Because I know that students cannot follow directions unless I explain them very, very clearly and remind them to copy things down (and even then, I have more hopes of not falling into a toilet on any given day than expecting them to follow instructions), the second half of my class on Friday covered all elements necessary for the final project. I wrote the requirements—all fifteen of them—on the board. I also emphasized that they would need to fulfill every single requirement in order to get even close to the full grade. I then instructed them to copy down the requirements so they would know what they were when they started to work on their projects. That elicited groans, but half the class managed to find a pen/paper and scratch down what I had written. One enterprising soul/sole took a picture on his phone of the board, another asked him to forward that picture to his cell phone.
I then gave examples of what I was expecting. Then I had them write down questions they had for me about their projects. Surprisingly, they asked decent questions that I could answer without rolling my eyes. Then I sent them on their merry way to start their final projects. Two students lingered to talk about their grade on a previous assignment.
While talking to these two, a VERY tardy student come hurrying up. She bypassed me to ask one of the students, “Did I miss anything?”
“No, we didn’t do anything. Just more of the same,” he responded.
“Cool,” responded the first.
“Wait,” I said, “What do you mean we didn’t do anything?”
“Oh, you wrote stuff on the board for our final project and we copied it down.”
“Yes, but that’s not what you told her,” I replied.
“Same diff.,” he shrugged.
That worked out well. One student punished another for being tardy. A real time-saver for you.
ReplyDeleteI've finally realized that when my students ask if they "missed anything important," they only ever mean, "Was there a pop-quiz today?"
ReplyDeleteI was going to suggest that this an argument for pre-written assignments. But, on second thought, aside from avoiding the cramp one gets from all that writing on the board (and being handy to show to department chairs, deans, etc. during grade/plagiarism disputes), I'm not sure how much good they do. Students often ignore them, too. In fact, I suppose one might argue that writing it all down means the students have, at least, actually read the requirements (though I still don't think I could get away with this approach, or would want to try). The basic problem remains: many students won't engage with the requirements of an assignment until there are less than 24 hours left before the thing (or at least a major stage) is due, and, at that point, whatever you've given them in preparation, their first approach to resolving their confusion will probably be to email you to say "I don't understand the assignment. Could you please explain it?" -- or less-polite words to that effect.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Contingent ;o). In other cases, I do have pre-written instructions in the syllabus, but this is a project that builds on their earlier stuff, so I shape it according to what they've done already (hence the need for new instructions). It all depends on what their midterm projects are, too. Having them write out their questions helps with this so they have the chance to vent and ask for clarification.
ReplyDeleteOf course, there's always Silly Sally who shows up late and doesn't know WTF she's doing, and Confused Claude who emails me to ask what "due date" means, but generally, they're all working at a steady pace (because I have rolling deadlines instead of one final one where they wait until the last minute to do a shitty job).
But even when I had this in the syllabus and explained it ahead of time, they'd get it wrong, so now I put the onus on them and hope for the best. They seem to take more ownership of it when I make them copy it down, but that may just be me being wishful.