Usually I'm lucky enough to be finished with final exams in the first day or two of Finals Week. Ok, it's not luck. I request specific courses no one else wants to teach after having consulting the final exam schedule. This term I tried my luck and now have exams spaced out over several days.My usual MO is to grade exams and do the course grades the same day I administer the final. At this point I've assigned letter grades to half of my classes. In the past semesters I've posted grades within 12 hours of the final exam. The problem is that I get a lot of the following emails:
"Dear Mrs. CMP,
I saw that you posted the grades for the class and I was wondering if we could meet to go over my final. I'd also like to discuss my final grade."
Captain Subtext translation:
"I can't believe that my Ds and Fs didn't average out to a B. I didn't have any clue how to do any of the problems on the final and my solutions were illegible and confusing. So I want to come to your office to translate my solutions and tell you what I meant to put. You can give me more points since it will be obvious that I really did know how to do the problems. I also need to tell you in person how important it is that I be given an A or B in this class. If I don't get one of those grades my parents will be very angry. I will also be kicked off the Quiddich team and lose my academic scholarship. This is the only class that I've ever been close to having lower than an A in and I'll get kicked out and lose my scholarship if I get lower than a B."
I decided that I'd not post grades right after the final this term to avoid such student emails. But now I'm getting the following type of email:
"Dear Professor CMP,
Do you know when you will post grades? I really want to know how I did."
At least these are less passive-aggressive, properly addressed (I'm not "Mrs." anything), and mostly respectful.
Q: When do you post grades? Right after the final, after students "move home", or not at all. Is there any way to win?
I've had a string of semesters where my final exams were backloaded into finals week such that it was unusual for me to be done grading them and assigning final grades until the morning grades were due. So I've not given it much tactical consideration. This semester I have early finals, so I'm going to have to actually make a decision: I'm leaning towards holding off on grade entry until I have all of my courses finished.
ReplyDeleteI rarely get those kinds of grade-grubbing emails. Not sure if it's because they just don't think I'm that kind of a nice guy, or they just don't care that much anymore (or it could be because the grade system we use here has no plus/minus, so the grades are pretty broad categories and students usually have a pretty good idea where they stand.)
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ReplyDeleteCrap! Blogger destroyed the formatting of my previous comment. Here it is in better format:
ReplyDeleteMass e-mail:
"Dear students:
I will be posting grades on {insert dat grades are due into the office}. I will not be available for any meetings before [week after term ends? next term? summer session? never?} because I will be computing grades the entire time.
If you have questions about your grade, you can send an e-mail after grades are posted on {give latest date possible}.
Happy summer!"
Of course, the biggest grubbers will ignore the message, but, like your latest e-mails, just ignore them.
Dear God, how would they have liked it if they had to actually WAIT for their grades to arrive in the mail!??! Or compute them themselves....
This time of year, I contemplate adding a clause in my syllabi that says "for every inquiry about when grades will be posted, one point will be deducted from the student's final grade"...
ReplyDeleteI just got the following e-mail from a student:
ReplyDelete"Hi Marginalia,
I was wondering if our exam grades were going to be posted on collab? I would've just dropped by to ask, but I'm already back home. Hope your summer is going well!"
Was tempted to send the following response:
Post the grades on Collab? You mean, where every other grade or other piece of relevant info for this course has been posted? Yes, they will be posted, dammit! And you "would've just dropped by?" Where, pray tell? I don't have an office on campus, and I hope to God that you don't know where I live. And you "hope my summer is going well," do you? It will be, once I get through grading this mountain of exams and give you the mediocre grade you so rightfully deserve. Little turdflake.
What happened to the good old days of watching the mailbox to intercept your report card before anyone else could see it?
ReplyDeleteTell them to put the blinders on and climb inside Schrodinger's box: You have an "A" until you open the envelope and "force the grade to choose" what it really is.
"What it really is" until they whine to try to get it changed into "what it ought to be" anyway. But it will still be what it is.
@Ferris,
ReplyDeleteSounds like fun but probably won't fly.
I make a form letter in advance. When I get a large number of annoying emails, then I send it to everyone on the list.
After that, I don't even bother with the emails. You are fine as long as you make the deadline, and they are just going to have to live with that.
I post them as soon as humanly possible. I then switch on my "vacation message" (auto-response) immediately, even if I'm still around and accessible via email. If I deign to respond quickly, I'm the good guy; if I don't, I give the student at least a few days to calm down and get into vacation mode before offering to speak with him individually.
ReplyDeleteI think Captain Subtext should become a regular CM character.
ReplyDeleteSee http://collegemisery.blogspot.com/2011/04/undead-why-wont-they-just-go-away.html
ReplyDeleteLike EMH, I now make all inquirers fill out a form so they're clear about how things work (e.g., no after the fact grade bump merely because they're graduating etc.). But really, I intend the form to scare away nuisances. However, this past term even the daunting form didn't stop most of them -- they just kept coming. The undead.
I decided a couple of weeks ago to adopt a version of Lex's strategy -- a brief moratorium on such inquiries, a cooling off period to thwart at least some of the rash "can't believe I didn't get a ___" demands that go nowhere yet eat up nice chunks of my precious time and wreck the tranquility I need so desperately at the end of a long term/year.
Truly, things are getting out of hand.
I post grades but don't make them visible to students until I stop checking work email, which happens for the week after graduation when I go off the grid for about a week. I also post a note on their grades letting them know when grades WILL be made visible.
ReplyDeleteIf I get a grade grubber who has ignored my announcement, I refer them to that announcement and ignore their request. If they insist, I then ask if they're trying to manipulate me to become as unethical, dishonest, and slimey as they appear to be by asking for special treatment.
Oh, Cynic! How do I love thee!
ReplyDelete@Eskarina: I'm rather found of Captain Subtext, too, which is why he's been in three posts in the last weeks. I think I'll keep him (for a while at least). I was planning on making a graphic for him after Graduation.
@ Cynic
ReplyDeleteI like that! I think I will be asking my grubbers that more often.
I post my grades in Blackboard when I finish them, put up a final course message there, and then turn on my "out of office" on my regular campus email. Students who don't go back into Blackboard won't see their grades until the college's system finalizes them. By that time, I will be on vacation for real and won't be checking my work mail till I get back for summer school. I generally make it a practice not to go back into Blackboard mail until the next term has begun so I don't have to deal with the "I'm graduating/I tried hard/I was only two points away" (no, you were 20--learn the difference between points and percentages) emails.
ReplyDeleteI just say, "Grades are posted. There is a procedure for disputing grades through the Dean's Office." I have yet to have anyone use it.
ReplyDeleteI post grades as quickly as I can. My response to grade grubbers is to tell them (after double checking my calculations) that the grades are final. In 15 years, I've only ever made one computational error, and I submitted the paperwork to fix it immediately. I don't even bother telling them about the mechanisms in place for disputing a grade. I figure that if they really wanted to, they would figure out how to do it themselves.
ReplyDeleteI let students know on the last day of class when I expect grades to be up, post them as soon as I have them, and email the class if I'm going to be much later than planned. That cuts down (a bit) on the "when will grades be available?" emails. I've also got a boilerplate answer for those who want to discuss their grades while I'm still working on others' grades; basically, I'll provide a breakdown of the final grade (since I do my final grading in my own database, not the LMS gradebook), but anything else has to wait until grades are in. At the end of the fall semester, I tend to defer any discussion more complicated than that until after New Year's (and use a vacation message to enforce that); that's easy to do since the whole university shuts for a week to 10 days, and I couldn't file a grade change even if I were inclined to do so (I never have, except to resolve an INC or follow up on the resolution of an honor charge).
ReplyDeleteSpring semester is harder, especially when, as this year, I'm also teaching the first summer term. Basically, I'll use the same deferral techniques while I'm still grading, may declare a day or two "away" from email after I get grades in (tricky since I'm also communicating with students in the summer class, which is DL, by email; I can only do that if I get the grades in according to my most optimistic schedule, which so far I'm not quite making), and may use the need to get the summer term started as a further reason to enforce a brief cooling-off period.
I've also had good results with F&T's approach: informing them of the appeal procedures after one or at most two rounds of email. In the old days when students actually showed up in my office to complain, I'd walk them down to the chair's office (usually empty, but never mind; I'd point out the office hours/contact info.). Now I provide a link to the relevant procedure (which involves them creating a written document -- usually enough to discourage them).
And I always post failing grades for those who have disappeared in the course of the semester as soon as I can legitimately do so. That cuts down on sudden last-minute reappearances of students bearing (often-plagiarized) essays.
Whatever happened to the old FERPA excuse? I just tell my students I will not discuss grades via e-mail and that they have to come into my office if they want the final grades. This usually cuts down the amount of whining and moaning and if they complain about their grade I can show them exactly why they got the grade they did.
ReplyDeleteAs for the final grades, I post them up on the very last day and then put my "not available via e-mail until the fall" out-of-office message.
This semester I did something a little different. As soon as I finished grading final tests and/or projects, I sent a mass email to each class letting them know that their final grade was available on Blackboard. I reminded them to compare the total number to the chart that was on the syllabus to determine the letter grade.
ReplyDeleteThen I told them that they had 2 days to alert me to any calculation errors so that I could correct mistakes before submitting the grades to the registrar. Finally, I explained that being a couple of points away from a higher grade was not a calculation error on my part.
I don't know why, but I received very few messages from students this time -- much fewer than in the past.
I leave the country no more than a week after posting grades. No lie. Enforced cooling off period. "We have no...how do you call it...internetz...in Starvistan! In Starvistan, netz inter you!"
ReplyDelete@The Cynical Optimist: If they email me in the LMS or from their college email to my college email, FERPA is intact, at least according to the student affairs folks who conducted our training. In fact, FERPA was one of the biggest reasons we even got emails for all our students back in the Dark Ages.
ReplyDelete