Friday, May 17, 2013

Final Grading Breakdown

Time spent actually grading student work (no comments): 30%
Time spent trying to get the LMS gradebook to do things it doesn't want to do (and teaching/re-teaching myself Excel when that fails):30%
Time spent tracking down work submitted in a nonstandard way; emailing students about missing, "empty" or "corrupted" files; answering emails asking why a student earned only 2 out of 3 points sometime back in week 9 (etc., etc., etc.):  30%
Time spent weeping, gnashing teeth, and occasionally nodding off and/or staring into space out of sheer exhaustion:10%

5 comments:

  1. CC, join me over here by the vodka. I'm expecting Bubba any time now.

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  2. While I am sorry to hear of your misery, I congratulate you for preparing a table of data for us. Data tables are rare at CM and I would like to encourage users to, um, use them more.

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  3. Finally I know that I am not alone in spending an inordinate amount of time during final grading doing something besides GRADING. Our LMS not only hates me, but my talented TA. I am a firm believer that these LMS packages are sentient beings with plans to take over the world, one educational institution at a time.

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  4. When I saw the title "Final Grading Breakdown," my mind went somewhere else. But, like the others, it's nice to know I'm not alone. Because my current institution is not what you'd call flush with cash (or intelligence), our LMS is, I suspect, some sort of product of Cold War Russia. At the very least, it hates us for our freedoms.

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  5. I just set up Excel to start with and try not to count on the LMS for anything but an e-dropbox. And, Cassandra, you will spare yourself endless misery if you start completely discounting any assignment "submitted in a nonstandard way" -- it normally only takes one zero for them to shape up. For instance, my students' emails with attachments have a very peculiar habit of getting filed with the spam and then deleted...and so they learn to put up with the less-than-ideal LMS for all submissions.

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