Proffessor chilptetin i was looking @ my grades online and u said i got a 0 on the secnd paper y?--Sylvia
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Sylvia,
If you look at my comments on the paper, they point out that you did not actually fulfill the assignment, or even address the main question in your thesis. The revision of the paper also did not address the assignment. You therefore receive a zero.
--Dr. Chiltepin
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but i did rite the pape so y a 0? cant i get some points?
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Sylvia,
You received a zero because you did in fact not write a paper addressing the actual assignment. I won't give extra credit to you for doing a different, unrelated, and irrelevant assignment that was not part of the sequence of assignments I carefully planned for the class.
--Dr. Chiltepin
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this is y every1 hates ur class
Wow. I didn't think I could be shocked by student behavior anymore, but her last "sentence"...just wow. Sorry you had to deal with that.
ReplyDeleteevry1 hates ur class Bcos u mek us werk! Y u so meen?!
ReplyDeleteSum day i'll b livin n a grate big citi and all ur evr gonna b iz meen. y u gota b so meen?
DeleteLOL. Wow.
DeleteReply to her:
ReplyDeleteThis is why you will be asking "Do you want fries with that?"
For.Ever.
With an attitude like that, that she'd have a hard time keeping a job, if she can get one to begin with. If one doesn't do one's work properly, why should they keep getting a paycheque? It always baffled me why students like that couldn't comprehend that.
ReplyDeleteI remember telling one group exactly that. The answer I got was "Oh, out there we'll be getting paid." Somehow, by graduating, they believed they would undergo a miraculous metamorphosis from unthinking slacker to highly-motivated workplace superstar. Yeah, right.
i was looking @ my grades online
ReplyDeleteThis is why I hate the push to put their grades online. It's crap, and it just leads to exchanges like this one.
This semester was the first that I had to deal with an all-online, all-visible grading system. It wasn't my choice. Every morning for the past two weeks, I've woken up to emails that say, "My online system says ..." "For Paper #2, I can't see my grade ..." "Why haven't you posted the final grade yet? I need to know my final grade."
I don't keep grades online, yet. This semester, students assumed that I did, maybe because that's how their daycare center did things. I received several concerned messages concerning their lack of posted grades. Did I drop them from the course? Are they getting a zero? How are they expected to know their grades?
ReplyDeleteWhen I pointed out to them that they could keep track of their grades themselves and average their homework, exam and lab scores, one student protested that it wasn't that simple. Each part of the course counted a different amount towards their final grade. It pained me to explain to a future engineer (unlikely) that such calculations could in fact be done. Even without a calculator, Wikipedia or Yahoo! Answers.
When students used to ask me where their grades were, or why they weren't online, or what their exact average was, I used to just say, "I assume that you are capable of doing eighth-grade math. I give you back your assignments, and the syllabus has a percentage breakdown."
DeleteThis reply got me written up in evaluations as "unhelpful" and "a bias [sic] and subjective grader who never let us know how we were doing." Because, of course, anything less than total transparency 100% of the time means that you are off falsifying grades.
Well, perhaps I *was* a subjective grader. When I didn't keep grades online, I was more willing to give the "grade bump." In that generous, winy, post-semester mood, those pesky B-minuses magically became B's when I entered them into the online system. Sure, I was subjective--but my students were too stupid to realize that they benefitted from that subjectivity.
Not anymore. That online gradebook gets imported right into the grade roster. Goodbye, grade bump. Hello math.
I would understand their math anxiety if I were teaching a course for liberal arts majors but this is a class for scientists and engineers. Not only are they supposed to be able to do this type of calculation easily, they are supposed to like it. They should want to work with numbers. That's what science is all about - other than the writing, which they clearly demonstrate complete ineptitude based on their lab reports. Calculating a weighted average on scratch paper is their only shot at success.
DeleteBut there's bound to be a student who makes that calculation, estimates his or her course grade, and then starts squawking about it before the official statement of marks is issued. That happened to me once and the administrator in question accused me of telling the student his result. (Our institution used actual percentages as grades--no curves.) I didn't so the student either figured it out himself or he sneaked a peek at my computer.
DeleteA while ago, I tried out LON-CAPA as a free LMS system for a STEM course. It amused me that nearly all the questions in the first week homework assignments were all variations of "if you got the following marks, what would you need to get on the final exam to pass"? I didn't use it, but I loved it: you got them to exercise the technology, exercise their math muscles, and give yourself total cover for the exact exchange Ben lays out above.
DeleteOf course, I'm untenured, so I capitulate and put my marks online. This is a good thing sometimes, as students find actual mistakes in my sometimes sloppy record-keeping.
Ben probably thinks he's kidding, but I used to have my kid in a daycare center where every day I got a chart that told me when she ate and exactly how many times she pooped. No one played with her because they were all so busy filling out the chart. This is how I feel about my online system. I could spend all day responding to emails about these transparent grades that everyone told me would cut down on the whining, or I could teach my damn classes. I'm never doing this again.
ReplyDeleteProffessor stella i was looking @ my grades online and u said i got a 0 on the secnd paper y?--Sylvia
ReplyDeleteDear Sylvia: I seem to have received a message from you but it looks like it's been written by a rabid monkey. Unfortunately I am not fluent in rabid monkey. At least not fluent enough to be of any assistance to you. Sorry.
Prof. Stella
That occurred to me also. "Please write as though you were a person deserving of higher education."
DeleteI have in the past responded to such emails with, "I'm not sure what language you are speaking. Could you please translate it to English and send it again?" or simply "This is an email, not a text message."
DeleteI've toyed with the idea in the past of responding to such emails in a similarly unreadable fashion. For example, in response to a question like "hey prof hhow i doign in yr clas," I would simply give some kind of cryptic emoticon or acronym that doesn't exist.
Delete:-#
It's on my syllabus that I don't respond to text-speak emails. Not because I am stupid and cannot translate them, but because I AM A FUCKING ENGLISH PROFESSOR and if they want a response, they have to use standard written English, along with a greeting and a signature line.
DeleteIt's cut WAAAAAAY down on the number of these things I see in a given semester.
Dr. C, I'd be worried that my supposedly unknown emoticon or abbreviation did exist, resulting in some awkward conferences with my department head.
DeleteYeah, that emoticon looks like it stands for "blowing a hashtag".
DeleteMy favourite, suggested by hyperbole and a half is Q:| Depending on the font, this means "I stole Davey Crocket's hat".
Yeah, and this is why we have a blog for flakes like you!
ReplyDeleteI have them come to my office if they want to discuss a specific paper -- I distribute grades and comments via LMS, and occasionally students see the number and fly off the handle without actually reading the comments (this goes for the B+ students just as often as the F students...). I tell them to print out the paper and bring it to office hours and I would be happy to walk them through what it would take to bring their grades up.
ReplyDeleteSo far, I have had zero takers on this offer.
I started doing that, too. It's working. So far I've only had one student challenge the grade (a C, and she's "always been an 'A' student") and when we opened up her paper and the rubric and I pointed out that she stopped following the assignment about halfway through, she STFU pretty quickly, though she still wasn't happy with me.
DeleteI can bear her displeasure.
I'm so glad I don't teach. I'd be up before the judge after receiving one of these stupid e-mails, charged with aggravated assault with a copy of "Strunk's Elements of Style."
DeleteI'm so glad I don't teach. I'd be up before the judge after receiving one of these stupid e-mails, charged with aggravated assault with a copy of "Strunk's Elements of Style."
DeleteRemember when faculty were able to report disrespectful behavior like this to the dean, and the dean would sympathize with the faculty, in large part because this nonsense was rare? I know, I'm showing my age.
ReplyDeleteThat was one of the reasons I quit teaching. I got tired of students behaving in such a loutish manner and I got tired of the administrators always taking their side.
Delete