Four emails in the space of an hour is a tad excessive, don't you think, Dimwitted Daniel? The first demands to know why the LMS gradebook shows that he has an F in the class when he has done one of the two assignments due since we began. The second whines about the fact that it's only the second week of the quarter and he is already failing. The third is a plaintive plea to please respond to him immediately because he is failing the class and this "MUST be addressed IMMEDIATELY." The fourth calls me negligent and "imcompassionate" for ignoring his "
disparate cries for help" because Dimwitted Daniel has an F in the class.
So my emailed response explains that if he had looked at my schedule on the syllabus, he could have seen that I was in class and, therefore, unwilling/unable to check email during that hour, making me unavailable, rather than "negligent and imcompassionate." The email also reminds him that we have only had two assignments due, one of which he did not turn in, which obviously means he will have an F because he's only done half of the work so far. This is no cause for panic. As he completes more assignments, his grade will hopefully go up.
In Dimwitted Daniel's case, however, I'm not sure that will be the case.
LMS gradebooks (especially those that connect to smartphones/send smartphone alerts when a grade is posted) are, as far as I'm concerned, an invention of the devil. The one saving grace for me is that they are so many individual low-stakes assignments listed in mine, including some that any individual student doesn't have to complete because they belong to other groups (our gradebook doesn't handle group work well), that the whole thing soon becomes too chaotic for the students to follow, and they more or less give up until the end of the semester, at which point I invariably have extended email exchanges with s few of them about the fact that, in my grading scheme, an A on some lightly-graded assignments is a 95, not a 100 (and not a 95/95=100). This is all explained on the syllabus, of course, but nobody reads the syllabus, especially at the end of the semester.
ReplyDeleteI, too, would not be optimistic about Dimwitted Daniel's chances in the class. Whether or not he is, in fact, dimwitted, it sounds like he has already reached the point where anxiety about the class is impairing his ability to actually function in it, and that generally doesn't work out well.
To the RGM: thanks for adding the brilliant link! That made my day! :)
ReplyDeleteIt seems that he did make some disparate cries for help. Unintentionally, perhaps.
ReplyDeleteDumb and demanding are a bad combination. Dumb, arrogant, outspoken, and demanding are worse.
ReplyDeleteI remember one final exam which almost immediately prompted a volley of complaints, even though I hadn't even marked it when they started. (I was usually quite generous when grading the final and, as it turned out, the class did quite well.)
ReplyDeleteAmong the comments was that "scholarships are at stake", though the writer didn't state whether getting a high mark was a condition in maintaining them or in qualifying for them.
And this "scholarship" thing is my problem, how? They have to, like, study and stuff...
DeleteMy department head was looking for reasons to get rid of me and, so, any problem a student had, regardless of what or how trivial, automatically became *my* problem. Of course, all those complaints automatically went into the file he had on me.
DeleteI only use our LMS for mass emails to the class. The only way a student can find out his/her grade is by physically coming to lecture (for tests) or recitation (for homework) the day the work is returned. Or come to my office, if they were absent that day. For the first time last fall this led to a clueless comment in the evaluations: "why can't I see my grades"? Because you're clueless, that's why.
ReplyDeleteAs for the email harassment, this hasn't happened to me. I think in this case I would have sent a one-liner "please come to my office hours if you wish to discus this. The will be no further email response." Let Dimwitted Daniel drop by and get the talk about appropriate behavior in an academic setting.
Our school requires us to use the LMS for grades, as of this school year. I suppose I could balk and simply not record grades, but we were instructed to use the LMS to keep students updated on their grades and to include a statement in our syllabi indicating we would maintain grade records on our LMS.
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