ABOUT TEACHING - Number 45
A Newsletter of the Center for Teaching Effectiveness
November 1993
Checkers and Chess: What's in a Game?
The Transition from High School to College
Checkers and Chess is an analogy for the "game" I have observed being
played by first year students and their professors. My thesis is
straightforward: students come from high school prepared to play a good game
of checkers and their professors expect them to be playing a decent game of
chess.
The reason for the misconception is in some ways obvious; both games are
played on the same board. However, the pieces, the moves, and the rules are
different. A professor makes a move and the students look on in disbelief.
The students make a countermove and the look of disbelief is returned. The
classic example of this mismatch of views comes with the first round of exams
freshman year. The students exit their tests confident that they knew
everything. They had studied with the methods that had proved successful in
high school--they even surprised themselves by studying two days before the
test instead of the usual night before. However, the look on their faces is
shock when they get back their tests with failing grades because they missed
the point (actually, they missed a lot of points). The professors are, in
turn, swamped with complaints and often the first test is dropped if the
students show improvement. Neither player fully understands that the other is
not playing the same game, yet it is essential for the students to learn
explicitly the distinctions between the two games.
The main distinctions between high school and college fall into four
categories:
(a) the student body is different
(b) the requirements are different
(c) the classes are organized differently
(d) the teachers are different
First, the student body is different. Most college-bound students are
coming from the top ranks of their high school classes. That means that in
college, everybody is from the top of their high school class. Students can
no longer evaluate themselves by comparison to poorer students; they must
evaluate themselves by comparison to good students.
Second, the requirements are different. The requirements are harder:
there are longer reading assignments; students have to go to lecture and read
the text to understand the material; problems don't always have clear cut
solutions; students have to write about ideas rather than feelings; tests
demand detailed recall instead of recognition and may not have explicit
objectives; there are fewer tests so larger segments of material must be
remembered for longer periods of time.
In a survey of incoming freshman, we asked students about their
confidence in being able to accomplish a variety of academic tasks. Students
reported having confidence that they could produce good answers to assignments
such as "For History 207, you have just read a chapter describing the events
leading up to the Civil War. Make a diagram of the events which depict cause
and effect relationships." They seem to feel that since they were admitted to
college, they are capable of doing college work--and that they will be told
explicitly how to go about performing new tasks.
But this is not the case, especially in a competitive school where
students are expected to do more of the work on their own and are expected to
do it faster. Students themselves do not always possess adequate study skills
or self-motivation; the survey reveals that many students reply "Often" to "I
fall asleep when I'm reading or studying" and "Always" to "I am forced to
study very much before a test or before an assignment is due." Often a
student's initial reaction to academic frustration is a sense of inadequacy-
-"Maybe they made a mistake when they admitted me." Or the new demands may
seem arbitrary, unreasonable, or mean-spirited because the purpose is not
clear. The students have to learn new standards and expectations. They have
to learn what is necessary for them personally to succeed in their chosen
field.
Third, the class organization is different. The classes range in size
from 40 to 400. There is less direct contact with the instructor to get
information informally and fewer opportunities to show the teacher that you
know something. The classes meet less frequently so the segments of material
are larger. More of the work is done independently, and students are expected
to make connections between class examples and out-of-class homework problems
or readings. There are fewer reminders about tests and due dates for
assignments, so students have to organize their own reminder system and
orchestrate their own time.
Fourth, the teachers are different. Teachers in college have different
responsibilities than high school teachers; students and teaching are not
their only focus. Professors are therefore not as easily accessible; they
have office hours and appointments.
The behavior of college teachers also differs from what students have
come to expect. Professors are using a framework from their discipline to
organize the information they present, and this is often not clear to the
students. For example, in psychology, the professor is not Bob Newhart using
a fifty minute session to talk about popular psychology and personal problems;
he or she is using a formal scientific paradigm for the study of human
behavior. Students may find classroom presentations boring or find the
material incomprehensible because they cannot tune in or relate to the
paradigm in use.
How can we help students make transition from checkers to chess? Here
at the University of Delaware we at the Academic Services Center have
developed four 1-credit courses called SkilMods for college freshmen. The
courses include Academic Self-Management, Study Skills, Critical Thinking and
Problem Solving. The SkilMods are derived from contemporary research in
cognitive processes and mental development, train students on their actual
class materials--using their own lecture notes and textbooks--rather than on
artificial materials, and last for an entire semester, allowing time needed
for true mental growth and conceptual change. The Summer Enrichment Program
and the Summer Qualifier Program also offer challenging and engaging ways to
make the transition over five highly structured and demanding weeks. Ongoing
support is available throughout the year in the form of preadvisement, study
skills help, and tutoring.
What about learning disabled students who have been admitted to college?
Actually, these students may already know more about chess than they realize.
They may have been playing Chinese checkers, which has a more complex system
of rules. While equally intelligent non-disabled students may have skimmed
through high school with little effort, the intelligent learning-disabled
student has worked harder and has thereby forged some useful learning
strategies.
However, they will need to retool their strategies (and learn some new
ones) to meet new college requirements. For example, they will have to learn
how to really read. They will no longer be able to get information just from
lectures, from talking to other students, or from skimming books and guessing.
They will need to learn systematic decoding strategies.
A good example is a case of a learning-disabled student who was taking a
psychology multiple-choice test. I was proctoring him to make sure he read
the questions correctly. One question read, "Which of the following needs a
medical degree as part of their professional training?" The choices were
psychologist, psychoanalyst, psychotherapist, or psychiatrist. His eyes
bulged from their sockets. He had read each of these words in the text as the
same thing and had stored away the information in the same category--
psychxxxxxx. With a knowledge of his specific disability and an understanding
of the tasks, we developed ways to prepare for multiple choice exams that
helped him go on to graduate with a 3.2 GPA.
The analogy of "Checkers and Chess" was inspired by one educator who has
worked hard to discover the developmental path taken by college students in
their intellectual and emotional growth--William Perry of Harvard University.
At an address to a conference on the Freshman Year Experience, Perry described
how different the viewpoint of a student was from that of the professor. He
responded to the frustrated laments of questioners by saying that despite the
differences, students at this stage of development are good at learning
procedures. The job falls to many of us now to teach and coach the necessary
procedures so that the students can best learn the new game and benefit from
playing.
-David Johns
Academic Services Center