Surprise, surprise

I'm hearing Gomer Pyle: "Soo-prize, Soo-prize." I didn't think there would be any opportunity for me to blog today, but here I am in Advisement, having read and graded the stack of papers I brought with me (I didn't bring them all--and perhaps I should have). There are few students, long pauses, and I still have a little over an hour before I can get the flock out of here. So, what to do? Write a blog post, of course.

Things I wanted to record (in no particular order):

I can't remember if I mentioned yesterday that I realized, if I were to average the homework grades for the students in my later 102 class, I'd be handing out failures left, right, and center, as most of the students had racked up an impressive number of zeroes in their idea logs and (especially) glossaries. I'm getting soft in my old age: I don't want to fail them, mostly simply because they gutted it through to the end. I don't mind handing out an entire classfull of D's, but failing six of the eight who remain? I can't do it.

I told them about the problem--and what I was thinking about as a solution. I may consider anything that they turned in after the storm as extra credit. If I do that, those who turned in all the logs and glossaries would get a whopping benefit--perhaps too much, which is why I'm unsure whether that solution will fly. I don't want to end up having to move someone who deserves a D or a C up to a higher grade; I just want a legitimate, numerical justification to pass them.

I'm not sure about the fairness of making that kind of adjustment for one section and not the other--but in the other section, more students beat themselves to bits to get the work done, even if they did a crap job of it. It's all going to come down to the number crunching tomorrow; I'll juggle solutions until I come up with something that works to my satisfaction.

In terms of the reading of papers, there is one student--I think I've mentioned him before--who is certainly plagiarizing but whom I have not been able to catch at it. I read his final paper, and I'm even more sure that it is not his work. If he's using someone else to write his papers, I won't be able to nail him (which frosts my ass, as I wish I could burn his)--but my sincere hope is that he's getting over-confident, time-pressured, and therefore sloppy, and that consequently I'll find evidence to use to blast him. I spent a good while in the office typing his paper into a Word file so I can grind it through the plagiarism detector software I have at home. I really want to catch the little rat.

And I've done the same for a student in the earlier 102. I don't think she'll pass anyway; her paper has other significant problems, and she's been conspicuously absent (and not turning in work) most of the semester, especially since the storm. But if she plagiarized--and I think she did--I want to let her know she can't get away with it.

Well, sometimes they do get away with it--witness the rat in the Short Story class--but it seems useful to be able to scare the crap out of a student, hoping that the lesson actually has an effect.

I have to say, across the board the final papers are sub-standard, despite the incremental versions thing. Some student conveniently forgot the critical essay requirement. Many turned in a paper that is significantly under the required length. Lots of bozo errors. Generallycrappy writing. I'm giving grades that I know in my heart are way the fuck too high--but I painted myself into a corner with earlier grades. Still, many are getting a lower grade on the final version than they got on the in-progress steps, which drives me bonkers. How can I get them to come through on the promise of their in-progress work--even if it isn't much promise? I thought the proposal process was the problem, but it seems not. I will stick with the incremental submissions thing regardless: it does make more sense, even if the results are not what I'd like. But this is another area in which I'm going to look for that mythical perfect delivery method that gets every student to produce praise-worthy work.

That reminds me that in the discussion with the earlier class yesterday, one student said that she thinks there is nothing I can do to help students understand what idea logs should look like, why observation and summary (not to mention personal response) are not actually ideas. Her point--and she may be right--is that it students simply need to learn by doing, and not succeeding very well, and responding (at least theoretically) to my comments. But they did all love the procedure I instituted part-way into the semester, of distributing green and purple pens so I could distinguish their class notes from the work they'd done at home. That encouraged them to take class notes--because they knew they could get better grades if they did a good job of learning from the class discusion. My concern is that they won't be willing to risk doing the work (and making mistakes) at home, which is always a problem. I will have to remind them, over and over, that I'd rather see them  take a good stab at it and miss--or ask a zillion questions--than provide answers that are not useful to analysis.

Well, but that's next semester--and the ones to follow. Right now, I have four papers to comment on, another seven to read, a little Assessment dealy to do, and then the number crunching. Hoo-fucking-ray.