A few months ago, I had a discussion with my department chair where I shared my frustration at students simply ignoring feedback, particularly over a simple instruction from the university-wide rubric."Did you clearly state the expectation, give a warning or two, explain there would be consequences?" I was asked.
"I did"
"Did you then follow through with those consequences?"
"Uh ... no," I replied sheepishly.
"Why not?" was the surprising response.
Feeling unexpectedly empowered, I forged ahead when the next quarter began, taking a hard line about following these basic instructions.
But, I've just spent several hours over the past few days, enduring a whinefest of epic proportion from the students who didn't follow the those instructions and were penalized for it. The label "unfair" was as common as bookbags on the quad. Apparently, expecting entry level adherence to expectations makes me "cruel," "mean," and "arrogant." Oh, and yes, it seems Every Y'Otherinstructor agrees with that assessment because he/she/they has never required these directions to be followed.
Bad as that was, I now await a second wave of turmoil. Once we moved past how the assignments were prepared, that then required evaluation of what was in said assignments.
As the assignment was distributed, I reminded everyone of the content expectations from the university-wide rubric. Peer-reviewed sources beyond the text, proper written English, APA formatting ... yanno, the collegiate bare minimum?
What I got were summations of the assigned reading in the text or of encyclopedia entries.
But what really made the cheese fall off my cracker ...
In response to another student: "I don't believe the [peer-reviewed and published] evidence. I know it doesn't work."
I am unfortunately aware that there is not a lot of encouragement in my feedback. I end up spending so much time remediating the basics of syntax, structure, spelling, sourcing, and synthesis, it is difficult to find anything to compliment, never mind encourage. I have spent countless hours contemplating how to avoid backlash by hovering grades between the dividing line between "exemplary" and "good." In this instance however, I simply cannot play that game and grades came from the "average" and "below average" rubric categories.
I so want to send back with the comment: "This sucks. It is not college level work; it's barely high school quality. Don't bother me again unless/until you can at least meet the minimum requirements."
But, accurate though it may be, it would be damaging to the darlings' self of steam.
Except, at this point, I am staring into the darkness of a deep abyss with the sense of impending doom that I cannot prevent a plunge into it. Either I hold firm to actually expecting work to meet the standards and await the silent termination resulting from adjunct contracts not renewed due to angry customer service surveys or I just capitulate to become Every Y'Otherinstructor and return all work with an A- and "Good post!"
Both options leave my soul as dark as the abyss.
Amen. I don't think I've ever been completely honest with my feedback on projects unless I'm praising genuinely A-level work. The other day it struck me that I have never written "boring" or "half-ass" or "sloppy" on a paper, much as those descriptors would have fit the bill, and it occurs to me just now that "boring," especially, is the one insult that most students have had no scruples about hurling with utter and complete abandon for as long as I've been doing this job. Something's rotten. Thanks, Aware and Scared.
ReplyDeleteCan you take some samples to your Departmental Chair now, and ask hir advice? Hir seems to be at least sympathetic to the challenge of balancing student happiness and student standards, and pre-emptive involvement before the wave of 'meanie' scrawled on those stupid happiness sheets breaks is a professional means of at least holding a small piece of material over your behind if not completely CYA.
ReplyDeleteI used to teach a course in which there were 2 lab sessions and I was quite blunt with my comments on their reports. First of all, this wasn't the first one the students had in which they had not just lab sessions but had to submit reports. Second, they had at least one English course before they got to me and should have known how to express themselves in a rational and comprehensible manner. Third, most of them, upon graduation, would go into industry and some would be doing work which would involve writing reports and explaining what went on.
ReplyDeleteBecause I didn't acknowledge them as geniuses and didn't recognize their writings as being on par with or better than the greatest literature of the ages, I was overwhelmed with whining and griping. I didn't do much about it except offer them the opportunity to go through their reports with me and explain themselves. Those who did usually left my office with a higher grade. Those who didn't probably couldn't have cared less.
Sometimes, I'd grade their work and, in addition to the final result, I'd simply write on it: "See me." I didn't give any other explanation. It was up to them to make the next move but that rarely happened. I started using that after a senior colleague who had been teaching at the institution advised me to do so.
I once was ordered to take an "alternate learning styles" course and I mentioned that I often made use of "See me." One of my fellow attendees took umbrage at that and thought I was being insulting or arrogant or some such thing. The chap who ran the course advised me that I should instead as them: "How can I make the learning easier for you?" After the course was over, I immediately ignored both comments and continued using "See me."
My field is unfortunately rife with arrogant tech weenie students who think there will be lower-paid technical writers to correct their shitty writing/presentation at their future place of employment. They, in their high-and-mighty tech godliness, need not waste their time on mere communication skills.
DeleteThere is a legendary proffie in my discipline who uses the following grading scheme for technical reports: take the "Technical Grade" and the "Communication Grade" and MULTIPLY THEM.
Arrogant tech-weenies are rudely awakened to find that 96% (technical) times 50% (communication) equals 48%.
The justification goes: if you have the world's BEST, innovative, paradigm-shifting technical idea, and it's poorly communicated, it will have NO IMPACT. However, if you have even a half-baked kernel of a good technical idea, if it is well-communicated, then someone else might be able to "finish baking" it for potentially high impact.
I've never been brave enough to implement this scheme.
"lower-paid technical writers will correct their shitty writing/presentation"
DeleteUrge to kill...rising.
That's brilliant! I wish I'd known about it while I was teaching.
DeleteI've always emphasized to my students that their documents, whether drawings or reports, should be concise and unambiguous and should be self-contained as far as conveying information.
As a grad student, I read publications that were written well before I was born and the author was no longer alive. In some cases, I've seen drawings where I had no idea who prepared them or the firm which originated them no longer existed. Under such circumstances, it's hard to ask someone questions if something isn't clear.
Unfortunately, most of my students didn't understand that. Then again, they didn't need to. Everything they did was "perfect" or, at worst, "good enough".
There was another reason I did a lot of nit-picking with what my students presented to me.
DeleteWhile I was in industry, I sometimes went through files for project similar to what I was working on. I wanted to figure out what was done and the logic behind it, often finding myself frustrated because I couldn't make head or tail of what I read. Eventually, I included all sorts of references and notes to explain what I was doing, including the calculation sheets. That way, whoever would inherit my files once I was finished with the project or had left the company would have a bit of an idea of how and why I did things.
I emphasized this to my students, but did they appreciate that? Nope. Maybe they changed their minds once they went to work and something like what I described happened to them.
I ran into that a lot, back when I was in the private sector. Poorly commented code, badly written instructions, etc. That's one reason I'm so hard on students now, even though my current field has nothing at all to do with my previous professional life. I use humor to lighten the mood when writing critiques of their work, but I don't pull any punches. In class I emphasize the point that whatever they decide to do and whatever job they eventually have, they'll need to communicate with someone, or someone will need to communicate with them, so they better learn to communicate well.
DeleteI dealt with that a lot when I was a rookie with a brand-new B. Sc. in mechanical engineering.
DeleteFor one of my earlier employers, I checked drawings that one of our draftsmen prepared. After I was finished and the corrections were made, I'd send copies over to the contractors who build the machines. Quite often, I'd get a phone call from the shop, which went along the lines of:
Shop: "You checked the drawings, right?"
Me: "Yup."
Shop: "You're sure everything's going to fit properly?"
Me: "I think so."
Shop: "Come on down. We've got something to show you."
Sometimes when I went there, I got yelled at. Sometimes, the guys in the shop simply laughed at me. Usually, the mistakes were my fault for not catching them and we had to devise a way to work around them. (To be fair, sometimes the shop made some real bloopers and it was at fault, but I bit my tongue and worked to come up with a solution.)
I'd often relate stories like this to my students. I wouldn't be surprised if most of them believed something like that would never happen to them. They can't say I didn't warn them.
"There is a legendary proffie in my discipline who uses the following grading scheme for technical reports: take the "Technical Grade" and the "Communication Grade" and MULTIPLY THEM."
DeleteI have a new hero.
As for myself, one of my courses is Hamster Wrangling Skills.
There is a written component and a skills-assessment component.
The skills grading is done on a scale with multiple categories, such as knowledge of hamster husbandry, cooperation with fellow students, etc.
Most of the students are so- so, performing at the level of an utter novice, but not so badly as to allow the hamsters to escape and stampede. They are given a score that correlates to "average" for that.
Every semester, I get students who feel that, since their actions did not result in the death of hamsters, they should receive the score that correlates to "exemplary".
"There is a legendary proffie in my discipline who uses the following grading scheme for technical reports: take the "Technical Grade" and the "Communication Grade" and MULTIPLY THEM."
DeleteI have a new hero.
As for myself, one of my courses is Hamster Wrangling Skills.
There is a written component and a skills-assessment component.
The skills grading is done on a scale with multiple categories, such as knowledge of hamster husbandry, cooperation with fellow students, etc.
Most of the students are so- so, performing at the level of an utter novice, but not so badly as to allow the hamsters to escape and stampede. They are given a score that correlates to "average" for that.
Every semester, I get students who feel that, since their actions did not result in the death of hamsters, they should receive the score that correlates to "exemplary".
That prof is my hero too. Brilliant. If I ever teach tech writing again, I'm using that.
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ReplyDeleteI had a long stretch (which seems to have improved a tad) of time where I was receiving work that REALLY sucked in terms of basic grammar and mechanics. REALLY sucked. Then, I'd make them come in and read their work to me, and the fuckers would SELF CORRECT as they read. They literally KNEW what they had written was grammatically shit, and they KNEW how to correct it.
ReplyDeleteBAAAHHHH. That shit just pissed me off. So what I did, and what it sounds like you might do, is enacted a policy whereby final copy was "agreed" to have been edited. And if I counted more than 10 errors on the first page, of any kind, I'd give them an F and they could take it back and have one class day to correct it and try again. After that first time, if I counted more than 5 errors on a page, they would get an F and that would be that.
This was in a composition course, but perhaps you could tweak it. It saved me from having to read too much of their shit before I could quit and just give the F. And it worked. It got me some bad evals, for sure. But it worked.
I do something similar, but they lose some points for handing in the corrected version late. They have to have done the editing the first time to avoid a "waste of my time" penalty. Not that I call it that.
Delete"Sometimes, I'd grade their work and, in addition to the final result, I'd simply write on it: 'See me.' I didn't give any other explanation. It was up to them to make the next move but that rarely happened. I started using that after a senior colleague who had been teaching at the institution advised me to do so."
ReplyDeleteI love this and wish I had balls enough to adopt it. Maybe next term?
Bella, I like yours, too. Maybe I can get to some variation of it.
I grade through our LMS, and we can make our own rubrics. For anything below a solid C, the last part of the auto comment is "If your grade falls in this range, please see the instructor for more help." So far, not one has come in. But I feel better having it in there, because the ball is in their court. I make sure I mention this when I fill out my self evaluation, in case one (or more) of the little darlings complains about the feedback from the rubric.
DeleteI hope your chairperson backs you up and sends a reminder to everyone else about this university-wide rubric. Congratulations to whichever administrator or academic senate that passed it, but they'd better make sure that proffies (particularly adjuncts) aren't penalized by the student backlash.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of writing not being ready for college, that should say:
Delete"Congratulations to whichever administrator or academic senate passed it . . . "
I do feel your pain. In my big Intro the Hamsterology class, I struggle each year with getting students to follow instructions. For example, despite multiple written and verbal reminders to fill in their IDs and test version numbers on their multiple choice answer sheets, a significant minority do not bother. Either someone on my team fixes this, or after they get a zero or score from the testing center, they hassle us to hand-grade their answers. This year I held back all the papers from going to the test centre, and sent an identical email to each non-complier, telling that that to my surprise, the test centre had returned a zero score for their paper, and I had traced this to their non-compliance. Each freaked out, and sent servile emails begging me to help them fix it. I told them to email an administrator [who I knew was on vacation and had an auto-reply]with the id and test version information so this could be remedied. After they got the auto-reply, they emailed me again, even more desperate, and swearing never ever to make this mistake again, if I would only please help them fix it. I will of course, but I am hoping word gets around and next test, I'll have near-perfect compliance.
ReplyDeleteThis is why we all (especially those of us with even jobs that are even marginally more secure than semester-to-semester) owe it to each other to hold the line on basics like following instructions. It's exhausting -- they, or least a substantial minority of them, *will* try to wear us down with repeated whining, complaints, etc., and most of us who went into college teaching really didn't expect to need skills more typically associated with steering a hungry toddler through a grocery store -- but it needs to be done, and if a majority of us held the line (and were supported by our dept chairs and all those higher up), things would change pretty quickly.
ReplyDeleteI wonder whether we could declare a nationwide 5-year moratorium on the use of student evaluations to judge teachers (perhaps accompanied by a 5-year moratorium on the use of standardized tests to judge teachers)? Perhaps just collect the data and send them into a black box somewhere, with the promise that they'll be used only for research purposes? The effects would be interesting to see (and other forms of evaluation -- e.g. class visits by peers and/or reviews of course materials -- could continue).
Back in the real world, it sounds like it's time to talk to chair again A&S (and yes, once again, look for another job, academic or otherwise, just in case).