I have officially put the fear of (insert deity here) into my students

[UnforgettableLemon]

Okay, so I was getting really pissed off at my students in Research Writing for not doing their online assigments. So, I decided to give them a pop quiz on their reading for today, Gregory Maguire's Wicked. It's not the best book ever, but it spells out the ideas very deliberately and is conducive to good class discussion. And they only had 63 pages to read.

So. I give them a 10 question pop quiz. I'm already missing 7 people today, an obnoxious trend in its own right. So of the 18 people in class today, only 2 got 100 percent. 5 others got less than 6 questions. And a full 11 people left their quizzes completely blank. I told them that I wasn't going to count this today, but I needed them to be aware that they really are expected to read and participate.

I also just reviewed a stack of thesis statements from them, and for sophomores, their skills are surprisingly underdeveloped. I'm going to have to require a few of them to attend the Learning Resource Center. It's discouraging.

My freshman, on the other hand, are delightful and have participated in every discussion.

Sorry, I'm only in my second week of teaching, and I just need to vent with people.

 

[anitram]

Are the online assignments worth anything in terms of their final grade?

 

[UnforgettableLemon]

Only participation points. They're just grammar diagnostics, from which I'll give them assignments to improve target areas rather than devoting too much time to grammar in class. I'd rather work on organization, research, citation, etc. Otherwise, they won't be prepared for anything in upper level classes.

 

[DaveC]

I'm glad I don't have any profs like you.

That's not intended to be an insult. My profs are way too easy.

 

[anitram]

But are the participation points worth anything? Like 10% of the final grade, etc?

 

[UnforgettableLemon]

the participation points come to like 20 percent

 

[Dalton]

They still won't care. You're part of 'the man' now. Its a slippery slope to hell.

 

[anitram]

I think it's unusual, even for lazy undergrads, to write off a fifth of their grade. I thought if it didn't count, then it's no wonder they're not doing any of it.

 

[UnforgettableLemon]

I'm fully aware. I think part of the problem is that most of them are business majors who literally wrote on their little index cards that they hate english classes.

 

[Dalton]

I think it's unusual, even for lazy undergrads, to write off a fifth of their grade. I thought if it didn't count, then it's no wonder they're not doing any of it.

I have a much more developed cynicism than you do ...

 

[Dalton]

I'm fully aware. I think part of the problem is that most of them are business majors who literally wrote on their little index cards that they hate english classes.

Business majors, unless they are getting a degree in a specialized field (i.e. accounting or marketing), should quit school and get a job.

In my mind business majors are a churched up version a rec majors.

 

[pepokiss]

FAIL THEIR ASSES!!!

 

[UnforgettableLemon]

I don't want to be vindictive, but I'm not afraid to give out F's as needed. We're definitely discouraged from giving As, though.

 

[Laura M]

If we weren't prepared to put any effort into our work at university, nobody was going to take any interest or try encouraging you to study.

 

[Liesje]

I'm not a prof obviously but for 2.5 hears I TAed and I was a Nazi bitch about it too. I took great pleasure in making students writhe knowing that they just blew their GPA with a stupid class that's supposed to be an easy A. All of my students were freshmen b/c it was a course required for ALL students of the college, always taken as a freshman unless you were a transfer. The course was basically supposed to help them transition from HS to our college. They learned how to use all of our online systems, like how to use the library system, how to access the research databases, how to submit work online via their courses in the Blackboard system, and more comp. type stuff like MLA citations, what types of sources are appropriate for college level work, again stressing the research databases, etc. I could not believe some of the CRAP coming from those students!!! And they are all paying over 25K per year to attend this school. I would say maybe 1/3 of the freshmen coming in really understood and could write acceptable thesis statements. Half my students never bothered to turn anything in most of the time. Then they'd go whine to the prof for an extension, but luckily the prof was lazy as hell and I did everything but give the lecture so I got the final say in grades and how I determined them.

It actually explained a lot about our 99% acceptance rate. The school except everyone, but tons of kids drop out after first semester b/c academically the school is in the top group in its class. Why would you knowingly pay that much for a good school and think I'm going to give you a free ride? Ha!

 

[namkcuR]

Power trips

I'm not a prof nor have I ever TAed(nor do I ever plan to), but if I were....I'd be lenient. Especially if I have a class full of people taking it purely as a gened requirement that has pointlessly been added to their degree. Just make an honest effort and I'll pass you. That would be my philosophy for those students. I'd probably be a little stricter for those students who are majoring in the subject at hand.

 

[Liesje]

Well, there's a HUGE difference between "an honest effort" and just not doing anything at all. I would say 95% of my docking points was because students simply did not read and follow simple directions. Most of the assignments I graded were completely subjective: you got five points for doing this, five points for doing this, ten points for doing that, etc. All they had to do was DO IT!!

We were encouraged to be strict. Not strict as in take off more points just for fun, but not give in to their whining. The point of the course was to prepare them for the type of research required in college, in general. Just passing them on without doing the work would do them no favors. The course was supposed to be a wake up call. A lot of the English and Comp profs teaching the low level Comp courses complained that some of their students had no clue that we even HAD a library database or that credible academic material existed. Their idea of a "source" was wikipedia or cnn.com. That is what prompted the new course and the requirement that all incoming students take it and pass it. The class was not pointless (well it was when I took it, but modifications were made), unless my students were never going to use a campus computer for research or were never going to have to write a paper for any class.

It has nothing to do with power tripping. We were all adults. The school has specific standards that must be met (and the standards for my particular course were still laughably low). I was not getting paid to hold people's hands and spoon feed them their grades.

 

[UnforgettableLemon]

I'm a TA myself right now, and i'm hardly on a power trip. But I'm teaching core writing classes - I'm trying to help them develop skills that will help them throughout their entire time here. Now, we're a public school, so tuition isn't ridiculous, but it still isn't cheap. I just want them to know that I'm serious about the course, whether or not they like it. I don't want to be responsible for them not doing well in the future. If I give them a passing grade on a paper that would fail for another professor, I don't feel like I'm doing my job.

And Liesje, I did kind of horrify them when I told them I wouldn't accept papers citing Wikipedia. Ironically, that same night in Intro to Grad Literary Study, the program director was praising wikipedia in quick-fix situations, emphasizing of course that it is still unsuitable for actual documented research. I couldn't help but chuckle a little bit.

 

[Liesje]

Aaaah wikipedia. If they complain about not being able to use it, I tell them to use it as a starting point. Most wiki articles cite their own sources and they are welcome to use those (if they apply). The general rule was that only .edu web sources were acceptable (b/c lots of graduate students and profs publish their work on their websites or through their university). No .coms, .nets, and preferably no .orgs. Find the sources that the web sites are based on, use those. Many profs require peer-reviewed sources, so they had to learn how to find peer-reviewed sources.

 

[UnforgettableLemon]

Our department-wide standard for English 102 is that they have at least 6 sources, and at least 5 of those must be scholarly journals or books. So they have to find the journal articles through an online database, which is our means of deterring reliance of questionable web material. It will be interesting to see how this actually works out.

 

[namkcuR]

I recently had to write a research paper, back in February/March of this year, and all of our sources had to be 'scholarly' as well. I really hated it. I understand the need to not use questionable web material that could have been put there by anybody, but 'scholarly' limitations block more than that. There could be magazine articles containing information that could be very useful, but it's not 'scholarly', so it can't be used.

'Scholarly' basically means it has to be written by a professor of something from somewhere or a former professor of something from somewhere or someone of equal stature with a PhD. Which is crap. It's elitest. It makes it seem like, if you don't have a doctorate, what you say doesn't matter.

 

[Liesje]

We interpreted "scholarly" as "published" (as in, printed, typically in a journal relevant to the topic of the source). There were more specific requirements given if profs wanted only peer-reviewed or only accepted certain journals. There's plenty of published material by John Q Public. Heck, IVE been published and my dog has more letters with her name than I do.

 

[anitram]

The general rule was that only .edu web sources were acceptable (b/c lots of graduate students and profs publish their work on their websites or through their university). No .coms, .nets, and preferably no .orgs.

I'm not sure why this should be the rule, to be honest. Nothing I need for my academic research is on a .edu.

 

[UnforgettableLemon]

I recently had to write a research paper, back in February/March of this year, and all of our sources had to be 'scholarly' as well. I really hated it. I understand the need to not use questionable web material that could have been put there by anybody, but 'scholarly' limitations block more than that. There could be magazine articles containing information that could be very useful, but it's not 'scholarly', so it can't be used.

'Scholarly' basically means it has to be written by a professor of something from somewhere or a former professor of something from somewhere or someone of equal stature with a PhD. Which is crap. It's elitest. It makes it seem like, if you don't have a doctorate, what you say doesn't matter.

The important element in what we require is that the publications are peer-reviewed. Generally, things published commercially are not recommended. There are circumstances when a newspaper article or an editorial in Time Magazine is appropriate, but that's not really my decision. Unfortunately, however, most of the time these documents do not go into the depth you would find in a peer-reviewed journal. Truthfully, the thing that matters most is how the material is integrated into the paper. If the limitations are acknowledged and treated as such, it's not a problem.

 

[Liesje]

I'm not sure why this should be the rule, to be honest. Nothing I need for my academic research is on a .edu.

Why the .edu is allowed or why the others are not?

Many profs upload all their papers and projects on their own web directories of our .edu so I suppose they thought it would be hypocritical to ban ALL .edu sources. (example: http://www.calvin.edu/~schu/publications/ ). One of our profs is an expert in pre-WWII German propaganda and all of his material (the scans of everything in his collection) is hosted on the school's site (if you Google German Propoganda, the first hit is his page: http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/ ). I was once looking for pedigree information on DDR dogs (East German German Shepherds bred behind the iron curtain) and it came up with a hit to that database. Weird.

 

[anitram]

No, I'm wondering why the others are not permissible. You can find a lot on a .org, especially internationally.

 

[Liesje]

Who knows. My guess would be that it was b/c the point of the course was helping them learn to use the resources in the libraries and online, so they restricted web sources to force kids to go to the library. If ALL web sources were allowed, I'd wager more than I'm worth that no one would crack a book or search a database.

 

[indra]

I recently had to write a research paper.... I really hated it.

I thought that was the whole point of research papers.

 

[Angela Harlem]

I think you sound like a great teacher, U-L. Are you teaching at a university? I can't tell, and honestly, the overseas tertiary tiers are beyond me. Sorry if that's a dumb question, lol.

I'd honestly quit uni if my degree was handed out and allowed me to fudge my way through things. I'm there because I want to learn. There's only one way to do this, and it does hurt and it is slow going. And with resources, if it isn't peer-reviewed, published, or in an academic database then my uni don't want to know. And neither do I, really. I'll go anywhere for sources and information, but won't cite them. Bibliography yes, reference no. And never wikipedia. Ever. I want Ds and HDs too much to ever fight it.

 

[UnforgettableLemon]

Yeah, I'm working for my master's degree in English at a state school here in Jersey, and because I'm teaching two courses, I get my entire tuition waved and pull in a really nice stipend. Especially since TAs are part of the teachers' union in Jersey.

For some reason I'm wary about saying which school, but the information is readily available in other threads. I'm getting paranoid now. Not really, but still, I feel like I need to be more responsible.