PL4235 - A blast from the past!

If you do not know me and read this blog, it probably means you first came here because of my NUS module reviews. I have received many emails over the years about my reviews, all asking for further advice about module selection, thesis planning, and general advice. Today, I got an interesting email.

In my final module review post, I reviewed a module which I didn't have a good experience with, PL4235 - Moral Psychology. One year later, I received a notification in my inbox that told me Nina Powell, the professor in question, has left a comment on my blog. No wait, 5 comments. That's because her comment was so long that she had to split it up into 5 comments.

Since she put in so much effort to try to defend herself, I felt obligated to reciprocate and put in effort to respond to her. This was the email I sent her:

Dear Nina,

I have read the lengthy comment which you left on my module review blog, and I felt obligated to respond since you clearly put in some thought and effort in your comment. The text in red are your original comments, and my responses follow them in black.

Nevertheless, I am pleased to have this opportunity to address your concerns and also assuage the concerns of any future potential students reading this blog.

FYI, I get emails from time to time about my reviews, and I have received one or two about my review of your Moral Psychology module. A student was interested in your module, but "after reading your review of her module, I'm really scared."

I responded: "I'm not sure how she is like now, maybe her teaching has improved after a few semesters of feedback. Let me know? :)"

The point of reproducing this short exchange is just to (re)frame what you may think of my views- I am not particularly 'anti-Nina' or despise your guts, and I am aware that it was your first semester teaching and you may have improved since then. I haven't heard from this student again though. 

The feedback that I received from your fellow students in that year (2013/14) was generally quite different from what you provide here. Your fellow students, for example, mentioned finding the course refreshing in its approach to moral psychology and they mentioned enjoying the depth and rigour of the lectures and the reading. Four students nominated me for best teaching, which I found particularly encouraging, thoughtful and kind, as that was the first time I had taught at NUS.

I actually consulted a few of my friends in that class to check if I was alone in my views. Maybe something was wrong with me right? But all of them actually echoed a lot of what I felt, though a few of them were more forgiving, with comments like 'Aiya, it's her first time ma' (Translated: Yea I think so too, but it's her first time teaching, so it is understandable) (Singlish seems much more efficient)

The point here is that you can't please everyone. Maybe there were some students who loved the way you managed that class. Maybe there were others like me who didn't, and find your above lines a little surprising. 

I made significant changes to the moral psychology course after that first attempt. The course now includes a more clearly structured reading list with required and supplemental readings now directly identified. Assessment of the class participation is now more transparent and the fieldwork activity is now based on group rather than individual work. 

Some of the problems noted in the evaluation exercise are echoed in your blog here and so I expect you will be pleased with the changes. 

I actually said most of what I said here in the evaluation exercise. I recall spending significantly more time on it than I originally planned... so yes, I guess it's good that there were changes made.

The reading list was extensive, but not unreasonably so. In general, you were expected to read one chapter of a book and five journal articles per week. At an average of an hour each, that is just six hours reading. For a module where you are expected to do ten hours of work a week, the reading list was, essentially, exactly correct. Moreover, the reading reflected that expected by other universities for students taking highly similar modules. The course on Moral Psychology offered at NYU, for example, requires the students to read 3-5 journal articles per week, plus an additional reading of 3-5 supplementary journal articles per week, and three supplementary books. You can download the syllabus here: http://www.psych.nyu.edu/vanbavel/lab/documents/MoralPsychologySyllabus.VanBavel.pdf

I think it is important that NUS students receive a similarly comprehensive education to students at other institutions because I want our students to be globally competitive. Similar to the syllabus at New York University, and many other institutions, my current syllabus for the course at NUS includes two books and 2-3 required journal articles each week and a further 3-5 recommended journal articles for those who are especially interested in that week’s topic. 

The new breakdown seems more sensible (2-3 articles a week, and optional supplementary journal articles), though it depends on how long the book chapter readings are. While it is admirable that you are trying to keep NUS students globally competitive, you would have to expect if your reading list is more extensive than the 'market rate' of other level 4000 Psychology modules, you would face some disgruntlement about that. I'm not quite sure where you really stand though, you start off by defending a more extensive reading list, but later share that you have trimmed it down. 

Regardless, I don't think a good, holistic, comprehensive education involves flooding students with reading materials. There may be other more effective ways to do so, which you have yet to discover. (I'm not saying I know any better, just that intuitively it doesn't seem right)

I am saddened that you were not sufficiently interested or motivated to read for the course past week 4 and I am somewhat surprised, and concerned, that you did so well on so little reading. I do not think any student at degree level should expect to do well unless they put in substantial self-motivated work outside the seminar room. 

I don't think a 'B' grade is 'doing well'. Nonetheless, if you saw in that post, I did not expect to do well anyway, and predicted a 'B-' grade.

"The essays are weird, I've no idea what she wants even after completing two essays and receiving feedback. Her feedback makes no sense sometimes and seems slipshod. Don't bother staying back for the 'feedback sessions she gives after she returns your essays, she gives generic writing comments which don't help at all as it's not specific to what you wrote. "

I am not sure why you found the essays “weird” because you offer no specific detail. That is exactly the kind of feedback I would have provided to you when assessing your written work. Your criticisms and comments must be sufficiently detailed so that the reader can understand your meaning. That said, I wuld guess that you found my essays “weird” in part because I asked open-ended questions and expected you to pursue your own thoughts and understanding of the topic. Students at NUS appear more familiar with, and more comfortable with, short answer questions that look for specific facts and details. An open-ended essay, in contrast, asks you to identify the relevant facts and details to wield an argument based on your understanding and your integration of those facts and details. It is more difficult, but it is exactly what is required of degree level students around the world. I want NUS students to be able to compete with those students equally, because NUS students are capable of that; they deserve an education that pushes them out of their comfort zone so that they may reach that competitive edge. 

I would love to give you a thorough breakdown of why I didn't like the essays, but I honestly can't remember what they were about. I do remember one major gripe I had was how you appeared to be asking for more elaboration on many things despite the short 500 word cap. 

I am sorry you found my feedback nonsensical, slipshod and generic. Again, it is difficult for me to address your comments because you provide no specific details or examples. It is possible that in my first year at NUS I did not quite connect with the particular difficulties NUS students have with their writing and so I provided comments that were difficult to understand and came across as generic. Nevertheless, I provided every student on the course repeated opportunities for one-to-one discussion and feedback, and I saw improvement in the writing of most of my students. If you felt my feedback was not helping you to improve your writing, you could have talked to me about that during one of your personal discussion slots. 

I'm not sure if I elaborated on this in my module evaluation, but I remember one clear problem of the 'feedback session', which is more of an administrative issue. You tried to go to each student one by one and go through the comments... and by the time you have covered half the class, you probably realised time was an issue and may have rushed through the remaining half. I recall feeling that session an entire waste of time as I waited for over an hour (maybe 2?) only to get some generic comment (I wish I could remember exactly what these 'generic comments' were, but being so generic, they weren't very memorable). 


"She doesn't do much besides read off her slides, and when even so her slides aren't structured well such that sometimes she describes an entire experiment which only had a one line description in the slide, and you are frantically scribbling down the main points of the study."

I find it confusing as to how I both did little besides read off my slides and described an entire experiment from a one line description. Whatever may be true, at university, and especially in a final year seminar-style honours level module, it is not necessary to scribble anything down, frantically or otherwise. The point is to use the lecture to guide your reading and to guide your thoughts about the reading. 

To address your confusion, there is clearly some typo in that sentence, judging from the phase 'and when even so'. Let me rephrase the point - The delivery of your 'lecture' wasn't well synchronised with your prepared slides. Often, I found that you read off the slides without any elaboration on the points. I remember this distinctly because ... ok here, let me quote what I already wrote: 

"She doesn't seem to prepare well for each lecture, sometimes she is reading off her slide and hits a point which she didn't know how to explain, and, I quote her: "ok nevermind skip that." ???

She did this multiple times. in one lecture."

And at other times, you can rattle on about an experiment which had only a one line description. It helps the audience a lot if you could at least provide a skeleton to follow your points, even if it repeats the readings.

"Her 'writing tips' were just strange writing stylistic matters she insisted we follow. Some examples:

- Don't start a sentence with 'However,', no matter what. 'It undermines your argument'. (?? That IS the point gosh.)
- Don't use flowery language, such as 'upon' (I swear, she said this). Use 'on' instead.
- Each paragraph must have at least 3 sentences"

Those are standard rules. However, you are unerring in pointing out that these rules do not have to be obsequiously followed. However, when you are new to writing the rules can help an author better construct his writing.

Quite likely you struggled with reading those three sentences above, and yet there was nothing obviously gramatically incorrect. Starting those two sentences with however throws the reader from one position to another and it is difficult to work out what the author means – should a writer follow the rules or not?! And you probably tripped over “unerring” and “obsequiously”. Here is the same paragraph but written with the aim of it being easy for the reader:

Those are standard rules. You are correct, however, in pointing out that these rules do not have to be slavishly followed. When you are new to writing, however, the rules can help an author better construct his writing. 

There are still problems in that rewrite. I would prefer not to repeat “however” even if it is now embedded in the sentence and thus less distracting. And I would prefer a different word to “slavish” but “unthinking,” or “compliantly” did not quite work for me either. Again, writing is difficult. Writing takes time and thought to find the right word and the right structure to convey exactly what you intend to say. I provide some rules and tips that I hope will help until each student starts to understand the process and can find their own style. Once a student understands the point of the rules, then they can break loose from rules and add their own “style” or “flair” to what they write. 

So you still stand by your statement that 'upon' is flowery language? 

I am ambivalent about this. On one hand, I see value in what you say - teaching a student how to write would reap immense benefits (if the teaching is effective). Doing well academically definitely requires good writing. 

On the other hand, I disagree with the idea of dedicating a large portion of your module to 'teaching good writing'. I'm not sure how it is structured now, but this 'writing' component should be a secondary component, if at all, of the module. When I took the module, it felt like you were giving disproportionate focus to 'teaching how to write' than to the module content. This accentuated my preconceived notion that the syllabus was not well-prepared. 

In addition, I find that writing rules tend to be subjective. I have just completed a one year stint in a policy department within the Singapore government. Policy work requires a great deal of writing, so I've seen my work corrected in a variety of ways by my superiors. I find that the same piece of work can be criticized or praised, depending on who is reading it. Often, the edits made by one person may be due to his idiosyncratic preferences, and when it hits the next layer of checks, that person may revert those very edits.

Back to your 'rules'. I still disagree with your 'however' rule. In your example above, the series of sentences are only confusing because you strung two 'however's back to back, resulting in an awkward flip flop of meaning. When used appropriately, I think 'however' makes perfect sense, as a signal post to indicate a change of meaning, even if placed at the start of the sentence. I'd further argue that placing it in the middle of a sentence (i.e. between two commas) is more distracting as it breaks the flow of the reader.

I did struggle to remember everyone’s name in the seminars and I did find the Chines names hard to pronounce. I still find some names difficult, but I have been working to improve my pronunciation; I am gradually getting there. I am also improving with remembering names and did so even while I taught the seminar you were a part of.

I made an offhand comment about how you struggled with Chinese names and 'gave up learning names after the first week'. Out of everything I wrote in the post, I think this is one point which I would retract as it isn't really fair to you. 

This point was nested in the bigger point about how I was especially disgruntled about how you allocated the class participation grades. I still think it is an unfair and silly system (which I was personally shortchanged) which should be changed (which I note that you mentioned was changed to be 'more transparent').

I wish, Alan, that you might also have had a more enjoyable and beneficial experience from our encounter. That you did not is deeply regrettable.

Indeed, it was regrettable. I had high expectations for the module as it sounded very interesting. It was also unfortunate that the other module I took that semester was very well-conducted, which just served to contrast against the flaws I have highlighted in PL4235. 

I will highlight in the review that you have left a response in the post, so that people are aware. Hope the students of next semester have a great learning experience!

Regards,

Alan