Robert Silberman State University College Cortland, New York 13045
I
The Keller Plan: A Personal View
After four years of teaching organic chemistry using the Keller Plan,' much of my original enthusiasm for the plan has worn off, even though my students' enthusiasm is largely undiminished. Students do seem to work harder, achieve better grades, and perhaps gain a better understanding of the course material, but prolonged use of the plan leads to some adverse side effects. These side effects are the subject of this report. The most important problem I have as the instructor in a Keller Plan course is that after 3 or 4 years I no longer seem to be learning anything from my students. Most teachers will agree that one of the rewards of teaching is the intellectual stimulation they get from their students. In a lecture course I was constantly learning new material as I prepared lectures and answered student questions about this material. In the Keller Plan students are given a very detailed outline for the course, which is prepared before the course begins. Student feedback during the outline preparation is minimal. The outline soon takes on the attributes of a sacred text. Deviation from the outline is heresy. Only a few exceptional students show even the slightest interest in any material that is not specifically mentioned in the outline. Student questions become very predictable, so much so that it becomes hard to keep annoyance and boredom out of the answers, but the repetition of questions quickly pin points material students find difficult. If one believes the cynical dictum "that students attend class and ask questions to either find out what will be on exams, or t o get and clarify the exams," then students in a Keller Plan follow this rule to its logical conclusion. They never have to come to class or ask questions because they know what will be on the exams and they get their exams back immediately. The phase "will it be on a quiz" is the course motto. This motto or a reasonable facsimile, can be heard in any course, but perhaps not so stridently. Almost all the creative effort in a Keller Plan course takes place before the first class, during the preparation of materials. Once the course begins, both the instructor and the students become locked into a rigid system that is difficult to change. I found that the lack of freedom to rearrange topics, change emphasis, and introduce new materials in response to student feedback was very frustrating. Attempts to change the course materials after the course began met with considerable student opposition, and in one case the opposition of the campus administration. The task of preparing a Keller Plan outline can be very valuable for an instructor. There is no better way to get a complete detailed picture of your course. However, yearly small scale updating of the course outline becomes a tedious, time-consuming and ultimately a discouraging task. I found myself making fewer and fewer changes each year, partly because the course materials were close to my notion of the ideal outline, but also because of the lack of student interest, and my growing boredom with the task. There was no way to accurately judge the effect of a major outline change until the course had started. Most student feedback did not center on course content, but rather on rules and bylaws of the course. Therefore, many changes were minor and consisted of changes in the contract. There are some obvious solutions to instructor frustration: change the instructor for a Keller Plan course frequently, alternate Keller Plan and lecture from year to year, or give up
the Keller Plan. Less obvious solutions might involve changing texts or giving out course materials in small, easily changed segments. A minor difficulty I had was explaining to my colleagues and to myself why a Keller Plan course seems to require so much time and effort in comparison to a lecture course. Not only is there more contact time, hut the bookkeeping involved is time-consuming and tedious. For example, in a one-semester, 90 student class in organic chemistry, approximately 2500 five-question quizzes are given, graded, and filed. A computerized file system proved to be more time-consuming than a simple file folder system. However, a computerized quiz was very s~ccessful.The increased contact time had one major benefit. I was able to talk to almost every student in the class personally. Personal contact in a 90-student "lecture" course is often an unusual occurrence. The built-in resistance to chanee and lack of flexibilitv. which1 found so frustrating, is largzy unnoticed by the tutors and the students. After all. as far as mv students and tutors are concerned. the course is a novel one-time experienr~.Thr nroblems thev had with the course were of an entirely ditierent nature. Undoubtedly the students that benefited most from the course were the tutors. They learned the course material far better than they thought possible, and got an excellent introduction to t e a ~ h i n gPremedical .~ students who had been tutors were particularly pleased to find that they were able to do very well on the organic chemistry segment of the premedical exam. Choosine" a " eood tutor is often a kind of intuitive euessine game. The best tutors have the right combination of maturity, nersonal inteeritv. and confident self-imaee. Outstandine academic abiGty often of secondary importance. An a c g demicallv superior student who is arroaant. immature, or tutor is hard overconiden{ can be a disaster as a tutor. k to find. but I usually can find 6~? potential tutors in each class of a b o k 90 students. Once tutors have been chosen, they may face a variety of demanding and stressful situations. During the course of a semester, a tutor may he called upon to make decisions and judgments that will affect a fellowstudent's grade. Obviously, they cannot be susreptibletnpeer pressure. Tutors have been nre&red bv aearessive students to eive ouizzes or eknlain material outsidLUofthe regularly s c h e h e d hours. The same arouo.of aeeressive students is oarticularlv auick to blame Futors for ti& own shortcomingkd difficuiti&. Finally, very conscientious tutors sometimes found that tutorina placed more demands on their time and energy than they weie prepared for. In short, tutors are under more pressure than they bught to be expected to bear. I have tried to counteract some of the peer pressure by making i t clear that decisions concerning tutoring times are mine and that all complaints come to me. Any disputed quiz result is also brought to me. Tutors are told not to spend time
Presented in part st the 7th Northeast Regional meeting of the American Chemical Society, August 8,1975. 'Silherman, R. S., and Parker, B. J., J. CHEM. EDUC., 51,893 (1974). 2Lewis,D. K., Wolf, W. A., J. CHEM. EDUC., 50.51 (1973). Volume 55, Number 2 Februafy 1978 1 97
arguing about grading derision and only rarely have I found that a tutor's iudament has beenat fault. Whilemany students feel t o free arg;e about every grading decision with other students, they will argue with the course instructor only when they have a real grievance. As the number of tutors increases, consistency in grading quizzes hecomes a problem. In an attempt to head off the problem, I spot check quiz grading and hold discussion sessions about grading. One method I have used is to Xerox a questionable quiz after erasing the grade, and then ask each tutor, separately, to grade the quiz. Discussions about how each graded the questionable exam have proved very helpful. If tutors are encouraced to use their judgment with regard to student performancd; tutor moral ishigh, particularlyif they feel confident that the instructor will hack them. A serious moral question has confronted some tutors: what to do about a fellow student caught cheating. I am happy to say tutors confronted with cheating felt a sense of moral outrage. Each tutor handled the problem differently, but all handled it well. In the four vears I have used tutors, I was very pleased to find that almost all my tutors were excellent and that there are still some students who will work diligently for an intangible reward. It is difficult to sav if the Droblems encountered by students in the Keller Plan a& a mkifestation of the Keller Plan or the times we live in. Many students plan their time poorly and seriously underestimate the amount of studying necessary before thev can oass a quiz The result has been a steady increase in ;he nimber of students who fail to meet course deadlines or who do not complete the course. A"beat the system" approa>h to the coune is also hecoming more prevalent. There seems to he an increase in the number of students who take several quizzes for a particular unit in hopes of hitting an easy quiz, i.e., one containing questions on the articular tooics thev studied or one that has questions the; have heard about. some students have gotten the same exam auestions w a n e two or three times, because they assume that once a question has appeared on a quiz i t will not appear again. They never bother to learn the material. Another "beat the system" strategy involves 3 or 4 students who take quizzes in rotation. After each quiz is taken, all involved get together and compare questions. After each has taken 3 or 4 quizzes, the students essentiallv know all the questions. Fortunately, by the time they hav;done all this quiz taking, they have ~ r e t t well v mastered the material in the unit. Over the years there-has also been an increase in overt cheating. As noted before, a situation involving cheating is a particularly difficult one for undergraduate tutors to handle given the intense peer pressure not to inform on one's fellows. I have noted two other upward trends: an increase in the ~~~~
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98 1 Journal of Chemical Education
amount of trivial haggling on the part of the student over a tutor's interpretation of question or answer, and an increase in the number and volume of comolaints about the amount of work in the course. The haggliig is characterized by the statement. "It was not mentioned that wav in the outline." The complaint about the work in the course is characterized bv the statement. "I have more work for this course than for any other course 1 am taking." I can only answer,that indeed, thev mav work harder for this course. but the work is reflected in their better grades and I hope greater understanding of the course materials. A dis~roportionatenumber of com~laints have originated from the rank of very competitive, aggressive students (read as Premed. students) who seem to make life more trying for everyone. Flexible scheduling of tutoring hours leads to many comolaints about the number of hours and the times tutors are available. This usually takes the form of a complaint, that so and so's tutor met his students on Mondav. " . Wednesdav. " . and Friday, but mine cannot meet on Wednesday, so it is unfair, or "why can't I see my tutor for an extra hour on Tuesday this week, instead of next?" The only solution seems to be to schedule the same time and hours of the day for everyone. I have found that setting a series of well publicized deadlines for the course relieves some of the jam up that occurs before holidays and at the end of the semester. If no deadlines are set, some students try to take six or seven units in the last two weeks of the semkster. This sudden great demand for an increase in tutoring time is very unfair to tutors who are heginning to study for their finals, or are completing semester projects. If no deadlines are set, the race with disaster that occurs at the end of the semester is often lost, with resulting hysterics by the losers. As I mentioned before, a maddening amount of bookkeeping must be done for a Keller Plan course of any size. In my course there are literallv thousands of auizzes to keen track of. Because the students' grades and progress in the'course deoend lareelv " - on their auiz record.. ereat care must be taken to keep accurate records. Misplacing one quiz is an invitation to student comolaints. hvsterics. chaos (choose one. two. or all of these). he largdr the class, the more involved and'tedious the hookkeepine becomes. The best piece of advice I can offer is to keep upwith it. If you let it slide for a week or two, you may be in for a couple hours of unadulterated tedium. To sum up my experience with the Keller Plan, my students moan and complain, but work like dogs and beg me to keep the Keller Plan. My tutors seem to revel in the feeling that they have truly mastered a difficult subject and have had a positive effect on other students. I look a t the whole system and wonder if it is worth the effort. In spite of my feelings of exasperation, I am forced to conclude that it is.
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