Dealing with student assessment anxiety in the first year at university

Ako Aotearoa has some excellent materials and research projects that help tertiary teachers to improve their practice. For instance, consider this research project that finished towards the end of last year, by Valerie Sotardi and Erik Brogt (University of Canterbury), entitled "Understanding Assessment Anxiety during the Student Transition to University". I just read the final report from the project. Unsurprisingly it caught my interest because I predominantly teach first-year students (and PhD students, and nothing in-between any more).

In some ways, this project didn't highlight anything terribly new. Students face anxiety around assessments, and the transition from high school modes of teaching and assessment and their expectations to university modes of teaching and assessment and their expectations is a big contributor to this anxiety. The change of learning environment from high school to university is an unforgiving transition. Assessment at university tends to be higher stakes (or appears so to students), and the large class sizes in first-year lectures tend to prevent students from receiving individualised feedback on their progress. Another big contributor to assessment anxiety appears to be student uncertainty - in particular about how to interpret and execute assessment tasks, and about the criteria and expectations against which assessments will be graded.

I have to say that I was unsurprised at the extent of anxiety that was reported:

More than 3 out of 4 participants in this sample had expressed that tests (82%), writing tasks (82%), and oral presentations (78.2%) elicited mild-to-extreme levels of anxiety. To a lesser degree, approximately 1 in 2 students (52%) had reported group work as associated with mild-to-extreme levels of anxiety. Also noteworthy were descriptive reports of anxiety on extreme anchors of the instrument (i.e., students reporting a 6 or 7 on the 7-point scale). Participants found oral presentations the most intensely distressing (33.5%), followed by tests (31.4%), writing tasks (28.5%), and group work (6.7%).

The lower anxiety around group work was a bit of a surprise. I wonder whether students at the top of the grade distribution and those at the bottom have different experiences of anxiety relating to group work?

The report tried to dig into some of the factors that contributed to assessment anxiety. This bit will also not come as a surprise to any university lecturer:

Time management was another key issue contributing to assessment anxiety. Leaving things to the last minute and realizing too late that there was more to do than anticipated led to an increase in stress and anxiety levels. In contrast, students who planned their work ahead of time and had the opportunity to edit and redo parts of their assessments reported less stress than those with poor time management skills.

The only disappointing part of the report was the lack of really concrete recommendations for improving practice among lecturers of first-year university classes. Sotardi and Brogt surveyed students and staff, and I found the summarised student responses to be a bit more helpful than those from the staff:

Of the course-related factors that reduced anxiety, the most common was confidence in the task. A few students identified various ways of managing their stress, whether that be self-soothing strategies, seeking reassurance from someone else, time management, and group study with classmates. Having prior experience in the assessment type or university experience seemed to greatly relieve stress for students. Other factors included effective teaching, providing useful resources, low weightings of early assessments, and knowing that stress was common among classmates.

It is hard to establish what to do when the recommendation is "effective teaching", since I don't believe there is one-size-fits-all model for that. This bit (again, from students) is also important:

Student participants made the following observations and recommendations about their first year that they thought lecturers should be aware of (in order of frequency):

1. Lecturers need to be realistic and clear about student expectations.
2. Students need time in advance to learn, comprehend, and complete assessments.
3. Time to relax is important.
4. Students don’t always feel comfortable asking questions.
5. Students enjoy self-directed and active learning tasks.
6. Students [may] have mental health issues.
7. Courses with competitive entry are stressful.
8. Lecturer enthusiasm with students makes it easier to learn.
9. Students face a lot of pressure to do well.
10. Too much information can be overwhelming for students.

There is a lot of value in the report, but I get the feeling that this is only just the beginning for understanding the anxiety that students face in the transition to university-level study. More focus on how students perceive this transition, and what works well and what doesn't work so well, will be important. Sotardi and Brogt conclude that:

...staff can assist university students by reiterating that the transition from high school is challenging, and that stress and a lack of confidence are common. Students should know that they are not alone in the challenges they face, and that they can learn to adapt and cope by developing effective strategies in terms of learning, such as study practices and help-seeking behaviours. Lecturers can also assist by taking the time to review their course assessment structure in a way that builds students’ confidence, makes the expectations and priorities for students clear, guides them into thinking about how to approach the assignment, and informs students about the university support structures available to them.

Those might be the most important takeaway messages from this important research.

We don't need an international framework for sand extraction

Economists define common resources as resources that are rival (meaning that one person's use of them reduces the amount of the resource that is available for everyone else) and non-excludable (meaning that it is not possible to stop people from using them - if they are available to anyone, they are available to everyone). When thinking about common resources, we often think about the obvious examples like trees, or fish (in fact, that's an example I spend some time on in my ECONS102 class). But what about sand? Nature reported back in July (footnotes omitted):

Sand and gravel make up the most extracted group of materials, even exceeding fossil fuels. Urbanization and global population growth are fuelling an explosion in demand, especially in China, India and Africa. Roughly 32 billion to 50 billion tonnes are used globally each year, mainly for making concrete, glass and electronics. This exceeds the pace of natural renewal such that by mid-century, demand might outstrip supply (see ‘Global scarcity’). A lack of knowledge and oversight is allowing this unsustainable exploitation.

Desert sand grains are too smooth to be useful, and most of the angular sand that is suitable for industry comes from rivers (less than 1% of the world’s land). This extraction of sand and gravel has far-reaching impacts on ecology, infrastructure and the livelihoods of the 3 billion people who live along rivers (see ‘Shifting sands’). For example, sand mining on the Pearl River (Zhujiang) in China has lowered water tables, made it harder to extract drinking water and hastened river-bed scour, damaging bridges and embankments.

Is sand a common resource? It is rival, since one person using sand means that the sand is not available for anyone else to use. Is sand non-excludable? Possibly yes:

Most of the trade in sand is undocumented. For example, between 2006 and 2016, less than 4% of the 80 million tonnes of sediment that Singapore reported having imported from Cambodia was confirmed as exported by the latter. Illegal sand mining is rife in around 70 countries, and hundreds of people have reportedly been killed in battles over sand in the past decade in countries including India and Kenya, among them local citizens, police officers and government officials.

If essentially anyone can extract sand, then it is non-excludable. So, it seems that sand is a common resource, as defined by economists. Common resources suffer a potential problem, known as the 'Tragedy of the Commons'. The private incentive for sand harvesters is to harvest as much sand as they can, in order to maximise their profits. However, the social incentive is to harvest sand in a sustainable way (to ensure that sand is always available). This leads to over-harvesting of sand, and threatens the collapse of the resource.

Solutions to the common resource problem involve making the resource excludable. This could include regulation (with enforcement) or assigning property rights. Either of those options make the common resource excludable, since they define who is allowed to use the resource. They make sense as solutions when we are talking about trees or fish, because if the solution is enacted before the population collapses entirely, the population can recover. However, sand doesn't reproduce, at least not on the same timescale as trees or fish.

That makes a solution to the common resource problem for sand particularly difficult. The Nature article posits seven components of a sustainability plan for sand:

1. Source - finding new sources of sand, such as in Greenland;
2. Replace - finding alternatives to using sand, such as crushed rock;
3. Reuse - using crushed demolition waste and concrete as an alternative to new sand;
4. Reduce - cutting the amount of concrete use;
5. Govern - an international framework to control sand extraction;
6. Educate - making sure people know that sand is running out; and
7. Monitor - keeping better track of available sand resources.

That seems like a lot of effort, but it made me wonder - why are we worried about this? I can understand worrying about trees or fish - if a species of tree or fish is over-extracted to the point of extinction, that tree or fish is never coming back (unless we develop Jurassic Park technology). However, sand is created by weathering and erosion of rocks. So, if sand runs out, we just have to wait for more to be created (or we have to make our own).

Moreover, if natural sand becomes scarcer, the price of sand will increase. That price increase creates incentives to find alternatives to using natural sand. We already have alternatives (crushed rock or recycled demolition materials) - they are just more expensive than natural sand right now. The same thing happened with rubber. When access to cheap natural rubber was disrupted during both World Wars, that spurred the adoption of synthetic rubbers (which were already available, just more expensive).

We don't need an international framework to control sand extraction. Sand isn't going extinct.

The $8 bucket of movie theatre popcorn

I can't believe it's over five years since I wrote this post about pricing at movie theatres. I was reminded of it recently when reading this article in The Hustle about the pricing of popcorn:

In March of 2012, Justin Thompson, a 20-year-old security technician from Livonia, Michigan, decided to go to the movies.

Inside, he encountered an atrocity we’re all familiar with: the movie theater concessions stand, with its $8 popcorn, $6 sodas, $5 candy bars.

Left with no alternative, Thompson indignantly bought a treat at an 800% markup.

It's interesting to think about why popcorn is priced so high. In my ECONS101 class, when we cover pricing strategy, we talk about firms making strategic pricing decisions where they may not be profit maximising on one product, but that enables them to maximise profits from other products they sell. The obvious example of this is loss-leading, a relatively common practice at supermarkets for example. Supermarkets sell some of their products at a loss, in order to encourage more shoppers into the store, with the goal of getting those shoppers to buy other products that the supermarket can profit from. It seems that movie theatres are engaging in something similar:

When a theater wants to show a film, it must agree to pay the distributor a percentage of all ticket sales. This percentage is higher during the first few weeks of a film and decreases over time, but generally averages out to ~70%.

So, if a theater sells a movie ticket for $9, its cut is only $2.70 — and that’s without accounting for other expenses.

Theater owners could price tickets higher, but it wouldn’t do them much good since 70% of any increase goes straight to the studios. Instead, they think of movies as a loss leader: their primary goal is to get as many people through their doors as possible, even if it means breaking even (or losing money) on the price of admission...

Unlike tickets, concession sales are not shared: theaters keep 100% of the revenue they generate. And this revenue generates much higher profits.

The Hustle looked through annual reports (2015-2018) from two leading movie chains (AMC and Cinemark) and found that concessions account for ~30% of total gross revenue, yet make up 45-50% of gross profits. 

So, having priced the tickets low in order to get people to go to the movies (although, I leave you to judge whether the tickets are actually priced 'low' or not!), the movie theatre hopes to make profits from the concessions. The most interesting part of the article is this bit on the markups:

Why are the markups highest for popcorn (788%), and lowest for candy (313%)? My ECONS101 class should know the answer - popcorn must have the least elastic demand. That is, moviegoers are less sensitive to an increase in the price of popcorn than they are to an increase in the price of soda or candy.

The reason for that probably comes down to the availability of substitutes. Movie theatres have rules against you taking your own food in from outside (i.e. food not purchased at their concession stand). It's fairly easy to subvert this by bringing things in your handbag or pocket though. However, that works well only for small items (candy), and less so for drinks. Popcorn, on the other hand, you want to consume while it's hot, and it's a lot bulkier, so more difficult to conceal. So, substitutes are most available for candy, and least available for popcorn. The result is that the optimal markup is highest for popcorn, and lowest for candy. And that explains the $8 bucket of popcorn.

[HT: Marginal Revolution]

Read more:

• Regal Cinemas to introduce dynamic pricing for movies
• Pricing at movie theatres still defies logic. Or does it?

Let's not revoke the ivory ban just yet

It's only a couple of months since I last posted about the ban on elephant ivory, but it's already in the news again. From The Economist:

This month’s [CITES] meeting will consider competing proposals about how absolute the ban should be, since in some countries elephant populations have recovered (see article). Countries seeking a modest relaxation have a strong case to make. But it is not strong enough. The ban must stay.

Just to reiterate my point from that earlier post, banning ivory sales (and, by extension, the sale of other parts of elephants) doesn't completely shut off the supply of elephant ivory, but it does decrease it because the costs of supplying ivory are higher (due to the penalties for supplying an illegal product). If you relax the ban, then the supply of ivory (and other elephant parts) will increase, and you'll end up back where you started, with elephants critically endangered. The Economist's article seems to agree:

To understand why these reasonable-sounding proposals should be rejected, consider what has happened to elephant numbers since cites most recently authorised some legal trade, when Botswana, Namibia and South Africa were allowed in 2007 to sell a fixed amount of ivory to Japan, as a one-off. Elephant numbers started falling again. A survey conducted in 2014-15 estimated that elephant numbers had fallen by 30% across 18 countries since 2007; another estimated a decline of over 100,000 elephants, a fifth of the total number, between 2006 and 2015. Increased poaching was at least partly to blame.

These numbers suggest that the existence of even a small legal market increases the incentive for poaching. It allows black-marketeers to pass off illegal ivory as the legal variety, and it sustains demand...

The objection to trade in products of endangered species is not moral, it is pragmatic. When the world is confident that it will boost elephant numbers rather than wipe them out, the ivory trade should be encouraged. Regrettably, that point has not yet come. And until it does, the best hope for the elephant—and even more endangered species, such as rhinos—lies not in easing the ban on trading their products, but in enforcing it better. 

Perhaps we could farm elephants, as I noted in this post from 2015:

As a totally different approach, what about farming elephants and flooding the market with cheap farmed ivory? The problem with wild elephants is that they are a common resource - rival and non-excludable. Rival goods are those where one person's use of the good reduces the amount available to everyone else, i.e. in this case one poacher killing an elephant reduces the number of elephants available to everyone. Non-excludable goods are those where you cannot easily prevent a person from obtaining the benefit from them, i.e. in this case it is difficult to stop the poachers from hunting. Farmed elephants (rather than wild elephants) would be private goods - rival and excludable. The farmers would (in theory) be able to exclude others from obtaining the benefits from the farmed elephants, and would have an incentive to sustainably manage their elephant herd. Farming as a solution for elephant poaching has been suggested before - see this piece by Shaun Jenkins last year as one example. Of course, others have criticised the suggestion (see here in response to the Jenkins article).

One problem with farming is that would spell the end for wild elephants (if you wonder why, consider how many wild chickens there are). However, one thing is clear - relaxing the current ban is not a good option.

[HT: Marginal Revolution]

Read more:

• Saving the elephants, only for the hippos to be hunted
• The debate over poached elephants
• This couldn't backfire, could it?... Stockpiled ivory sales edition
• Because crushing ivory is so much better than burning it
• This couldn't backfire, could it?... Ivory burning edition