A Dead Grandma is slacker students’ best friend. Bing AI natuarlly
It’s that time of the semester. Tis the beginning of what I’ve heard affectionately called “Dead Grandma Season.” You know when aging relatives start dropping like flies and students just can’t finish that assignment on time.
Humans gonna human.
This reminds me of a story from a book I just finished called Predictably Irrational by Dan Arielly from Duke. Arielly is a behavioral scientist who writes about behavioral economics for laypeople like me.
NBC has a knew show based on his work called “The Irrational” staring Jesse L. Martin. The show is my new favorite, the Arielly character helps the FBI solve crimes using behavioral psychology and clever experiments. I like my social psychology served bite size, with a good helping of intrigue and mystery.
Behavioral Economics finally gets its own detective show. Bout time, I say. When does Philosophy get a turn?
The book is also worth a read. He tells non-boring stories about experiments in his field and then extrapolates from them (sometimes a bit thinly) lessons about how we can combat our own predicatable irrationality.
One study was designed to see how irrational students were about their procrastination. In his syllabi each class had three papers that made up most of the students’ grade.
For one class he did as I tend to do. He told them they could turn in the papers as early as they like but that all three papers would be due on the last day of classes—no exceptions.
Another class were asked to pick their own due dates up to the last day of class, write them on a piece of paper and then turn it in. The dates they chose could not be changed. Any late papers would be deducted 1% per day. Again, students were free to turn the papers in early.
If you were in the second group, you might just put the last day of class as your firm date for all the papers—if you were confident you wouldn’t procrastinate. But most people procrastinate.
Arielly speculated that those students who set unchanging deadlines throughout the semester were aware of their own irrational procrastination.
Which group do you think got better grades?
The second group had better grades than the first. Just to make sure it wasn’t a fluke. He played hardball with a third class. He chose three unalterable dates spread throughout the semester with penalties for late work. Sure enough, these students had the best grades of the three classes.
Arielly doesn’t think the best method is hardball however. Instead, the second option where students have some freedom to set their own deadline but can’t change them is the way to go.
I like the idea but I probably wont try it. Arielly is at a research university and probably has several teaching assistants. I’m at a teaching university, I don’t have any teaching assistants to keep up with all those dates. Can you imagine? With at 4/4 load?
I wonder though what if you combined the first and second methods could you boost punctuality and save a few grandmothers? What if you told students that all papers must be turned in by the end of the semester. If it’s late you better be coughing up a lung or something. Dead grandparents won’t cut it.
Then what if we tell the students to take a few minutes or even a couple of days to think about what sort of deadlines they would want to keep them from . That way those who know they are susceptible to procrastination have some guidelines. We could even have students with similar deadlines, form a pact to check in on each other like dieters and their friends after New Years.
Maybe I’ll try it. Let me know if you do.
Speaking of deadlines,I’m going to start making my own deadline for this substack Fridays instead of Thursdays. Still every other week. See you soon.