Slightly better

I managed to get last week's discussion board posts graded for the online class--and I realized I'm not as horrifically far behind as I thought. I do have essays to grade, but not many, which, as always, causes mixed feelings in this professor. I feel very discouraged when a number of students don't submit a major assignment--such as an essay worth 400 (out of 2000) points--because I feel I'm not reaching them as well as I'd like. On the other hand, fewer to grade, right?

I've also uncovered yet more plagiarism. One student plagiarized his discussion board posts--and earlier in the semester I contacted him because it seemed his answers to one of the quizzes were plagiarized. He explained that away, and I accepted his explanation--but now I see I probably shouldn't have. It's bad enough when they plagiarize, but when they act all offended about it--how could anyone accuse them of such a thing??--or try to deny having done it, I get seriously ticked off. This young man is going to have to do one hell of a job persuading me not to fail him for the semester.

And a different student plagiarized her essay.

Ah, fuck. Ah well.

Also, somehow, the fact that they're submitting online seems to mean to them that they don't have to follow any kind of formatting for their essays. Well, they'll get the point deductions. They can erase those point penalties only if they actually revise: they can't just submit the same essay formatted correctly. If they're going to get a better grade, they have to work their butts off for it.

Meanwhile, one of the best students has suddenly gone AWOL. He contacted me to say he'd been ill and then missed the deadline for the essay; I encouraged him to submit anyway, and to submit his discussion board posts even if they were late--but nothing. I really hope I haven't lost him; he was great.

I was looking at overall grades, too, and I sort of hate the fact that one student has more points than anyone else--but her thinking is not that splendid. She's working hard and doing extra credit--but I'm probably being overly generous in the marks I'm giving her on her discussion board posts. She's doing well enough for a sophomore, but when I compare her work to the two men (clearly more grown up and further along in their educational process), she's not in their league--and yet she has way more points. I guess I can let her know that I've been pretty generous with grades on discussion board posts and that I'm going to get tougher--or I can just let it go, knowing she's doing well enough for this level. I used to be stingier with A's.

In any event, I'll start grading essays tomorrow. I'm not much looking forward to it--and part of me thinks maybe I should print them and grade by hand (as I don't get quite so carried away with comments when they're somewhat harder to write)--but we'll see how I feel about it tomorrow.

Which is, as you may not be aware, another day. Today, I am about to segue into my non-professorial mode. Not sure what I'll do with the evening, but no more work for the time being, that's for sure.