I’m still working on planning that “Logic and Critical Reasoning” course I mentioned in an earlier post. As I noted there, the course is meant to give the students exposure to symbolic logic (looking at the forms of the arguments expressed with Ps and Qs, using rules of inference and truth-tables to evaluate the validity of those arguments, etc.), as well as to help them grapple with the arguments people make in natural language. While there’s clearly a connection between argumentation in the wild and formal arguments, students frequently need some time to get used to the Ps and Qs and not-Ps and backwards Es and upside down As.
In the normal course of things, getting used to symbolic logic means homework, and homework means grading. But, I’m looking at an enrollment of about 65 in a semester where there’s no earthly chance of money for graders. And, as you might recall from the last post on the course, the students are also required to write argumentative essays totaling a minimum of 3000 words. Among other things, this means I already have a substantial grading load for this course before the students do a speck of symbolic logic. However, symbolic logic is one of those things that seems to require practice if it’s to stick in your brain.
Luckily, my colleague Anand Vaidya shared a strategy with me that I hope will give the students the practice and feedback they need without drowning me in additional grading. We’re going to do “homework” in class.
The idea will be to save time at the end of each class period to work problems. Maybe there will be a set of five for the students to work individually, after which they will tell me how to do them at the board (asking questions as needed). Then there will be another set of five problems for the students to work in small groups, after which the groups will explain how to solve them and more discussion will follow. Maybe we’ll conclude by tackling some especially challenging problems together.
None of the problems will be handed in or graded. However, every two weeks we will have a quiz covering material that includes such problems. Presumably, this will give the students a strong incentive to come to class, do the problems, participate in the discussion, and ask questions until they understand. (Anand’s experience with has been that the students discover by the second quiz that they cannot blow off the problems worked in class, at least not if they want to do well on the quizzes.) I’ll probably make the problems available on the course website for those who might miss the class meeting (or who want to recapture the magic by working the problems again later), and I’ll entertain further questions on them during office hours, but it will be the students’ responsibility to make sure they know what we go over in class.
I am assuming here that grading quizzes will require less labor than grading homework assignments would (at least for the amount of homework required to master the material in advance of the quizzes). I’m also assuming that actually making up (and photocopying) the quizzes will be less work than grading all that homework would be. (There’s probably also a subconscious calculation about the amount of paper I’d be schlepping back and forth, one that favors the quizzes slightly.)
That’s my plan for the symbolic logic course content. The argumentative papers obviously won’t work this way. More on them in an upcoming post.
Here’s an idea that I’ve been musing over. It’s originally not quite for philosophy, but will work for a seminar class. This is a rough port, polish at will.
You need a CMS; some sort of blogging software will do. You can even use Blogger or WordPress or some such.
Come up with a group of 21. First week, by say Wednesday night, have the group assignment be to come up with a particular example illustrating a problem or whatnot. That’s 21 articles. By Friday morning, the other class members must have commented on at least one of the pages… breaking the argument down, or identifying the warrant, or what have you.
I bet you get some interesting comment threads. First week, you have to read all the results (this part will be time consuming and will suck). Rough rank everybody, pick the top 21 people. Their assignment is to write next week’s page. Everyone comments again. The original winners pick who they think are the best comments on their page, those become the next 21. And so on.
Any week, if someone doesn’t comment, they get 1 free pass. If they fail to comment more than once, they’re out for the draw.
At the last week, have all the students send you an email picking out 3 of their companions, and giving them 5/3/1 points for best/second best/third best participant in the online discussion. Sum up everybody’s points, and award everybody some amount of a bonus to the “class participation” part of their grade based upon the rankings. Spot check the comments of each student to see if the class ranking is fair. I bet it comes out pretty close.
If someone tries to game the system, that could be a lesson plan in and of itself.
Have you taught formal logic before? In my experience (which, granted, is primarily with teaching it to very bright teenagers), it’s difficult for students to get comfortable with anything in formal logic with just a handful of problems. Like with math classes, even with a good instructor most people need to work through substantive problem sets for each new technique.
You might consider using a formal logic book with associated software — something that generates as many problems as students need and grades the results automatically. Unfortunately, I don’t have any good recommendations there. I’m considering using Harry Gensler’s book the next time I teach logic, though, and it does have associated software.
They can do some homework at home with something like a pass/not pass grade for each assignment which would be just about as helpful as doing the work in class. It can take some people several hours to figure out how to do various logic problems, so the in-class activity won’t do it for everyone.
I’ve often found that in-class work is better at the beginning of class than the end. If I try to leave 15 minutes at the end of class for students to work on stuff, I often find myself cutting into that time. Setting a strict 15 minutes at the beginning of class guarantees that they get their 15 minutes. Doing this at the beginning of class also allowed me to sneak in some extra time–I’d get to the room just as the previous class was getting out, and then get students started on the worksheet as they showed up.
The thing that really surprised me about this method, though, was the amount of time it used. 15 minutes is a fifth of a TuTh 75 minute class; out of the 30 class periods in the semester, 6 are used up in this way. I hadn’t taken that into account when making up my schedule.
Professor Stemwedel:
First, I want to say I am so grateful that I found your blog. I enjoy reading your posts. I am 52 years old. I work full time as a paralegal and I am attending college full time in the evening in order to finish my degree in psychology that I started 30 years ago. (I dropped out of college after my sophomore year to get married and have children.) Now, I absolutely love attending college even though work, class and homework don’t leave me much time for anything else.
My only comment about your class (from a student’s perspective) is that I think it would be overwhelming to be in your class when you require 3000-word argumentative essays. That is a lot when trying to understand and apply logic. Would you consider allowing your students to “work up” to that large of an essay through the semester? I would much rather write shorter essays with the requirement of writing more of them. As a student, I would struggle in my college algebra classes unless I did every homework problem, not just the ones assigned.
Unfortunately, none of my local community colleges or my university teach logic courses. My university has three full-time philosophy professors, which is disappointing since I want to get my masters in philosophy. I am purchasing your textbook and I am hoping I can go through it on my own.
Thanks again for having such a great blog!
Jan
Thanks for these comments, folks! They are very helpful.
To clarify on the argumentative essays, the students are required to write a *total* of 3000 words over the course of the term. I might well accomplish that with a 500-word essay, a 1000-word essay, and a 1500-word essay (for example). I’m still thinking that part through.
So, based on the feedback here, I’m thinking at least some of the in-class problems should be posted ahead of time (so students have time to think about them and work out strategies to solve them), that we could work some problems at the beginning of the class meeting (before the main lecture/discussion) and some at the end (to apply concepts from that main lecture/discussion), and that it would be a kindness to provide extra problems for students who want or need more practice to work on their own.
Book adoptions have already happened, so at this stage of the game I won’t be switching to (or adding on) a text with accompanying (self-grading) problem software. But actually, given how much of the course is focused on critical thinking (not just symbolic logic), I’m not sure I’d be able to find a book that worked out this way for the symbolic logic bits *and* did what I needed on the critical reasoning bits.
And I’m not going to write a textbook of my own for this course until I finish writing the other textbook I’m trying to wrap up.
I once took an OChem class in which, at the beginning of each period, the professor would put two problems on the board (one mechanism and one retro-synthesis, usually), give us 3 minutes to think about them, then ask for (or designate if needed) volunteers to come solve them on the board.
To spice things up, he would have two teams of two volunteers solving the problems simultaneously (which gave an “entertaining” competitive edge to the ordeal and increase the chance of seeing some common mistakes). This would be timed as well, and then he would go over the proposed solutions himself. The whole thing would take between 10 and 15 minutes and the volunteers/designated students would get some crumbs of extra credit. From what I could tell the whole lecture hall was very engaged in trying to find the solution.
I don’t know how well this applies to symbolic logic but I thought it worked pretty well.
Doesnt Formal Logic have pretty discrete answers? You are either P or you are Not P and so forth..
Does your university have the facility for online homework?
Can you use any of those online multiple choice question quizzes?
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