6.3 Student Accountability

It seems to get harder every year to get students to hold themselves accountable for their decisions and actions. This should be sorted out before the students get to post-secondary, but that seems to have fallen through the cracks, and it is now our problem.

There are ownership issues with every choice. Students make choices about how they spend their time, what they do when, and the amount of effort they are going to put in. They make choices about how they will study, how much they will invest in each class, how they treat their classmates, how much each hour is worth to them with respect to what mark they will get. They make choices about what they do not do. Marks matter and for many students, the choices made will depend on how they see the marks.

Being accountable is part of what the best college students do (see Bain 2012).



Just had an interesting thought as this point was typed. If the student does not think that the deal is fair, they will not think that they have to be accountable. In their world, accountable is when it is a win-win situation for them and it is fair. If you create a situation where they have to make a choice that they think is unreasonable, in what they perceive as an unfair situation, they will not own it. They will consider that the contract has been broken. All bets are off and it will not be their fault what happens next. And, if it is not their fault, they will not hold themselves accountable. If it is truly an unreasonable and untenable situation, the student might be right on this. However, if the student is not running with a good set of expectations and assumptions, working in their own version of reality, this mismatch will cause problems. If they fundamentally disagree with what they are told, what things are worth, what they think they have to do to get the mark they want, they will not own it. We might not like it, but that will be the case. If they lose on one decision, there will be natural tendency to make it up on the next and in some cases their choices will come back to haunt them and they will not like it, or expect it.

Ownership can sometimes be related to other issues like entitlement. We once has a student argue that it was ok for them to download for free, without permission music (before legal streaming etc.). Why not pay? It would be too much effort to go buy it and it would take too long. Because they could not wait, it was ok to steal. No ownership. Another student argued that it was ok for them to cheat because we made it easy for them to do so. Not their fault they could find material online and present it as their own.

Ownership can also be related to deeper patterns of behavior. In some cultures, it is a compliment when you copy and the student has been brought up in this culture. It is hard to take ownership of their decisions to copy when they have been brought up to practice copying and believe that copying was a good thing.

If there are no 'ownership' consequences, there is no need to be careful about the decision making. If it can be negotiated away, there is no problem. If you can solve by 'next time', no problem. If you can simply say 'I am sorry' and the problem goes away, no problem. There has to be a reason to take care about the choices and decisions made. If there is not a down side, why care?

By the way, if you do not own things, and hold yourself and your TAs accountable in the same way you are trying to hold the students, this will also be a problem. If you do not deliver on your promises or take care of your own mistakes, they will hold you accountable, even if you do not. Then, it will be game-on and they will not own things either. So, ownership goes both ways and it is indeed a complicated topic.

Some students have NEVER been held accountable and forced to take ownership for their decisions. These students will need a runway and an education about ownership, what it looks like, why it is important, and how it feels. Some students will expect to have their decisions checked and you are accountable if you do not tell them how to fix their choices and decisions. Some students will hold you accountable for making the decisions and choices for them, hence no ownership guilt or concern; again.

Here are some thoughts about developing a sense of ownership...

• Establish a common language and understanding what the words responsible, accountable, and 'ownership' mean. Do not assume that everyone is working with the same card deck.
• Make sure that students understand the types of things they need to take ownership of. And, why. And, what happens if they do not take ownership.
• Provide some experiential learning so that they know what is expected, how to do what is expected, and how to do it correctly (if it is an issue of ethics, integrity). Show them the right, wrong, and have them do a practice run. Just watching a slide deck will not be good enough.
• In assessments that involve problem solving, design, choices, etc., have the students ALWAYS justify and explain their key choices/decisions and why one is better than another. Have them explicitly know the decisions and choices they are making.
• For fun, ask them to add a short description of what would happen if the choice or decision is not appropriate. How would they know? What would the impact be?
• In a situation where a decision or choice has gone south, make a learning moment out of it. Have them do a reflection on the decision, choice. Was it possible to have made a different choice? How would they have known that another choice was possible, what were the pros/cons of the choices, that they SHOULD HAVE known, could have known from the course. Have them try to answer the question: why did you choose x instead of y?
• Depending on the reasons they went down the wrong rabbit hole, give them a chance for redemption. If the reason was just related to sloppiness, lazyiness, and just not caring, options for redemption are probably not warranted. Also consider if you or your TAs had a hand in the poor decision making, and that you did not set up the students for a poor decision. This can through poor instruction, but also through inappropriate loading and stress caused by your assumptions and execution. If you contributed to the situation, own it. And, in ambiguous situations, plausible doubt, advantage goes to the student.
• If the student only made one, innocent error in ownership, work with a reformative mindset and use it a solid learning moment. Just educate them. That might be all it takes. If the student is a serial denier and offender of 'ownership', they might be lost souls and nothing you can do. That happens. Not everyone can be taught ownership. Not everyone cares.

Further reading

• Bain, K. (2012). What the Best College Students Do, Harvard University Press.