explain how they can improve their performance or indicate places of particular strength.

Questions to ask:

1. Does my approach provide an opportunity for students to improve on their performance in a way that would encourage them to return to their own work and improve upon it?
2. Do the affordances of existing content websites and AI generation programs impede my ability to provide feedback on the performance of students to help them improve given my current assessment design?

Grades as motivator of student effort 

“If I don’t grade it they won’t do it”. Whether you consider it a threat or encouragement, this is the idea that we create assessments in order to encourage students to ‘do the work’. This could be encouraging students to do the actual work that we want them to do (eg. assess a piece of writing a student has done to encourage effective writing) or indirectly (eg. assess  a response to a reading to encourage the student to do the reading).

Grant and Green tell us that extrinsic motivators like grades are more effective at encouraging logarithmic or repetitive tasks, but less effective at encouraging heuristic tasks, like creativity or concentration. (2013) Content and AI systems are excellent at supporting students to do logarithmic tasks without the need to learn anything.

Questions to ask:

1. Does my grading motivate students to learn (as opposed to simply complete the task)?
2. Is the learning they are doing the learning that I intend?
3. Do the affordances of existing content websites and AI generation programs impact the motivation of students to learn in response to my assessment motivator?

Scaling – Grades as tools for comparing students 

This is about using grades to create a ranking of students in a given class. There is a great deal of historical precedent for this (Smallwood, 1935), but it is not clear that this is necessary in the modern university. One way or the other, the curving does depend on the validity of the assessments. 

1. Is grading on a curve mandatory in my program?
2. Do the affordances of existing content websites and AI generation programs accurately reflect the different performances of students?

Grades as an objective evaluation of student knowledge

Using grades to objectively reflect the knowledge that a student has on a particular subject. There will doubtlessly be differing opinions on whether this is possible or even desirable, but, similarly to the scaling conversation, this is subject to the validity of the assessments.

1. Do my grades provide reliable information about student learning?
2. Do the affordances of existing content websites and AI generation programs allow me to accurately measure objective students knowledge given my current assessment design?
3. Is the same objective knowledge necessary for students to memorise in the same way given these new technologies?

Ideas for adapting the syllabus

Teach less

Reducing the amount of content that you are covering in a course can be a great way to focus on critical issues. It also gives students a chance to dig deeper into the material. This opens up new opportunities for assessment.

1. Iterative assignments – if students are focused on one or a few major themes/projects you can assign work that builds on a previous submission. Process writing is a good example of this. The student submits a pitch for a piece of writing for an assessment. Then the student continues with the same piece of work to improve it based on feedback given to them by the professor.
2. Have students give feedback on each other’s project – When assignments start and end in a week, the feedback that a student gives to another student does not always get reviewed or have a purpose. If students are required to continuously improve their work, this could increase the investment that students have in investing in their work. This approach is, of course, subject to all of the challenges involved in peer assessment.

Lower the stakes for assessment

High stakes or very difficult assessments (20% or more in a given assessment) makes the usage of content or AI systems more valuable in the cost/benefit analysis for students. Lowering the stakes (regular 10% assessments or lower) could reduce student stress levels and encourage students to do their own work. This does, however, run the risk of turning assessments into busy work. It’s a balance.

Consider total work hours

Review your syllabus and consider how many hours it would take a student to be successful in your course. Consider the time it would take a non-expert to read the material for understanding, the time to do research and the time to complete assignments in addition to time spent in class. Would an average student at your school have time to complete the assessments they’ve been assigned given the total amount of work they need to do in all their classes?

Do more assessed work in class

Doing the assessment in class can be an easy way to ensure that students are at least starting the work themselves. More importantly, it gives students a chance to ask those first questions that can make the work easier for them to engage with. 

Reduce the length of assignments

Based on the Total Work Hours conversation above, consider whether the length of your assignments improve upon the intent of the assessment. Does a longer essay give them more of a chance to prove their knowledge or does it fairly reflect their performance? Is it possible that the longer assignments only support students who have more disposable time to complete their assignments?

Change the format of the submission

Not all work needs to be submitted in academic writing form. If you’re looking for students to consider a few points from a reading or from conversations in class, encourage them to submit something in point form. Changing the format of the submission can provide some flexibility for the students and also make the work more interesting to grade.

Ill-Structured (ill-defined) problems

A well structured problem is one where the question, the approach to solving the problem and the solution are all known to the problem setter (or, at least, are knowable). An ill-structured problem is one where one, two or all of those are not-known or not-knowable. Well-structured problems encourage students to search for the ‘right answer’. Ill-structured problems require a student to make decisions and apply their own opinion. (see Spiro et. al., 1991)

Rhizomatic Learning/Heutagogy

Approaches to learning where the curriculum in a given course is developed in partnership with students. Often called self-directed learning, these approaches aim to develop a learner’s ability to find, evaluate and incorporate knowledge available thereby developing essential skills for working in a knowledge landscape of information abundance. (see Cormier 2008 & Blaschke 2012)

Effort-based grading

While sometimes controversial, the move to an effort based grading approach has been shown as effective at encouraging students to take risks and be more engaged in performing their assignments while still helping students develop domain specific knowledge (Swinton, 2010). In this model students aren’t being judged on getting work ‘correct’ but rather their willingness to engage with the material. This can be done with a rubric, or by making assignments pass/fail. 

Ungrading

This refers to finding new ways to motivate students to participate in the work without using grades. Even advanced students struggle with this approach without specific guidance on how this can be done (Koehler & Meech, 2022) so this requires a significant shift in the approach to designing a course.

Contract Grading

A highly interactive approach to designing a course that gives students the choice of what assignments they wish to work on and, in some cases, allows students to decide on the amount of work they choose to do for the course. This approach, when done for an entire course, can potentially conflict with university and departmental guidelines and you might want to discuss it with colleagues. It might be easier to begin this approach as a section of a course rather than for an entire course. See Davidson, 2020.

Assignment integration across courses

Another approach, which does require coordination between different faculty members, is to have assignments apply to more than one course. It could be as simple as an academic writing course supporting the essay writing in another course or full integration in a program where a given project grows throughout a student’s experience moving through a program.

References

Blaschke, L. M. (2012). Heutagogy and lifelong learning: A review of heutagogical practice and self-determined learning. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 13(1), 56–71. https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v13i1.1076

Cormier, D., How much ‘work’ should my online course be for me and my students? – Dave’s Educational Blog. (2020, June 20). https://davecormier.com/edblog/2020/06/20/how-much-work-should-my-online-course-be-for-me-and-my-students/

Cormier, D. (2008). Rhizomatic education: Community as curriculum. Innovate: Journal of Online Education, 4(5), 2.

Davidson, C. (2020). Contract Grading and Peer Review. https://pressbooks.howardcc.edu/ungrading/chapter/contract-grading-and-peer-review/

Grant, D., & Green, W. B. (2013). Grades as incentives. Empirical Economics, 44(3), 1563–1592. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00181-012-0578-0

Kansman, J., et. al. (2020) Intentionally Addressing Equity in the Classroom | NSTA. (n.d.). Retrieved April 20, 2023, from https://www.nsta.org/journal-college-science-teaching/journal-college-science-teaching-novemberdecember-2022-1

Koehler, A. A., & Meech, S. (2022). Ungrading Learner Participation in a Student-Centered Learning Experience. TechTrends, 66(1), 78–89. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-021-00682-w

Radzilowicz, J. G., & Colvin, M. B. (n.d.). Reducing Course Content Without Compromising Quality.

Schinske, J., & Tanner, K. (2014). Teaching More by Grading Less (or Differently). CBE Life Sciences Education, 13(2), 159–166. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.CBE-14-03-0054

Smallwood, M. L. (1935). An historical study of examinations and grading systems in early American universities a critical study of the original records of Harvard, William and Mary, Yale, Mount Holyoke, and Michigan from their founding to 1900,. Harvard University Press. http://books.google.com/books?id=OMgjAAAAMAAJ

Spiro, R. J., Feltovich, P. J., Feltovich, P. L., Jacobson, M. J., & Coulson, R. L. (1991). Cognitive Flexibility, Constructivism, and Hypertext: Random Access Instruction for Advanced Knowledge Acquisition in Ill-Structured Domains. Educational Technology, 31(5), 24–33. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44427517

Swinton, O. H. (2010). The effect of effort grading on learning. Economics of Education Review, 29(6), 1176–1182. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2010.06.014

Trail-Constant, T. (2019). LOWERING THE STAKES:  TIPS TO ENCOURAGE STUDENT MASTERY AND DETER CHEATING. FDLA Journal, 4(1). https://nsuworks.nova.edu/fdla-journal/vol4/iss1/11

Lots of interesting conversation going on in my community right now about the implications of ChatGPT style tools for the education system. Will students use it to cheat? Will we incorporate it in our classrooms? Can we use it to do mundane tasks for us? What are the ethical implications of using this kind of software?

My read is that these tools will do to education what the math calculator did to math education. And we’re still fighting about that 40 years later.

Those are important conversations, but I want to talk about something else. I’m interested in how these tools are going to change our relationship to learning, work and knowledge. In a conversation with Nick Baker this morning, we were trying to map out what the future workflow of the average person doing an average task.

• Step 1 – Go to FutureGPT search
• Step 2 – Ask FutureGPT ‘what does a government middle manager need to know about the Martian refugee crisis. Include three references and tell me at a grade 12 level using the voice of an expert talking to their boss’
• Step 3 – Look over the response, click send message, include your mid-level manager’s email address.

I figure were, maybe, two years away from this? But who knows, we might have this before I post this message.

What does this mean for knowledge?

30 years ago when I was in college, you went to the card catalogue, found a book that might be relevant and went to a long line of library books to find your book. Once you remembered how the system worked. On that shelf were a bunch of other books that had been curated by 50 years of librarians to be similar in nature (in one way or another) to the book that you were looking for.

The librarians were my algorithm.

Right now, still, I’m using a search engine with a bunch of different practices to try and find the information I want curated by other people somewhere out there on the Internet. I put in a search string, I look at what I get back from the algorithm, make some adjustments, and try again. Throughout the process I land on some websites created by humans about the issue I’m interested in.

The search engine algorithm brings me to a human (probably) made knowledge space.

Starting this year, we’re going to be returned a mishmash of all the information that is available on the Internet, sorted by mysterious practices (popularity, number of occurrences, validity of sources if we’re lucky) and packaged neatly into a narrative. The algorithm is going to convert that information to knowledge for me.

The algorithm presents me with the knowledge, already packaged.

Autotune for knowledge

In 1998, Cher’s ‘Believe’ hit it big as the first autotuned song to sell tons of, I guess, CDs. Autotuning takes the human voices and ‘removes the flaws’ that are there. Any place where you might be off key, pitchy, where you might have slowed down or sped up in your singing. Musical purists have been decrying the process since as they say that it removes the human part of the process from the music. It’s everywhere now. If you listen carefully to most popular songs you can hear the uniformity in the sound.

That’s what’s going to happen to our daily knowledge use.

This, to me, is the real danger. These tools are so convenient, so useful, save so much time, how is anyone going to rationalized taking the time to actually look into issues to check for nuance? Who is going to pay you to take a week to learn about something enough so you can give an informed opinion when something that looks like an informed opinion can be generated in seconds?

The real danger is not to people who are experts in their fields. Super experts in every field will continue to do what they have always done. All of us, however, are novices in almost everything we do. Most of us will never be experts in anything. The vast majority of the human experience of learning about something is done at the novice level.

That experience is about to be autotuned.

It’s been both a humbling and exciting prospect to return to the face to face classroom. I’m teaching two versions of the same course ‘Digital Technology and Social Media’ for the faculty of education at the University of Windsor. It was a last minute offer, and I saw it as a great way to get my mind around the new LMS that we have at the university. That was my overt reason. Also… I just really wanted to be back in the classroom.

My students are first year education students from two different programs. The age range is reasonably broad, but I would suggest that the majority of them are early career. I have a few students who are more ‘mid-career’ with some teaching experience, but the course is not designed with any previous teaching experience expected.

The activity from this week was originally stolen from Dr. Bonnie Stewart. The article I used was sent to me by Lawrie Phipps. I can’t imagine that there are many ideas that I use in the classroom that I actually made up, but in this case I remember where both the content and the approach came from, giving me the opportunity to give credit where its due.

I’ve used the approach before in a number of contexts. It’s not a terribly complex process. Take an article, break it into pieces, give each piece to a group of students and get them to report back on what they’re reading.

Why this approach

I’ve been in a number of contexts with students and faculty where it has become abundantly clear that students have not had many opportunities to do deep, opinion based responses to readings. Looked at through a faculty lens, ‘students just don’t read what they are assigned’. They are often given LOTS of readings or asked to do ‘summaries’ of readings… but rarely, it seems, given the opportunity to think about one small piece with time to give a response. It’s also a response to which I apply my own context as the facilitator. So each group has a section of the work and is given, say, half an hour to read that section and come up with a perspective on the piece.

Students in both classes responded very positively to the approach. I overheard a number of ‘why have I never done this before?’ and ‘this is the first time I’ve ever actually read one of these things’. We’re those things said so I would overhear? Maybe. Fact remains that they did the reading, and the groups reported back on it. They also seemed to grasp a number of the concepts in ways that I hoped they might. They also took a few of them out of context, which is maybe just as useful in the way it spurred discussion.

What I actually did

1. I Created a slide deck in google slides that had the article title and link and then a slide each for each of the 7 sections.
2. I duplicated the slides so that I had the option of smalls groups or large groups. (i went with groups of 2 or 3 and did the whole article twice)
3. In the class I introduced, broadly speaking, some of the concepts that in the article. I did a bit of early deconstruction of commonly held beliefs that I thought would be useful to setup the content of the article, but didn’t talk about the article directly.  
4. I explained a ‘group read’ to the class
5. I walked around the class and assigned students to a particular slide. “Jim and Jane, you guys are slide 3. (slide 3 explains what part of the article they need to read)
6. I had to confirm (several times) that their responses were not being graded and that they were not, in actually, meant to ‘just do a summary’ but rather have a response.
7. They took about 25 minutes to get through their article section and to write up a response in their own slide
8. We took another 25 or so minutes to go around the room and listen to people talk about their response to their section of the article. I tried to engage with each group and occasionally included other groups in that discussion.

So. Takes about an hour. Students do an ungraded, deep dive into an important article in the field and, hopefully, come out the other side with some new ideas or, at least, a better understanding of their existing perspectives.

What did I choose the Barbara Fister article?

This article introduces many of the concepts that I’m hoping to cover in the first term of the course. It takes on the way we ask questions, integrates it with the way we do assignments in universities, runs through the impact of algorithms and talks about some of the things that the students can do about it. Its central focus on uncertainty matches my own research, at the moment, and allows me to have something external to confirm that I’m not just making things up.

The article is also approachable AND written in an academic style I’d love for the students to emulate. It’s the kind of writing I’d love for them to aspire to.

Outcomes?

I got a lot of what I was hoping for from this activity. We had some talk about how google’s algorithms control how we search for things and how we make truth, which is going to be important for future assignments. We started to talk about how task based much of their education has been and how the digital can, if you’re not careful, lead you further down that ‘task based learning’ approach. We also teased out some of the balance between ‘believing experts’ and ‘having your own opinion’ which I feel is going to be a theme that goes on for the term.

Notes for improvement

I definitely should have taken more time to talk about what a good response looks like. It would have been perfect if i’d said “and this kind of response is what I want you to do in your discussion forums” which is the activity they had to do for homework. Thought of that right after class. smh.

I started to lose focus on the last couple of slides. I struggle to stay in those things for a long time. Just need to do a better job preparing myself so that i can be as interested in the last comment as the first.

For you long suffering readers of this blog (this is year 17) you know that my blog is often just where I keep my notes. This one is going to be my ‘working with dave’ notes for new student employees.

I have been fortunate to work with a fair number of excellent students on a number of different projects over the years. At UPEI I worked with the student union for a number of years to introduce some basic project planning and management. I led New Student Orientation for a couple of years, and had some students working for me full in a number of previous roles. In the last two years (’cause Covid) that number has shot through the roof as I’ve had about 80 CoOp students working with me in the Office of Open Learning.

It’s an interesting group to work with. I’ve only got them for four months and, for many of them, this is the first job where they are expected to do things beyond simply repeating a pattern they’ve been given. This term I have three students, two of them are returning from previous CoOp terms. It means that instead of allowing the ‘this is how we do stuff’ to come naturally through conversations, I’m going to do some one on one training with the new students to avoid forcing the returning students to hear all my introductory advice again. In preparation for that, I thought I’d jot down some notes.

Would love some feedback on this so I can turn it into a long term document.

Choosing to be interested

One of the challenges for CoOp students who are working with us in the department, is that they would not have (with a few exceptions) ever have imagined working in education. They are predominantly engineering students who have been unable to find in-field CoOp placements because of the pandemic. Many students (and not just engineers) have been sold the fantasy that they can go to school to get a job that is going to be easy to love.

I mean, that can happen, I guess. But it probably wont. Liking the work you do is mostly about mindset. It’s something I was fortunate to learn in my house when I grew up. My mother can have fun peeling apples. Or raking the lawn. She turns things into a game for herself (and others), tries to get better at it. Tries to do it more efficiently. That mindset is a critical one to develop for people to live happy lives. Most of us have to work. Most of us will never have jobs that are ‘fun all the time’. Learning to find things to like in your job is critical. Even if that thing you like is playing cards at lunch with coworkers (I learned to play 5-way cribbage working at a lead-silver refinery)

I approach this in a number of ways. I try to bring a positivity and enthusiasm to our staff meetings. Try to model it. More importantly, I talk to students about finding a project during the term that they can invest in. Something that they can find interesting that they are responsible for. That they can take pride in doing well.

You need to choose to be interested.

(but not all tasks are going to be interesting)

Being prepared

Such an easy thing to do. Such an obvious oversight if you don’t do it. If someone says “read this over” then read it. Yes. But read it to the point that you have an opinion about it. Come to our meetings with thoughts about the work that you’ve been given.

You could even read around it. A 2 minute google search where you’ve looked at what other people have done or checked the meaning of an industry term can make all the difference to you enjoying the next meeting.

Be prepared

(it doesn’t have to be a big thing. Just think about the work BEFORE the meeting)

Handling multiple tasks

I have consistently seen students struggle managing multiple tasks. If I forget (early on in the term) to say “hey, when i give you a new thing to do it doesn’t mean you stop doing the other one” I will have at least one project totally fall off the radar. Students have had their lives jammed into 60 minute sections (classes) for basically all of their lives. They are accustomed to being TOLD when to work on things, and when to change tasks.

This is super easy to fix. You just have to say “look, segment out your day so you can keep working on different projects.”

Be conscious in managing your work day.

(this might take a while to get used to)

Learning to prioritize

“Wasn’t it obvious that this was more important? The VP asked for this!”

This is something I once found coming out of my mouth before I stopped and realized that, obviously, if my employee didn’t understand the priorities, it’s because I never explained them. A big part of working with student employees is to pass along these cultural norms, but you need to say them out loud. These are very different based on cultural backgrounds.

I like to think of it in terms of ‘right now’, ‘next 24 hours’ or ‘next two weeks’. YMMV. But a big part of the job is to get students thinking about how they are prioritizing their multiple projects. Talking it through… “hey, i know you’re working on three things right now, how have you got them mapped out?” really helps.

Some things are going to be more important than others

(You don’t have to do everything at once, you just have to keep track)

Managing up

This might be the most important piece. We often hire students to do projects that we don’t want to do. We also hire them to do things we don’t necessarily know HOW to do. So many students end up working for people with very little management experience or, worse, for people who think management is some kind of guessing game where they say ‘go do stuff’ with some expectation that students know what’s hidden in your brain.

I talk to my students about how to manage me. I can get a little scattered, so I tell them it’s perfectly ok to remind me that I said I would send them something or to answer their questions. You can ask me questions about what I’m asking you to do, but I’d like it if you read everything first and get a sense of what’s happening before you ask.

That’s the way I like to work. But one of the biggest jobs of any employee is to figure out how your boss ticks. I mean, some of them are just jerks, BUT we all have to work. Learning to manage your boss in a way that allows you to find out what success looks like is going to make you happier and make your boss happier.

You need to manage your boss, as much as they need to manage you

(figure out what success looks like, it’s almost never obvious)

The project charter

I love me a project charter. It’s just a document that lays out what a project is and keeps track of high level issues. The beauty of your average project charter is it gives you a place to put decisions, to clarify outcomes and timelines and to keep track of risks and scope creep.

It becomes the official record of the project and gives you something to go back to. To make sure everyone’s on the same page. I use various versions of this one, which you are free to steal.

Filling out a project charter is also a great way to frame your questions for your boss (see managing up). “hey i was just going through my notes and realized I don’t think you ever told me when you needed this finished”

Keep track of what you’ve been told to do

(and everything else that’s been said about your project)

Dealing with uncertainty

This is the hardest. When I ask a student to do something or I ask them for their opinion, they almost always assume that I already know the answer. 15 years of school has told them that it’s what adults do. They ask questions to test you.

It takes a lot of convincing from me to get students to realize that when I ask them a questions it’s because I DON’T KNOW THE ANSWER. It’s one of the things that slows down the work the most. Students think they are trying to figure out what I’m withholding and I’m waiting for the work to get done. It’s bad for everybody.

There is not a ‘right way’ to do most things. There are local customs at different places of employment that you need to follow, but a lot of the time you just have to make choices AND learn to be ok with being wrong sometimes. It can take a while before a student gets their mind around that. It requires patience.

Face uncertainty, make decisions

(just not decisions that can get you into too much trouble 🙂 )

Learning to be wrong and to fix it

Today I showed the edit that my own supervisor did on a grant application I wrote. It was GLOWING it had so many edits. Students have been trained to believe that they get one chance to submit something and that if there’s anything ‘wrong’ with it, that they have failed somehow.

Real life is mostly not like that. You need to get used to the fact that your supervisor is going to ask you to change things… sometimes in ways that you wont like. You can certainly talk about why you made those decisions, but being open to critique is a necessity.

Be open to critique

(just bring it back better next time)

Talk about what you don’t know

This is a touchy one. I want students to tell me when they don’t know how to do something, but I also want them to try and figure it out. It’s a delicate balance. If you ask me a simple question you could have easily found the answer to, I’m just going to send you a lmgtfy. So, as a student, you need to try something first. Asking questions without trying just leads to bad questions.

But. If you don’t know how to do something, or you don’t understand the scope of something… your work is going to suck. And people are mostly bad at telling students what to do. That means that students need to advocate for themselves. They also need to make an effort to learn the stuff they don’t know on their own.

Working is all about learning.

(sometimes that learning is your job, sometime’s it’s your boss’ job to help you)

Overall…

Working is hard. You’re going to find, a lot of the time, that you aren’t sure what you’re supposed to be doing or how to do it well. Figuring out the job is a big part of getting good at it.