UC Berkeley Professor Zvezdelina Stankova reveals the semester she first watched a third of her calculus class collapse, having to lower grade cutoffs and redesign her syllabus on the fly "In spring 2023, I'm teaching calculus two, second semester calculus at Berkeley." "I had something between 12 and 1400 students in two classes." "And for the first time, I noticed that about a third of them were disengaged with the class after week two." "They would not come to lecture. There would be a missed quiz here, not submitted homework there. The first midterm was a disaster. I never seen anything like this before." "And don't get me wrong, we have still fantastic students at the higher end. But the lower end was so far behind, so many standard deviations behind their classmates." "So I on the fly had to redesign the syllabus to make it easier, more accessible. I introduced bonus points. I introduced polls in class just for participation. Come and answer these multiple questions on your phone and we will give you some credit." "And even then, this bottom third did not come to class. I had to revise my grade cutoffs, I lowered them down in order to help students pass the class. And belatedly now, in retrospect, I find that this was a wrong decision."