Q: Does "behavior" or classroom comportment have any weight in your final grading for a semester? Have you ever used something outside a student's actual assignment or exam work to determine a grade? Can I ask - without revealing too much - if you've ever penalized someone for just being a terrible fucking asshole all semester?
Not really. But there's this:
ReplyDeleteAt the end of the semester, I usually bump up people who are close to the next grade level. I pretty much always do it for people on the D+/C- borderline.
But if you've been a real flake, I won't do it.
No. I don't need to punish those types--almost always, their grades (or lack thereof) do it for them.
ReplyDeleteBut when I have a student on the bubble between grades (as in a C+ fractions away from a B-), I look back through my gradebook: no missing assignments and evidence of effort *might* mean the higher grade.
Yes, I know this is called grade inflation. But I was the beneficiary of this sort of benificence as an undergrad in a math class. I did all the homework, never missed a class, went to the prof for help, and still pulled high Cs on the tests. The last day of the quarter, he told me that I was on the bubble--I had a very high C+ (which would also have been the lowest grade I had ever gotten in 4 years with a reading- and writing-intensive double major). But because I had shown myself to be truly invested in my education, he'd given me the bump to the B-. I graduated cum laude, which probably would not have been possible with a C+ in math.
Maybe some of you won't agree with that. And no doubt I will now get my ass handed to me by my fellow CM'ers, but I'm OK with that.
I don't think I've ever *penalized* someone for being a jackass, but I am more likely to be correct and precise in my end-of-term math (i.e. "Oh, 69.2%? Oh, well. . . sad that this one blew off the extra credit option.")
ReplyDeleteYes, to the first two questions. I have 5% of the final grade for "attendance and professionalism", that is, "did you show up" and "were you a problem"?
ReplyDeleteI regularly give out 0/5 and it's only once come back to haunt me. A student asked me for a breakdown of his final grade and immediately went to my chair, accusing me of being biased against him. Flakey McFlakerson claimed to have "done the work for a C" when I had awarded him a D. Too bad his exam grades didn't back this up. It wouldn't have bothered me, but my chair actually took him seriously. It'd be nice if I felt the chair was on my side when it came to crap like this.
I know, I know. I should wish for a pony, too.
Well, to be fair, it seems to me that part of a chair's responsibility is to take these sorts of complaints seriously. The chair is the next person up from you in the university hierarchy, and it is appropriate that he or she deal with complaints in a professional manner.
DeleteI always feel that my chair always has my back in cases like this, but he still takes the complaints seriously, and looks into the student's allegations. If he doesn't do this, all he is doing is giving the student a valid reason for going even further up the ladder.
It appears, in your case, that once you explained your position to your chair, and showed the chair what the student's performance had been like in class, the chair backed you up. Is that right? Because if it is, it seems to me that this is exactly what the chair's job is.
This sounds very much like what I do, but I have made it worth 10-15% of the final grade. I grade VERY leniently (although you wouldn't think so based on the whining) and I have a LOT of students who skip class, have athletic events to go to, get the admin to approve lengthy absences, manage to finagle late submissions of assignments, not hand in assignments at all, etc. So I needed a "backdoor" way to grade them so the people who actually do the work, hand it in on time, and you know, show up, should get a perk. So instead of a lenient attendance policy (or a Draconian one), I just take off the same amount I always would and then have a bit extra factored in to downgrade the large number of assholes who seem to grace my classroom.
DeleteIn truth, it's never dropped someone more than about half a letter grade because they have so many other reasons why their grades are poor. Miss 3 weeks worth of class AND have a bad attitude? Add that to poor performance and you get a D, kiddo. Since I have had administrative directives issued at the end of term (after already having the grade breakdown on my syllabus all term) to "avoid Ds and C-minuses," this has worked out well.
Defunct: No, I really didn't feel like my chair backed me up. She took it seriously AFTER I explained the situation to her. It's one thing to listen to a student and look into the matter. It's another to always conclude that if there's a complaint, there MUST be a problem. Good teachers never have students complain about them, right? Where there's smoke, there's fire, right?
DeleteIn mostly-lecture-survey classes, attendence counts more than classroom deportment, but I leave myself some leeway -- about 2% of the final grade -- for my own judgement, which makes difference at the margins. In mostly-discussion-upper-division classes, the "professionalism" grade is almost entirely my professional evaluation of classroom performance, which is as "real world" as I can make it without kicking *them* out of class when *I* run out of money.
ReplyDeleteDitto with borderline grades: if you've been an asshole, I don't round you up.
ReplyDeleteBeing an asshole in a way that interferes with other students' learning (e.g. failing to pull one's weight in group work, sidetracking whole-class discussion) will hurt a student's participation in my class.
ReplyDeleteBeing an asshole to me personally, without bothering other students, will probably result in my bending over backwards *not* to lower a grade on the basis of personal animosity, and thus may actually result in a slightly higher grade than being innocuous or otherwise forgettable. No, this doesn't make all that much sense, nor is it necessarily good for me or for the other students (or even, in the long run, the obnoxious student him/herself). Please don't tell my students.
"participation" should be "participation grade"
DeleteThis is more or less my policy for the discussion sections that I TA for. I grade each student's participation on a simple point system, and if their classroom behavior is bad in a way that disrupts the learning of others (such as extreme or habitual lateness, grandstanding, derailing the conversation, etc), then the student gets fewer points for the day than he or she might otherwise have received.
DeleteAnd for students who treat me badly in a way that doesn't necessarily affect other students, I don't give them any breaks when it comes to bumping them up to the next grade level. I take a modicum of vindictive pleasure in assigning them the (usually low) grades that they have rightfully earned.
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ReplyDeleteI probably should not admit this, but when an asshole's paper crosses my desk, I'm a little harsher than I'd be with the nice student's paper. I don't invent new grading criteria or go all open-season, but I don't let any lapses in logic slide by with a pat on the back for "good effort."
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, sometimes assholes perform well. They get everything right, write flawlessly, and don't need the grade bump. So their assholeness is a matter of personal contention (and I have a difficult time lowering a participation grade based on anything but the most flagrant violations of the classroom rules). And that's when you just have to cut your losses, be the bigger person, give the A and walk away
Really, though, you didn't give the A. They earned it.
DeleteI agree. What I was trying to articulate was that I have a difficult time justifying a big hit to the participation grade unless someone has really violated class rules or didn't do class work (openly disrespected classmates, slept in class, failed to turn in group-work assignments or work with classmates).
DeleteMost assholes engage in more passive-aggressive behavior that's more difficult to assess: getting up periodically to leave class for little "breaks," eye-rolling and loud sighing/yawning, eating a disgusting sandwich and then fiddling around with the wrapper, etc. That stuff is disrespectful and trollish, but because it's so subjective (and so directed at the instructor), it's more difficult to use it as justification for lowering a participation grade. "I didn't like the way Jimmy sighed all the time" isn't going to cut it when the chair comes knocking.
I just marked a final where the student wrote at the end, "You should not have asked a question that involves an opinion from the student. It should have been a fact based question. You may want to look at that if you teach this class again."
ReplyDeleteGosh, I wonder if that impacted the grade?
Holy shit. The hubris.
DeleteYes.
ReplyDeleteI do some clinical instructing in the hamster health professions, and attitude counts.
This includes attitude towards fellow students, instructors, and, of course, the hamsters.
If someone is an asshole, I am meticulously careful to make sure I have graded him or her so freaking fairly so there is no wiggle room for any complaint.
ReplyDeleteThis also means that any creative license I might have to round up at grade, or to ignorecertain errors, is removed (so there!).
If a student annoys me to the point of my seeing them as an asshole, I ask a colleague to mark the work to ensure the appearance of objectivity.
DeleteLately we have been "screwed" by our various admins over "participation points" I can't imagine what they would do if I added a "classroom behavior" or "professionalism" component to the grade (which I would LOVE to have!) The admins don't like and never stand behind anything remotely subjective unless it is painfully clear in the syllabus how the points will be doled out. I had a student miss four three hour labs and when he (gasp) didn't pass he filed an appeal stating he deserved more participation points. WTF. I may have to come up with some sort of point system for "professionalism" with clear deductions or "demerits" because I am sick of the BS some students pull.
ReplyDeleteIt depends largely on the flavor of asshole.
ReplyDeleteThe girl who sat in my class during my second year teaching and constantly said things like "I hate this fucking class," disrupted every group she was in, and wrote her final paper on how much she hates black people pretty much lost all her participation points, a large portion of her final grade on how to make an argument, and seriously impacted other students as well. I was a GTA at the time and didn't have the authority to have her removed from class permanently. This sucked. I changed my group grading criteria to keep her from affecting the others. Unfortunately they chose to follow her and not turn in the "stupid" 100 point assignment as well.
Jerk to me? Fine. Whatever. I grade you and make sure that I do a bang up job of covering my ass and being fair. However, I probably won't round up if you are close.
Jerk to other students? See above re: grading....
However, over the years most of the true assholes in my sections have gotten the idea that they probably are going to have to do splendidly well just to get by and eventually drop.
"It depends largely on the flavor of asshole."
DeleteUmm.. Yuck?!
Yes. I actually have "professional attitude" in my syllabus as grading criteria. I do define it - being open to suggestions an criticisms from their peers and instructor, maintaining their workspace, meeting deadlines, etc.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, I almost-but-not-quite failed a student (just to insure I didn't have to have them again). So they passed, just barely. They fought it, filing a complaint for a higher grade as well as requesting that I be fired. It went on for a year or more. I was never consulted, and I'm guessing this is because I left a very good trail and filed a very thorough report with our judicial affairs department. The student's emails pretty much spoke for themselves. This student was openly belligerent to me in class, spoke and laughed when other students were presenting -- and this, despite the fact that I had addressed this matter with in several times (in private). In the process, this student also claimed that another student had turned me against said student.
A year passed, and I was sent a copy of the response the president sent to the student. Thankfully, it read, "request denied". Big sigh of relief.
I find that having low-stakes mini-assignments is a great way to weed out the assholes (who think, I am so awesome I don't need to do this thing worth only 5%) and lazy students (who don't bother because they are lazy). I just finished my grading for a class where there were a number of assholes who could have earned As based on their performance on major assignments, but thanks to blowing off the simple stuff, they ended up with Bs or lower.
ReplyDeleteProblem behavior gets addressed there and then in my courses. I do not suffer assholes. I am generally a pretty funny, easy-going, and genial guy, but if you come to complain, I will list very quickly how following my syllabus to the letter can transform this course or lab into a very unpleasant experience.
ReplyDeleteIt is extremely rare, but one year, a student stole my textbook in Hamster Germs Lab; yes, you stole a free instructor copy, but it doesn't matter, you just unleashed Dr."I am going German on your Hamster ass, and not the hip alternative Berliner kind of German." I stopped deviating in any way from the syllabus and applied every strict rule and regulation. Late more than a certain number of minutes? Door locked. Miss two labs? You are withdrawn or get an F. No joking around with students, strictly cold business. No extra-time or generosity on my part (only strict office hours and lab hours to meet with you). No extra-tips: follow the written guidelines, look in the syllabus, go online. All bonus questions were removed from exams, quizzes, assignments. Due date penalties were strictly enforced. I wielded pure power like I was channeling raw electricity, like when Klaus Kinski goes fucking mad in "Aguirre, the Wrath of God." I sweated none of it, my strict bullet-proof syllabus had my back: it was all in there. And if I ever have to do it again, I will. I'm a nice guy, really. Just don't test me. So that's the "short" of how I deal with asshole...
I think you have your reproductive organs confused. Engineers, bright but not smart. Or was it brilliant but dull?
DeleteHey, don't judge engineers based on dipshits like StockStalker.
DeleteBefore worthwhile CM regulars start sharing StockStalker's indignation, let me add that I did explain to the lab that I would allow the culprit to hand the book back to me, anonymously. That I thought it was probably a mistake, you probably grabbed a book you thought was yours: "Just look inside the covers and you'll see my name." I did not accuse anyone of theft: I asked that everyone check their belongings and let me know. When nothing came from that, I warned everyone that if I did NOT get it back in a week's time (left at my door, left in a public place, left anywhere so it would be returned to me -my name is written in the book- I would go by the syllabus, no exception. The warning was made and no book appears. Well, now I proceed on to do what I said I would. More than one student understood and apologized for the behavior of the anonymous truant.
ReplyDeleteNobody shares his indignation. Occasionally he has something worthwhile to say, but mostly, comments like the one above place him rather firmly in moron territory.
DeleteMore than once, I have been tempted to lower some child's grade for disciplinary reasons only. Every time I have considered it, my careful examination of how the fool has done in my class has stopped me from doing it. Never once have I found it necessary: student misbehavior has a very bad effect on how much they learn. (I like to think that my exams and homework do a pretty good job at showing how much they learn.)
ReplyDeleteSo help me though, every semester, I feel this temptation gets more and more frequent...