So: Midterm grades have been distributed. I have yet to see the classes related to the post I wrote last week (which shockingly got POW from RGM--I was rather tickled about that. Too bad I can't claim it on my activity report). When I hand back the fistful of D papers tomorrow, I am sure the whinging will be heard from one end of the county to the other.When I checked my class lists today (in advance of grading a short assignment they'd had over break), I noted that they're all still enrolled.
All 48 of them. Seven of them are flunking outright, and 3 more have Ds. None of the seven turned in the latest assignment. I can't drop them, and I sure as hell have no interest in grading anything they might deign to hand me should they choose to remain in the class.
My thirsty:
Q. If you are unable to administratively drop students from your course (for absence, for not submitting work), what is your policy on grading work they choose to hand in *after* you've informed them that they're failing/have not the hope of a snowflake in hell of attaining a passing (C) grade? Does your school have a policy on this? Do you put something in your syllabi? What do you do?
That's tricky. If, as the students say, the only worthwhile outcome of the class is the passing grade, then no further marking on your part is necessary. But, if as we say, the learning transcends the grade, then you should comment on their work -- in the name if education!!
ReplyDeleteIn the real world, I tell students, "you can't pass, so don't bother coming." That has always worked up to this point. If they demur, take them through the math. But if they pigheadedly think that math is flexible, then I'm not sure you have a choice but to mark any work they hand in. Do you? Kinda depends also on your departmental/institutional culture. Will there be cover for you if you tell the failflakes to get lost?
I just talked with a student not ten minutes ago about this very issue. I told him, "I can't drop you, but it's in your best interest to drop."
ReplyDeleteThat wasn't news to him, but he asked if he could do anything to pass. "You'll only get minimal points if you turn in all the things you haven't so far (three assignments) and do the speeches you've missed (two) tonight before the, oh, by the way, just-in-case-you-forgot, TEST." My syllabus reads, "10% off per late class period," so the best he can hope for is 40% if everything else is perfect (not likely, obviously.)
I don't expect to see him again.
Can't you waive the late penalties? After all, if he's still doing the work and learning, that's what really matters. I'm not joking or trolling. I was just wondering whether that would be feasible, perhaps with a warning that this is a one-time chance and he should not put himself in this position again. Penalties are meant to avoid problems such as large numbers of late papers, not to prevent students from passing if that would be possible without the penalties.
Delete"Late work does not receive comments". This policy has totally saved my sanity since I implemented it, and it solves the problem of the ones who don't drop and suddenly want to hand in all the stuff they missed. They get a couple days of grace, and then there's a daily mark deduction as well. Sometimes the math-challenged late-flakes will hand in stuff late enough that it's an automatic zero, which always makes me boggle. If you didn't want to bother doing it, why do it later for NO MARKS?
ReplyDeleteAs far as the subsequent assignments are concerned, if they handed them in on time, I would mark them they way I do everyone else's, but honestly, I can't remember this coming up.
I wish I could remember who it was that coined this phrase on this very site (Darla maybe?), but I have taken it to heart:
ReplyDelete"Never care more about their grades than they do."
This phrase has allowed me to view those students as the blessings that they are. Because if I have a handful of F students, my overall average falls to an 80 or so. And so I can raise that average again by giving my A and B students slightly higher scores. Which makes those students who show up a little nicer in my class, and my evals a little easier to read.
If they turn it in late, do not accept it. If they turn it in on time, give it a cursory read, assign it a middling C grade, and keep moving. Flies on a horse's ass. They don't care, neither should you.
It's Ben's originally, I think, but whoever coined it, it's an unofficial motto around here. Somebody should translate it into Latin and come up with a CM crest that incorporates it (obviously, the design would also need to incorporate a hamster, and a duck, and perhaps one or two of Strelnikov's arcane weapons in place of the traditional lance and/or spear). Speaking of people who haven't been around in a while, where's Sam Folkchurch? I bet she could do a bang-up job.
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DeleteI may have first used it here. I'm not sure. The coat of arms is an excellent idea.
DeleteThe point of not caring isn't to get out of doing any work. It's to avoid the emotionally draining scenarios in which you plead with students to come to class and turn in assignments, then blame yourself for their lack of initiative.
I was recently talking to a fellow prof who takes insults personally. I found that to be surprising, for I expected that everyone interprets the content of an insult to be equal to the self-disappointment of the person who uttered them.
DeleteGet an F and piss and moan? Well at least you care. Don't do that again.
Get an F and don't care? Well shit, there's nothing to do for you.
I want that coat of arms. It would get well on a series of folders that I could use for carrying my class handouts around campus.
For major assignments, I have the same policy as WhatLadder (in fact, I may have stolen it from her): I don't comment on late work, or I offer only very limited comments. For very late work, I stick to my guns; I can assign a fair grade to almost anything in 5 minutes, 10 tops (a few more if I need to run it through a plagiarism checker).
ReplyDeleteFor the ever-proliferating small assignments that play such a large role in composition pedagogy, I create grading scales that reduce the points that can be earned to zero within a week or so.
Of course, students often want to finish the stupid little stuff, because it's easy, but not the big assignments. This makes absolutely no sense, and leads me to conclude that they are as cowed by math as they apparently are by writing.
I'm a little bothered by the idea that somebody would even ask this question. Of course you grade their work. Here are my reasons for always grading work, in order of increasing importance.
ReplyDeleteThey might benefit from the feedback, even if it's just a grade percent.
This is your job. Would you kick a student out of office hours if he had a question, even if he couldn't pass?
Thinking in terms of just passing or failing as the goal lowers yourself to the level of the student - don't do that.
Most importantly, grading all work covers your ass in case somebody appeals or complains that you failed the student for non-academic reasons.
I think the reason this question is more likely to come up in the humanities, and especially in writing classes, is that we do a lot of what we call "scaffolding" -- small assignments that guide the student through the process of accomplishing something big, like a research-based paper of some sort. At some point, the student has missed so many of those that we know from experience that there's a vanishingly small chance that the student will complete a satisfactory final project (even though the student, based on his/her high school experience cutting and pasting from the internet in the 12 hours before a "research paper" was due, is convinced (s)he can do it). Refusing to grade scaffolding assignments past the point where they're actually a useful part of the process of doing the larger project makes the point that the small steps are truly necessary.
DeleteAlso, given the fact that most of us are teaching about a third again as many students and sections as our professional associations' guidelines suggest that we can effectively teach, there's a certain amount of triage involved in deciding how to spend our time. Yes, the student might learn something from our feedback, but (s)he will also have the chance to learn it when (s)he takes the course again.
In an ideal world, we'd grade/comment on it all, meeting each student where (s)he is, and moving hir forward, even if it won't be to the passing point this semester. In the current academic climate, we really need a certain amount of cooperation from students, in terms of following the schedules and directions we've worked out, to keep the whole enterprise from devolving into chaos, and us from collapsing in exhaustion.
Yeah, I can see that. I guess I don't like the arbitrary choice of whether to grade a student's assignment but applying guidelines consistently for situations like this would be different.
DeleteP.S. I just wanted to say I love the word "whinging," which is still relatively new to me. I first encountered it in a mystery by Deborah Crombie. Is it English (she isn't, but her mysteries are set there)?
ReplyDeleteIt is indeed a British-ism.
DeleteAnd BB, the classes to which I refer are comp courses for which I have 4 students more than the recommended (NCTE and CCCC) cap (which would be 20 per section if my school system followed any guidelines other than the money). Eight additional students roughly equals an additional hour and a half of grading for the larger assignments--the ones where I have both a rubric sheet and comment extensively in the margins of the paper.
I'm adamently against any acceptance of late work that is mentioned in the comments here involving "different grading procedures". I may work my ass off to get something done on time and not do it perfectly only to barely outpace someone who had extra days to work and did it perfectly minus a late penalty.
ReplyDeleteWith that aside I agree with Beaker Ben. There's many reasons to still grade students who have no chance of passing. They might retake the class next semester and use any hints and tips gleaned from their failed run this semester to improve. If a proffie is just slamming down C's and leaving no comments, then that's not going to help here.
But I also do think that there's different arguments to be made for students who are trying and failing and those who just don't care. I've interacted with students that I've had to grade...it's not difficult to tell whether or not I should bother giving them more in depth comments on their assignments.
The reason I don't comment on papers more than 3 days late without a documented excuse is that grading is not my only job. I have many jobs, and when I am done grading I am done grading. I've budgeted the time for it, and the time is past.
ReplyDeleteI can't drop students who are failing, but they often do some weird retroactive drop thing behind the scenes. Whatever.
If a student stays in class, I continue to grade the work. I don't accept late work, so that doesn't even enter into the equation. Even if my comments are futile, the student (or parents or taxpayers or generous donors to scholarships) paid for the class. If he or she wants to stick it out, then I need to do the same. I find that in those too dense to figure out they have no chance of passing, I can often just copy and paste the same comments as they continue to make the same mistakes. Then I vary them slightly. The fact that they don't notice this trend or ask me any questions about it says to me that we're just putting on a dog and pony show, but no one can accuse me of not giving feedback, a point on which I'm evaluated.
ReplyDeleteI forgot to add that I can drop students, but it is not in my interest to do so. My college keeps two statistics on each proffie: pass/progression rate (C or better) and retention rate. Students who never show up to class prior to the day of state reporting do get dropped, but after that, why would I? Not dropping them means I take the bullet only on the pass/progression rate. Dropping them means I take it in both categories because drops count the same as D or F. If they are too lazy to drop themselves, then I'm not going to do further damage to myself when they're already making my rates worse by failing.
DeleteThere's an easy solution to this. Very easy.
ReplyDeleteOn the student's paper, at the end, write this chirpy message:
I hesitate to give you a grade since you cannot pass the course, but I would love to talk with you about this paper further during my office hours! Please bring it by if you would like to discuss it in detail...
I go through the motions, anyway. Out of 100 students, one more paper isn't going to be much more, plus who knows, the student might learn something.
ReplyDelete