Sunday, April 3, 2011
Extra Credit
I typically am not a fan of extra credit, but I do offer it to make my life easier when I see students are bombing on assignments because when I offer it then I see a significant decrease in grade arguing and grade grubbing. When I do offer extra credit it is enough to raise the students grade 1% (i.e. make the difference between a B+ and an A etc). I have a student who is struggling, REALLY struggling. They plagiarized all of their first assignments. I honestly think they did not know they were doing it because they have not done it since once I pointed out what they were doing wrong. They do pretty good work on weekly assignments, seem to have a moderate grasp of the material; however their writing skills are horrible. They cannot understand the APA citation style after 4 weeks of prompting and examples, and there is no cohesiveness to their papers. The student is starting to feel beat down because I have to keep pointing out what they are doing wrong, and I have to say I am starting to feel bad. The student is not doing poorly for lack of trying, they are just not very good at writing yet. I have referring them to our universities writing center, I hope they go because with guidance I think this student can succeed. However they have asked if there is anything else they can do, they seem to think that I should offer work to make up the a large double digit percentage they are missing due to poor work and academic dishonesty. I have told the student extra credit is not designed to make up for assignments that have not been passed but instead to give the student a small boost. What suggestions do you have to help this student/make them understand?
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I'm jumping in fast here cause extra credit is a pet pee of mine and I want to hear other opinions.
ReplyDeleteIn a skill building course, I can understand more practice would improve the student's skills. Extra credit assignments make sense. But, in a knowledge based class, if the student is doing sub-par work then doing extra or more sub-standard work does not seem a goal for the course.
Am I wrong on this?
I give extra credit. What the students don't know, is that it is designed to help them learn the material and do better on the exams. So when I tell them the extra credit will boost their grade, I am not telling a lie. It is not incorporated into any mathematical grade calculation, however.
ReplyDeleteSide note: my extra credit also encourages additional Learning an requires students to act out and apply concepts in real world situations and report back what happened and reflect back on what concepts they saw at work.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteBut it seems the only students who want extra credit are the ones not doing the regular work to a satisfactory level. I would prefer they engage the regular work rather than depending on special assignments.
ReplyDeleteWhenever I offer extra credit, the only students who bother to do it are usually the ones who really don't need it at all (booster from 96% to 98% or something): the students who very very much need it rarely ever do it (with scanty exceptions). So I offer it so that the B+ keeners might potentially get to their ardently desired 89.6 round up, and the D/C/depths-of-the-earth students are less likely to claim "too hard, unfair, etc".
ReplyDeleteI offer extra credit but show them the numbers and no one ever does it. Students think that extra credit somehow is always worth more than they think it is--worth enough to offset their failures in their assigned work.
ReplyDeleteSo I do some simple math with simple scenarios, showing them that extra credit is never as efficient as performing well on what they have to do already. If there is an extra credit assignment that is five pages long and worth five extra percent towards their final grade (a princely sum and very generous) and they do that but neglect their final paper which is ten pages long but worth 25% of their grade, what sort of benefit would they expect to get? The effort towards their final paper is worth 2.5 times the effort towards their extra credit.
The way to avoid giving extra credit while still keeping the goodwill of students is to make them realize that extra credit is not the panacea they think it is. They must realize they are engaging in magical thinking when they put their trust in it. If this is repeated a couple of times, along with encouragement for them to come whenever they like to office hours, and get as much help as necessary, they don't ask for it, ever.
As for the OP's student, they obviously don't belong in that class. Many students don't belong in college, period. And many others don't belong in college at 18.
If the course in question is comp, and the OP is teaching at a school with low standards for admission (hello, friend!), it might be best to see the course itself as a sieve, meant to filter out those that cannot cut it before they invest lots more time and energy in an education they are not capable of finishing.
The student in question obviously cannot do college level work. Best to know that sooner rather than later.
I teach at a CC with open admission, and I agree that some students do not belong at a post-secondary institution, but sometimes the students just are unprepared for this level of work and need more time. If I see a student who is working hard and has potential but just isn't there yet, I try to reframe failing the course in terms of needing more time to succeed. There is no shame, if you come in with sub-par skills, in taking more time (i.e., another semester) to get up to speed. I've got one person in my comp class this semester who failed out of the same class two semesters ago simply because he was unprepared and immature. This semester he is doing a lot better and will definitely pass the class. He just was not ready the first time around and needed more time to build his skills.
ReplyDeleteWait, wait, wait. "They plagiarized all of their first assignments"? Fail them and move on! Am I missing something here?
ReplyDeleteYou can't win with extra credit.
ReplyDeleteIf you limit the impact of it on the course grade, then the people who really "need it" won't benefit from it.
If you allow it to substantially leverage the course grade, you're corrupting and undermining your assessment process.
I dunno, are you marking the student down for his/her consistent pronoun agreement errors?
ReplyDeleteExtra credit opportunities in my classes are generally few and far between. When I do, it is because something is going on in the community or on campus that relates to the material we are covering in the course. My experience has been the same as Dr. Lemurpants described -- the students who NEED the extra credit are NOT the ones who do it. I have also found, though, that grade grubbing is more easily snuffed out when I point out the extra credit opportunties they chose not to take advantage of.
ReplyDeleteI've also found that when students ask for extra credit opportunities, they mean "can I get credit for showing up someplace or donating canned goods to the food drive?" rather than doing something to enhance learning.
My only concern here is that extra credit opportunities have to be the same for everyone. Either the entire class gets a chance or no one does. Giving extra credit opportunities to select students (struggling or otherwise) is unfair.
The one extra credit opportunity I offer is bonus points for perfect attendance (or near perfect attendance). "Perfect" means attending all classes and actually paying attention and participating. It's worth 2% and I clearly state in the syllabus that this is the only opportunity for extra credit (though I do sometimes throw in campus lectures or conferences-- with reflection papers, as well).
ReplyDeleteBy offering extra credit, whatever it is, you get the grade grubbers-- smart or lazy or unprepared-- off your back.
I've had both experiences (where only the top 2% of the class do the assignment), but mostly, more people seem to do it than regular assignments (even if it only boosts their grade by 1%, and only if they do a good job on it, which I tell them ahead of time).
ReplyDeleteCase in point: We read F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Benjamin Button" story last week. I asked the class how many had read. Five people raised their hands, and their in-class quizzes attested to that. It would have taken them 15 minutes to read the story.
This weekend I assigned the movie AND a two-page response which requires them to compare the movie to the written story for extra credit... So far, when I last checked, 18 people had submitted the extra credit (the dropbox closes in two hours). They watched the three-hour movie AND did the written response, which required them to read the story anyway... all for 1% of a grade...
Clearly, math isn't a strong skill of theirs, either, if they think 1% is going to make any difference to their overall grade when they're already getting 40% or 50% in the class. So now I just assign whatever it is I really want them to learn for extra credit... and they feel happy about having read the story and watched the movie for EXTRA CREDIT.
@CC: rofl.... I laugh, but it truly breaks my heart how innumerate my students are.
ReplyDeleteStella, aemilia, and Prissy Prof make excellent points. For one, EC should not be designed to essentially help students make up work they chose not to do earlier in the semester. (Disclaimer: I do not give EC work to any of my classes.) I can understand the argument that EC benefits student if they take the opportunity to spend more time with the material so that some real comprehension happens. If you want to spend that extra time, more power to you. But as was said above, this should not allow a student to pass who has consistently made poor choices throughout the semester. And second, lest you say I have no heart--we do tend to forget at times that passing is not always the best thing that can happen to a student. Sometimes (often, actually), we need to allow students to fail so that they may take a few weeks to reflect on the semester and perhaps rethink their attitudes and motivation. At my undergrad institution there was a proffie who likened students who were not yet able to pass to fruit that was not yet ready to be picked--no shame in it, as was also pointed out above. Just a fact of nature.
ReplyDeleteThis student (or these students--I can't tell how many of the little darlings we're talking about here. The lesson on noun-pronoun agreement must come later in the semester, perhaps on the day you teach them about comma splices and the difference between plurals and possessives) doesn't need to spend his or her time doing "extra" credit. If your students spent more time doing the work you assigned, they would receive better grades and not need additional opportunities to scrape together extra points. If you want to make this student feel less "beaten down," talk to her about the progress she has made over the semester and show her the improvements you have seen in her writing, following up that part of the conversation with a short list of areas she still needs to work on. Our students, by the way, understand plagiarism, and they understand citation styles (how f'ing hard is it to plug new information into an example?). If they plagiarize and get their citations wrong, it's because they don't give a shit and either think you won't notice or that these errors won't cost them too many points. Students have a Pavlonian response to points: give them opportunities for more points, and you'll only end up with a deeper puddle of drool. I tell my students every semester that in my class, there is only credit; there is no "extra." They had better work hard to ensure they get full credit for the work I assign, because there are no second chances for slacktards.
ReplyDeleteI have learned that no no act of kindness goes unpunished. Extra credit was an issue in my department (I teach a course-alike with another colleague).
ReplyDeleteWe no longer offer it.