I really don't appreciate such negative feedback on my term paper. I am not the strongest Basketweaving researcher, but not all of us are as interested in the material as those that are. I understand it is my responsibility to preform to the required standards but I found it difficult. I struggled a lot with this paper and I don't think you understood the question I asked you in our meetings. The sources for example, I was asking you if they were sited in the proper format..NOT if they were the proper sources. If I had known the answer to my question I wouldn't have made errors. I am about to graduate and I am really hoping this class doesn't keep me from that. Is these an extra assignment or can I fix my paper for extra points?
This student showed me two drafts before the final version of the paper. I made extensive written comments on each draft, and also met with the student during office hours. I made very clear, multiple times, that the student had failed to consult the type of sources required by the assignment. In my office hours, I even pulled up the specific places on the internet (mainly .gov and .org sites), and on scholarly databases, where the sources for her chosen subject could be found. I showed her examples of good sources, and explained why the sources that she had cited (or, in quite a few cases, not cited) were inappropriate for the assignment. The problem was not that the sources were not "sited" in the proper format; it was that she used bad sources, even after being told on multiple occasions that this was a problem with her paper.
There were other problems, which I addressed in the comments that I made on her final draft:
Your level of writing in this paper is really quite inexcusable for an upper-division university class, especially since I actually marked many of your problematic sections when you sent me a draft, and in most cases you made no effort at all to fix the problems. This applies both to larger issues of meaning and sentence construction, and to smaller problems of spelling and punctuation. For example, in your draft I corrected your spelling of "British decent," pointing out that the correct term was "British descent," and yet you didn't even take the time to fix this very simple mistake. There were numerous other errors of this sort, as well as instances of incorrect use of apostrophes and inconsistent capitalization of proper nouns.Now the thirsty: I wonder how blunt other Miserians are in their criticisms of students' work?
I've been accused in student evaluations, on quite a few occasions, of being "harsh" and "rude" and "unreasonable" in my criticisms. The comment above, in which I tell the student that the writing is not up to university standards, is about the most blunt criticism that I put on student work. I'm conscious that we shouldn't try to humiliate or demoralize students, but it seems to me that sugarcoating the crap is not working, and that students need to be told when the stuff they turn in just doesn't cut the mustard. I am always willing to praise good work, and even the better aspects of weak work; I'm also happy to praise students who improve over time, because it shows that they're reading my comments and taking the work seriously. As I told this student, though, my responsibility as an educator is to evaluate their work and to tell them how to improve, and I would be irresponsible if I placed a "D" on the paper without explaining the reasons for such a grade.
Maybe in future I'll save myself some time and effort, and just write "Great job! D." Maybe that will help them "preform" better in the class.
I am more than willing to make the pages bleed. If the paper doesn't end up with enough marginalia to make medieval monks look derelict of duty, it's either of superb quality or I haven't touched it yet.
ReplyDeleteAnd I do use red ink. It's not grading without red ink.
*My meager experience in this area so far is limited to a couple experiences being asked by students to go over their work for them so they can better their papers or being asked by a professor to substitute in for them on a writing class.
I'll tell you what, Defunct Adjunct. While I applaud you and think you did not write anything out of line, I don't do this kind of thing anymore. I give limited feedback, put my grade on, circle errors (but do not explain them) and require a conference if they would like to do a rewrite. No conference, I won't grade the rewrite. I find my students don't really read the feedback anyway, and they respond so much better to verbal feedback. I don't know how many students you have or if this would be feasible.
ReplyDeleteYou can get away with more if you say it rather than write it. You can say things in a certain tone of voice, etc.
As for the sources, that information I would give her in writing. I have so many students do this. It gets MADDENING. In my upper level classes like the one in question here, (for me those are my 200 level 2nd year classes) I make failure to use each required source payable with a penalty of one full letter grade, and put that on the grading sheet.
The comment above really is blunt and personal, even if it's justified. Students can handle being told their work sucks, but when they hear that they suck, they get bristly and ignore the comments. I've found that if I use the "You did well on X, but the paper has problems with Y," doing so removes attention from their egos and directs the student's attention to where they fucked up.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with the first part of your assessment, Dr. M. The only thing that makes it personal is that DA pointed to *specific areas* that the student utterly failed to correct.
DeleteI understand your point, but what the student will read is "Your level of writing...your problematic sections...you made no effort at all to fix the problems..." etc.
DeleteI understand your point, but what the student will read is "Your level of writing...your problematic sections...you made no effort at all to fix the problems..." etc.
DeleteIt's true; I have learned to revise the second person out of my comments entirely. The same passage would read, if I wrote it, "THE level of writing ... THE problematic sections ... No effort at all WAS MADE to fix the problems ..."
DeleteWhat I really want to say, though, is that you put an enormous amount of work into this student's paper, DA, and what they ought to be doing is scattering rose petals for you to walk on. Eliminating the 2nd person from the comments is really the only change I can think of.
As near as I can tell, we have three choices: Be "harsh" and "unreasonable"; be "confusing" and "unclear"; be "nice". Any substantial commenting is "mean"; giving low grades without an easy path to full credit is "obscure" and "mean"; high grades with unalloyed praise is the only way to be "a good teacher."
ReplyDeleteWhile I think what you said is true and reasonable, I can tell you right now that the student is going to read that sentence about "inexcusable for an upper-division university class" as "personal attack" and (my fave) "disrespecting".
ReplyDeleteIt is really hard to get all but the most keen of keeners to actually correct their mistakes, so that part is definitely not just her, and not just you. I have been seriously considering giving them pop quizzes on their errors.
Defunct, believe me I feel your pain. (I literally just read the latest rejoinder from a "disrespected" student before bailing to come here!)
ReplyDeleteAs with many Miserians, this very dynamic has been the bane of my professorial existence.
I recently took a page from Stella's minimalist feedback philosophy but cannot come out from under the "Good post" claptrap of online "discussion."
I now have an online graduate student -- who claims to teach an undergraduate class at our university -- asserting that UNIVERSITY STANDARDS support and endorse the "Good post" simpleton response. I have contacted (again) the student success center and have (again) been told "keep up the good fight, hold to those standards."
But in student/professor's latest response: *I* have taken this personally. *I* have failed to understand the student's previous statements. *I* am not giving him proper respect. For some reason, the student felt it necessary to up the ante by informing me of wartime military service.
Meanwhile, the student continues to "contribute" to course discussions by basing answers primarily on personal anecdotes claiming this is the proper process as it adds "punch" to the discussions.
::sigh::
(But, for perspective, this is the ONLY student I have this quarter engaging in this ridiculous ritual. That this student cannot see the obvious difference in depth/complexity of classmates' work is gobsmacking.)
"For some reason, the student felt it necessary to up the ante by informing me of wartime military service."
DeleteThen you tell him that he is a shitbird for doing a lousy job and expecting a high grade....a test is like an inspection.
"Shape up or ship out" as my grandfather would say.
The next time this fuckup (that's a military term) says this, ask: "Do you think your wartime service entitles you to an inferior education?" Chances are good that anyone who would do such a low-class job (that's another military term) never came close to a combat area.
DeleteThere is no solution other than to just steel yourself and tell the truth.
ReplyDeleteIf I am reading this student properly (based upon years of my own experiences with similar students), anything other than awarding an A to that steaming pile of poop would be seen as a personal attack.
Why? because too many other slackers have passed this slack-jawed yokel along to you. Graduating senior, my ass.
I usually say something like, "This is not college-level writing. This may be a case of people not having taken the time to work with you, which I am happy to do."
ReplyDeleteMe: good guy who will help! Other teachers: evil grade-inflators.
They usually don't take me up on their offer to work with them, but it shuts them up.
One shouldn't be gratuitously nasty, like the prof in "The Paper Chase." Still, I'm not so sure we need to worry excessively about students taking our comments personally. They will indeed be involved personally if they wind up in the unemployment line, because of their slipshod illiteracy and poor work habits. Education must be honest, or else it has no value.
ReplyDeleteMany students simply will not read a heavily marked-up assignment. This is partly because the helicopter-parented generation has been so shielded from criticism, disappointment, failure, or responsibility, the result is their inability cope with any of these. Part of it is their short attention spans, fostered by all manner of electronic entertainment.
ReplyDeleteBecause of this, and also to speed up grading, and also to make sure that my comments are legible, and also because about half the errors students make are the same 6 or 7 errors, I had stamps made up, which I use while grading. Here's what they say:
Please get help with your writing, you are not writing at college level. [Whenever I use this, I staple a copy of our Writing Center's web page onto the paper.]
Please read the instructions carefully.
Omit needless words.
Avoid opinion: let the facts do that talking.
Avoid colloquialisms or cliches.
How do you know? Please cite a reference.
Avoid affecting a breezy manner. Serious writing needs to be more formal than the average e-mail message.
Don't break sentences in two.
Spelling error
Grammar error
It's = it is
Its = possessive of it,
as with hers or his.
Please avoid this error.
My second grade teacher, Sr. Roberta, had stamps with a little cartoon angel and captions. One showed him slipping on a banana peel with the caption, "You're slipping!" Another showed him getting a medal for doing good work.
DeleteIt's sad that education has sunk to the level that you now must treat college students like second graders, or that they lack the maturity to say, "I see where I made an error. Thank you for pointing it out. I'll be sure not to make the same mistake again."
Failure is the opportunity to start again better educated.
It doesn't have to be just bluntness or sugarcoating. There's more than one way to give feedback that is clear and straightfoward on what students did wrong. One way that I have found very successful, is rather than making a summative negative judgement, being relentlessly constructive and helpful in pointing out just what they do have to do in order to get good work. Criticism comes over much better to them if they get the impression that you're being helpful in showing them how they can get good marks.
ReplyDeleteFor example, instead of
"Your level of writing in this paper is really quite inexcusable"
you could write
"Your level of writing needs a lot of work to bring it up to an A grade in a 5th-semester class. The things that need the most work on are these: ...."
(I realise that you did some constructive criticism on the student's earlier drafts too, probably along these lines, I'm speaking more generally to illustrate my point.)
Also by telling them what level they could aim for, it helps to set high expectations and encourage them that they too could get up to that level if they put the work in. They may not do it, but you won't get any complaints in this dept if you always stick to "this is how to fix it" type of comments with an encouraging helpful tone rather than a negative judgemental one.
For another example: see the whole of this comment.
Understand and appreciate your point, C, but isn't there a point when attempting to wrench out the diplomatic phrasing of criticism simply isn't worth the time and/or effort?
DeleteCase in point -- a student five weeks into a twelve week quarter who persists in submitting discussion forum answers as attachments rather than posting them directly into the forum. Four "To insure your classmates and instructor all have direct access to your work, please post your answers directly to the forum" along with four zeros posted in the grade book, and Clueless McDumbass has done the same for Week 5.
There was a line that Kirsty Alley's character in Cheers wails whens she realizes her upper crust boyfriend has been using her to spy on her company - "I am too stupid to live!"
Her voice rings in my head whenever I encounter a student like this.
Can't I pass along Kirsty's insight ... puleeeze??
"...too stupid to live..."
ReplyDeleteNow you know why my heart fills with dread whenever one of these declares an intention to become an engineer, physician, nurse, teacher, or other person with responsibilities.
Preaching to the choir, Frod.
DeleteSgt. Good Post has been joined by Affiliated Arnie in both asserting that expectations and standards are unreasonable because they both are taking my class as an elective and aren't actually Care & Feeding of Wombats majors, but only related fields (e.g. Wombat Care & Feeding Administration and Holistic Wombat Care).
I finally released my tongue from its dental bondage and shared with the Student Success Center that the vast majority of students I encounter who whine about the work being too hard and/or put forth ZERO effort to improve performance come from the Wombat Care & Feeding Administration programs. I guess I should be grateful that these frosty snowflakes won't be providing direct wombat care; they'll just be overseeing those who do.
::shudder::
My policy is now one of complete neutrality. I never praise and I never appear to criticize. I always tell students what they have to do and if they don't do it, I don't comment.
ReplyDeleteThe highest grade I gave in my last class was a C, yet the student evaluations were stellar. I hated the little bastards in the class for not doing their work and learning the material, but the ignorant idiots didn't have a clue about that.
The number of comments made is the direct inverse to the student's willingness to read comments.
ReplyDelete"Why did I get this mark?"
"What do the comments say?"
"Just tell me!"
"I don't remember your work. Please read the comments."
"I'm gonna rate you on that site!"
"Please spell my name correctly."
Are the snowflakes now at the point that they are plagiarizing each other's obnoxious emails? Because I swear I got that exact email last semester...and the semester before.
ReplyDelete"Is these an extra assignment or can I fix my paper for extra points?"
ReplyDeleteNo.
Because I had the same "problem" as you of pointing out what needed to be corrected and WHY a student received a D or an F, I switched to rubrics and reserve "good" comments for the paper. Since we use GradeMark from turnitin to grade, no need for "stamps" since those already exist in online grading, and students rarely look at those (I can check to see if they have), but they do read my comments. So I save praise for the comments and trash the paper to hell on the rubric. My rubric as a "Not college-level" and "Not done" and a "Needs work" box I can check and a D or F paper gets most of those boxes checked. FOr some reason, if the rubric tells them what I would have written on the paper, they take it less personally.
ReplyDeleteI think it's because the rubric is not perceived as "personal". Those little boxes de-personalize the error assessment--and I have had far less complaining since I started using one again two years ago. Makes grading much easier, too.
DeleteOK folks, I've had enough of being kiddie whipped. I will always have sympathy for the contingent faculty, since I remember my time as one, where anything I said was used against me, all the time.
ReplyDeleteAnyone with tenure, however, has a strong obligation to tell the truth, always. If it's necessary to get through a thick skull, go ahead and be gratuitously nasty, just like the guy in "The Paper Chase."
I absolutely cannot stand students who squander their educations. When they choose to do so, I let them HAVE IT, because I think they richly deserve it.
Here's an e-mail message I recently sent to a fool who got a well-deserved F, and then sent e-mail to snivel for special favors:
Dear Knuckles,
I'm sorry, but changing your grade now is out of the question. If I let you take an Incomplete now, aside from it being against university rules, there would be a hue and cry among the other [nearly 100] students in [our general-ed class] who would also want special treatment. The only fair thing for me to do would be to let your grade stand, and hope that you learn that deadlines are to be taken seriously, both here in academia and especially in the real world.
You may have heard that business leaders have lately been criticizing university faculty for not preparing students for the real world. I'm doing what I can now to address this problem. I hope you also learn that when you rarely even come to class, not turn in [more than four] homework assignments or a research paper, and get a [lower than 50]% on the Final Exam (an F) after having had only a C mid-term grade, and then send e-mail to me [full of spelling and grammatical errors], you need to improve, a lot.
Sorry again,
F. Frankenstien
P.S. RAAAAUUUUGGGHHHH!!!!
DeleteAs a contingent, I would never, ever be so brave as to word comments in that way. I'm not saying that you were being harsh. There were many times when I wanted to write in big, bold, red letters "WTF?!!!" It's just that everything I ever put down in writing can and has been used against me. Now I basically just give them a rubric and let them figure out why they got the grade they did (it's not like they ever read the comments in the first place). If they want clarification, then I'm more than willing to go over the paper verbally. Yes, I wish I could take the high road on this one but students are getting more vocal about bad grades, specifically "I should have had an A". I know many of us have had complaints lodged about us with the deans and the chairs because of this BS. My chair already seems to have it out for me for some strange reason and I don't want to give him or the students any more fuel for the fire.
ReplyDeleteYes, I know the feeling, far too well, from my time as an Accursed Visiting Assistant Professor. In "Generation X Goes to College," Peter Sachs was not using too strong of a word when he called what this educational system has come to as "corrupt." I was yelled at plenty by department chairs, especially my first, who yelled, "I've never had anyone who got more complaints!" I ought to have fired back at him, "That's because I have standards!" What really got me about this guy was that he seemed genuinely perplexed about how to improve student quality.
Delete