Today marked the second of two peer review sessions for the 6-8 page researched argument paper due for my Composition 2 students.
One third of the class (7 of the 21 left out of the original 24) did not show up for it. Absence means a 10 point deduction off the final grade of the paper (which is worth 100 points--so not coming to peer review results in a 10% dock of the grade). FYI, they do not get points for showing up with a draft--they only get docked if they don't have a draft.
The paper is due Friday at noon.
As the rest of the class worked its way through the review session, I sat at the computer in the front of the classroom and graded their annotated bibliographies.
I have two sections of Comp 2 for a total of 45 registered students. A grand total of 29 turned in the annotated bib, which was worth 15 points. Of those 29, 5 turned in lists of sources with no annotations. What I'm looking at on the D2L stats screen amounts to the fact that about half of my students did the work, and did it correctly. This is after I spent an entire 75-minute class period teaching them how to do the annotations (complete with excellent examples on a PowerPoint that they can access at any time through D2L) and showing them how NoodleTools would make it so easy to create the Annotated Bibliography that I envied them how quickly they'd be able to get it done (they had 2 weeks to come up with and annotate 15 sources: max of 4 from the internet, and at least 1 book).
I. do. not. want. their research papers. I'm considering giving them an extension just so that I don't have to look at them this weekend when the in-laws are up for a visit for Mother's Day.
This is the worst semester I have ever had in over 15 years of teaching at the college level. I just got tenure, and I feel like quitting to go herd goats.
Oh those goats. They can be flakes. They always want the extra hay. They want to sleep in late and be sheared only while listening to iPods.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I would feel lucky to have half my students turn in correct annotated bibliographies. Out of one of my classes on Monday, in which there are 17 registered students, you know how many showed up? Two. Fucking two. One of them was fifteen minutes late.
ReplyDeleteBut congratulations on tenure!
ReplyDeleteIf I may suggest a tactic used in a similar class I took as undergrad...
ReplyDeleteKeep the due date as is. However, when the due date comes, require each and every one of them to sit with you (or with each other) and make a check mark next to every single one of the requirements.
Only papers with all requirements completed may submit. The others get an extension and the list of things to do.
I had a professor do this. My friend learned a great deal from it. With the extension and the checklist in front of him, he polished the paper. The end result was a lot better than the half-assed last-minute POS he was about to submit.
Occasionally we get classes that contain a larger-than-usual conglomeration of dumbasses. And so we must take measures to fight back that we wouldn't do normally.
Just like any other job, herding goats has its own issues. During the course of your herding day, you may come across this guy, who apparently killed a neighbor's goat (and maybe did other things; eeeeewwwwwwwww) while high on bath salts.
ReplyDeleteI'd go with Academic Monkey's suggestion, but still have some sort of penalty attached to those who haven't completed the assignments as instructed (if you want to keep track of that).
ReplyDeleteOmigod, Pat, that is hilarious. Revolting. Hilarious. I have to go lie down with the smelling salts now.
ReplyDeleteI know it's sheep, not goats, but now seems as good a time as any to link to "Comments on RateMyShepherd.com (McSweeney's).
ReplyDeleteAnyway, this past semester I had a first-year composition class much like yours. Nearly half the class failed the course, despite the fact that I, like you, had broken down the final research assignment into discrete steps, each of which was explained thoroughly in class, marked separately, and returned to provide students with feedback they could apply to the next stage of the assignment. Sometimes there is only so much you can do.
Innumerate undergrads believe in magic math.
ReplyDeleteIf they hand in ANYTHING before final grades are due, they will be shocked...SHOCKED I tell you... that they failed the course.
Like others in the thread, I have seen this all before. The students should be flunked out of school if they do this in a string of classes, but we all know that doesn't happen so much any more.
@ The_Myth
ReplyDeleteWe want their money.
EMH: Do *you* see their money? I sure as heck don't.
ReplyDeleteThe well-paid administrators want the money. How else can they build a new dorm to add more of them to the books!
May I ask how your 'peer review' activity works? It sounds like a great idea in theory, but my first-year student write so very, very poorly that I would be fearful to let them loose doing peer-editing, if that's what this is. Yet they clearly need lots of help before they hand in finished papers, and I don't have the time to edit everyone's work myself. (Universities in my country don't require 'comp' courses, so I -- like most other first-year TAs -- am left trying to balance writing-skills development with conveying actual disciplinary content.)
ReplyDeleteOne of my students mentioned in an oral report recently that our institution's intro engineering classes have a 40% fail rate. He also pointed out that it's not because the classes are all that hard (okay, so they don't seem all that hard to him; other students' mileage may vary), but because they require a lot of work -- like the level of work that cuts into having a social life, joining a fraternity, taking on paid employment, etc.
ReplyDeleteI don't really want to fail 40% of my students; I'd find that discouraging. But I can't help wondering how my classes would be different if both I and my students were sure that I could, without anyone suggesting that my teaching was somehow at fault.
@Pat from Peoria: thanks so much for the link. I'm leaving to scrub my eyeballs now....
ReplyDelete@CC: I am fortunate to work at an institution that does not examine specific proffies' failure rates (either tenured, tt, or adjunct). I have had classes (as an adjunct and as a tt proffie) where my failure rate was over 25% (though thankfully they're not the norm). And when I say "failure" for composition, I mean any grade below a C (which is what they have to earn to get credit for the course). In looking over my two sections' current grades, the failure rate right now is at 20%, though that may go up or down based on the research paper they're handing in today. That's about what I expect.
ReplyDeleteFailure rates (for us, also include D(rops), W(ithdrawals), and I(ncompletes that turn to Fs) are highest in our system for our early math courses, intro to psych, and....composition--and the math and psych fail rates are in the 40% range. Theoretically we're supposed to be doing something about it, but last year they increased our course caps (the same year we continued to take a 3% furlough) so I'm not sure that "we" are really addressing the real issues so many of our students fail the first time out. (We know that smaller class sizes greatly improve student outcomes...but the central administration goes ahead and increases the class size...fucktards.)