Was it sheer coincidence that the entire class, except for one, failed to do the reading? I somehow doubt it. It’s an interesting example of how a group of people behaviorally tip when exposed to a certain stimuli. It’d be a great question for discussion as a class, especially in the context of this course, which is largely experimental.

Maybe the entire class got totally sloshed the night before though, and just didn’t do it on general principle. I don’t know.

I had the same experience more often than I’d care to count last year in my First Year Seminar. Ask Shannon, she was in it. I counted on the students to read along, but didn’t test them on it per se. Over time, as the explicit (i.e. graded) demands of other classes increased, it seemed like the students did less and less work for the course. It was as if they had too much freedom. The students said they liked the freedom and felt bad when they didn’t do the work, but the bottom line is they didn’t take responsibility and do the work. I haven’t given up though. I’m going to tinker with the format for this year, perhaps using Gardner’s APGAR on a regular basis.