I'm moving through the papers just fine, but I am not pleased with what I am seeing. Students are missing the point of the assignment. And maybe being tired from caring for the baby has made me less patient or tolerant of errors that I see as results of carelessness, lack of effort, or unwillingness to ask questions. Despite childbirth, I have been constantly available to my students online and I have posted messages to remind them of that.
The biggest problem is that many of them have totally missed the point of the assignment and have submitted papers that are entirely descriptive and not analytical at all. No thesis to be found. This is their THIRD paper, so analysis and argument are not new concepts in the class. And we went over and over and over this assignment in our on-campus meetings and online. I was worried initially that I had not made the assignment clear, but some students have done exactly what was asked of them. Not just the brightest ones, either. When a lot of students get it wrong, I feel insecure about the way I have taught them--that is it my fault, not theirs. But I feel at this point like it is simply a result of not following directions. So as I've been marking their papers, I have cut and pasted excerpts from the paper prompt to show them, "Here's what you were supposed to do, and you didn't do it." That's the best I can do with it.
So what to do next semester to make it better? I am teaching the same class in the summer and again in the fall, and instead of revamping the class, I am going to try to improve on this model (I'm sort of attached to it, and I want it to be great, and I also have a lot of things to do besides searching for new textbooks and developing new a syllabus). In the fall, I am doing the hybrid on-campus/online class, but in the summer I am totally online. And that was not so fun when I taught Tech Writing, largely because of the whole following directions thing.
So here's an idea that I'm toying with: quizzes over paper prompts.
This idea feels a little juvenile to me and even potentially insulting to the students. When I was an undergraduate, I would have been pissed if the instructor had quizzed me on my ability to read instructions. But it would make (most of) them read the prompts that I have spent so much time developing. And maybe they would write the papers that I have assigned.
Another option that I will most likely use is required online discussions of the papers in progress. We had those this semester and they really paid off for some students. That method puts a lot more responsibility on the students to identify their problems and bring up the right questions and topics for discussion. It's not as efficient as a quiz. It only works for the ones who are willing to put the effort into participating--REALLY participating and not just going through the motions to get credit. Part of me says that those are the students I should prioritize, anyway. But another part of me really wants to figure out how to motivate the ones who don't care so much and don't want to put in so much effort. It's easy to nurture the great students. I also want to reach the students who don't want to be reached. The perpetual frustration of a teacher.
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5 comments:
Okay, I hate to say this, but rather than quizzes you might consider doing it in the form of extra credit. I have found that students will HAPPILY and ENTHUSIASTICALLY and even THOROUGHLY do ANYTHING for just a minuscule amount of extra credit. Psychology, works every time.
You have to consider these particular students, too. I think, given our student body, this incentive will work just fine! I know what you mean about the self-doubt when so many get it wrong. I've been putting myself through this, too. I did stress different things--to the exclusion of others, I wonder? But others do get it right, and I did teach this in the fall with more success. Different classes have problems with different papers, and analysis seems to be particularly hard for these students--it's rather foreign to them. The schools have not taught them to be analytical, and neither has the culture. So what we are teaching is dual--writing and analysis, and then trying to combine the two in an argumentative paper is brutal. I am having the same "read the prompt" issues, and even the occasional "we have to cite things that are not direct quotes? I've never done that kind of citation before!" Very discouraging. Maybe it's just something in the air. Take heart--summer writing classes usually go very well in my experience. My summer composition classes were some of my best. Nice to see you, btw! If you don't think HMD is too young for R, maybe we could have them meet sometime!
I had professors in my undergraduate experience that used quizzes to even get people to read the syllabus. Its sad, but true. I like Jennie's idea of extra credit. Although the thought of a quiz is pretty intimidating and would definitely make me study harder.
Next semester, It might be helpful to print out a grading rubric that lists the elements of the assignment, and then grade how well they fulfill each element (on a scale from one to ten). Give them the rubric before they hand the papers in, then print out another copy and fill it in and add comments-- and then give them another rubric for the second paper, and most will try to accomplish as many of the goals as they can. Unfortunately, all of these sorts of assignents alienate the stronger students almost as much as they help the middling ones...
I think the extra credit thing sounds like a good idea. And you can bury the extra credit in a homework point, or something, so it doesn't add too much to their grade average. I give "extra credit" when students go to an activity and write a one-page review of it. They have to attend something and then write about it. They think they're getting something for nothing, but they're writing, which means practice, even if it is minor practice.
Anyway. Yes, as jennie said, they will go to ridiculous lengths (which you wish they would do for the initial credit) for something called "extra credit."
Finally, you know, sometimes, you just get a bad batch. I wouldn't give up, either, until I'd seen several semesters of misunderstanding. Sometimes, they just don't get it. I spent WEEKS on MLA formatting, and while most of them got the Works Cited page right (a minor victory) most of them screwed up parenthetical citation & how to actually integrate quoted material. One tiny victory at a time. :) So is there anything they're doing right about the paper? If so, you can get a smile out of a little bit.
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