The fifteen minutes before class are perhaps the most revealing moments most students spend in a classroom. Conversations during this time inevitably swing toward the class itself—one student looks at a second and nervously asks, “Do you know what we’re going over today?”
The second student smiles and shrugs their shoulders. “I don’t know; I didn’t have time to do the reading last night.”
“Me neither,” says the first student, launching into a ten-minute tale of woe that details the unfortunate series of events which occurred during the previous 24 hours and ruined their attempts at studying. The second student nods and responds in kind. Together, they’ve made an interesting revelation—nobody’s doing the reading for this class.
In walks the professor, who sets today’s notes down on the podium and calls attendance. “Today,” says the professor, “we’ll be going over the reading from last night, pages 107-123.” The professor then begins going over the themes and important terms from the previous night’s reading. For our two unprepared students, this is perfect. They skipped the reading, but obviously didn’t miss anything important: the professor is going over all the important things in class.
When most students neglect to do the readings before class, this is the excuse they revert to first. They simply didn’t have time. In a way, they have a point. The majority of AASU students are members of the iGeneration, and between classwork, sports, families, jobs, video games, the internet, television and obliterating one’s short-term memory, there’s a lot of reasons to put homework on the back burner.
The argument against this is very simple—those enrolled in school should be treating school as a full-time job. Assuming that the average AASU student is enrolled in twelve credit hours and that they should be spending two hours preparing outside of class for every hour that they are in class, it’s fair to say that an AASU student should be spending 24 hours outside of class each week on homework.
Does the average AASU student have 24 hours a week to spare? This is where basic math becomes extremely useful. It is safe to assume that there are 24 hours in a day and seven days in a week. Assuming that the average student gets 8 hours of sleep a night, this leaves 16 hours a day (or 112 hours in a week) to play with. To make sure that this hypothetical student doesn’t go completely crazy, we are also granting them one day off per week. This leaves 96 hours—16 hours spread across six days—for the student to actually accomplish things.
We know that the student in question is taking 12 credit hours, and thus spends 12 hours a week in class. For the sake of this example, we’ll also assume a one-hour round-trip commute to each individual class (eight hours per week), meaning that the student spends roughly 20 hours per week on classwork. This leaves the student with 76 hours outside of class to do homework.
In fairness, a great many AASU students have full-time jobs outside of the university. While jobs can take up a lot of time, even a person who works eight hours a day, five days a week, with a one-hour round-trip commute, will be left with 31 hours a week—seven hours more than needed to accomplish the recommended amount of homework.
We’ve established that a student who works 40 hours a week and takes 12 credit hours should, in theory, have enough time to do readings outside of class. Now comes the tougher question—if it’s not a question of time, why aren’t students doing the readings before class?
There’s reason to believe that the answer lies with the professors themselves. Many professors assign readings before the material is taught in class. In theory, this encourages students to do the reading beforehand, so they may come to class prepared with questions that will solidify their understanding of the topic.
The thing is, most professors go over all the important things in class. Some professors literally read aloud the text which students were supposed to have read; other professors will abbreviate the assigned reading, giving more easily understood notes that the students can then study from. In either instance, the student gains their understanding of the material by paying attention in class, reinforcing the idea that reading before class is nothing more than a waste of time.
The worst part is that these attitudes are often reinforced on test scores. Many professors design their tests around the material presented in class. This means that anyone who has paid attention in class will be in good position to pass major exams. A significant percentage of the final grade in most classes comes from exam scores. Thus, it’s easy to assume that students can get very good grades simply by studying the notes they take in class—and, if that’s the case, why do the reading?
For all the students who ignore the readings, there’s just as significant a percentage of the student body that diligently does the reading before every class period. It’s important to recognize these people for their hard work. It’s also important to recognize that, in most cases, these people are the standard-bearers in their respective classes, and generally are far more successful than their unprepared classmates.
Alas, their unprepared classmates are still passing classes. If students failed courses for blowing off the assigned readings, this editorial would never get written; the problem would take care of itself.
Part of the problem can be traced to professors, who don’t put enough of an emphasis on the assigned readings. Some professors have tried different techniques to force students into doing the readings. One technique is to have random “comprehension quizzes” at the beginning of some class periods, as a way to check that students have done the reading before class. Other classes require students to submit a written response to the assigned readings at the beginning of class.
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