Favorite student emails

[Charlotte]

We only have two more week of class to go.  Got this one today, not sure if it's a "favorite email" or more of a head bang of despair:

Hi Dr. [Geneticist],
Im in [TAs]  sectuon. I noticed that all my lab quizzes are zeros, I'm not sure how this happened, does it just say I didn't do those quizzes? I was having severe technical difficulties and other issues in the first weeks of school. I only saw this because I missed lab this week because of work, and went to check if I could make it up. If there's any way I can make any of them up I would appreciate it, if not I understand and will continue to do what I can.

Best Regards,
Hasn't Checked Grades all Quarter

This is a student who was excused from the first week due to internet issues, but since then earned a 0 on the first major assignment, and scored 30% on the midterm.  Ironically, they don't have a 0 for ALL of their quizzes, just 3 of them.

Yes, a 0 in the grade book means you didn't do the quiz and earned that 0.  I told them to talk with their advisor.  It's not mathematically possible to pass.

Sounds like an email I got this past weekend in which a student said they noticed they received a zero for an assignment and does that mean they have to do anything on their end to get credit?

Why, yes. Surprisingly, you must do the assignment to get credit.

It was followed by a student complaining it is not fair that they lose points for submitting assignments early.

I agree, which is why you never lose points for submitting assignments early. You do, however, lose points for not submitting an assignment that meets the requirements. As I've told you several times this semester, you are not completing the assignment as required and specified in the syllabus.

Can this semester be over now?

[AvidReader]

Maybe they think I have a slightly evil grading scheme where doing really badly could earn a score of less than zero?

I remember being horrified, in my first semester as an undergraduate, when a friend in a different composition class showed me her first essay grade. The instructor graded from a list of errors with a set of standard deductions: -4 per spelling error (or 3 for 10), -5 per comma error, etc. My friend was dyslexic, and there were many spelling errors. The instructor deducted 154 points from her first essay, for a final grade of -54.

I don't know all the contexts (perhaps there was a chance for revision), but my friend was devastated and demoralized. It's hard to recover from a negative grade, in more ways than one.

AR.

[marshwiggle]

Maybe they think I have a slightly evil grading scheme where doing really badly could earn a score of less than zero?

I remember being horrified, in my first semester as an undergraduate, when a friend in a different composition class showed me her first essay grade. The instructor graded from a list of errors with a set of standard deductions: -4 per spelling error (or 3 for 10), -5 per comma error, etc. My friend was dyslexic, and there were many spelling errors. The instructor deducted 154 points from her first essay, for a final grade of -54.

I don't know all the contexts (perhaps there was a chance for revision), but my friend was devastated and demoralized. It's hard to recover from a negative grade, in more ways than one.

AR.

That's not only cruel, but counterproductive. Unless it's one of those fields where lives hang in the balance so that errors are critically important, then students ought to be encouraged to attempt to answer even if they're not entirely sure. Grading schemes (or financial rewards, etc.) must not *disincentivize behaviour that would be considered desireable.


(*or if that belongs in "Trendy Words I Hate", then substitute "penalize".)

[apl68]

Maybe they think I have a slightly evil grading scheme where doing really badly could earn a score of less than zero?

I remember being horrified, in my first semester as an undergraduate, when a friend in a different composition class showed me her first essay grade. The instructor graded from a list of errors with a set of standard deductions: -4 per spelling error (or 3 for 10), -5 per comma error, etc. My friend was dyslexic, and there were many spelling errors. The instructor deducted 154 points from her first essay, for a final grade of -54.

I don't know all the contexts (perhaps there was a chance for revision), but my friend was devastated and demoralized. It's hard to recover from a negative grade, in more ways than one.

AR.

That sounds like some incredibly pedantic grading there.  With nothing said about the quality of the student's ideas or expression of them.  Sounds like the teacher missed the forest for the trees.

[Puget]

My course announcement email (occasioned by a student asking if it was OK to copy some sentences from sources):
"A reminder about academic integrity:
As you work on your assignment, remember that you must always use your own words-- never copy any text from another source (the papers, other sources, your fellow students). Doing so constitutes plagiarism and is a serious violation of both [University's] student Rights and Responsibilities, and ethics (plus defeats the educational purpose of the assignment). To ensure compliance, your assignments will be run through TurnItIn plagiarism detection software."

Followed immediately but student email:
"Just want to ask can we copy some part of the text when doing the part A summary? Or we can't or need to do in-text citations? Since it is kind of hard to totally use my own words when doing the summary."

Sure stu, surely when I said it was never OK to copy any text, "never" didn't include Part A. Because using your own words is hard, and that wouldn't be fair would it?

ARG! Maybe I should have put this in the banging head on desk thread (though I'm working from the couch, which is at least a softer surface for head banging).

[smallcleanrat]

Maybe they think I have a slightly evil grading scheme where doing really badly could earn a score of less than zero?

I remember being horrified, in my first semester as an undergraduate, when a friend in a different composition class showed me her first essay grade. The instructor graded from a list of errors with a set of standard deductions: -4 per spelling error (or 3 for 10), -5 per comma error, etc. My friend was dyslexic, and there were many spelling errors. The instructor deducted 154 points from her first essay, for a final grade of -54.

I don't know all the contexts (perhaps there was a chance for revision), but my friend was devastated and demoralized. It's hard to recover from a negative grade, in more ways than one.

AR.

Sounds quite unreasonable. Was the course focused specifically on the mechanics of writing? Otherwise, I can't see any justification for such a punitive grading scheme (and even then, negative scores?!?)

I've seen rubrics taking grammar and spelling into account, but this always represented a finite portion of the total score. So no matter how many spelling errors, you'd never lose more than say 10% of the total possible points.

[AvidReader]

That's not only cruel, but counterproductive. Unless it's one of those fields where lives hang in the balance so that errors are critically important, then students ought to be encouraged to attempt to answer even if they're not entirely sure. Grading schemes (or financial rewards, etc.) must not *disincentivize behaviour that would be considered desireable.

That sounds like some incredibly pedantic grading there.  With nothing said about the quality of the student's ideas or expression of them.  Sounds like the teacher missed the forest for the trees.

Sounds quite unreasonable. Was the course focused specifically on the mechanics of writing? Otherwise, I can't see any justification for such a punitive grading scheme (and even then, negative scores?!?)
I've seen rubrics taking grammar and spelling into account, but this always represented a finite portion of the total score. So no matter how many spelling errors, you'd never lose more than say 10% of the total possible points.

I agree with all of the above, for the record (except I've sometimes seen grammar and mechanics take a higher percentage than 10%. One of my recent colleges set it between 25% and 50% depending on the assignment). And this was a general education freshman composition course, so expression of ideas should have been given *at least* equal weight to the mechanics of writing . . .

AR.

[dr_codex]

That's not only cruel, but counterproductive. Unless it's one of those fields where lives hang in the balance so that errors are critically important, then students ought to be encouraged to attempt to answer even if they're not entirely sure. Grading schemes (or financial rewards, etc.) must not *disincentivize behaviour that would be considered desireable.

That sounds like some incredibly pedantic grading there.  With nothing said about the quality of the student's ideas or expression of them.  Sounds like the teacher missed the forest for the trees.

Sounds quite unreasonable. Was the course focused specifically on the mechanics of writing? Otherwise, I can't see any justification for such a punitive grading scheme (and even then, negative scores?!?)
I've seen rubrics taking grammar and spelling into account, but this always represented a finite portion of the total score. So no matter how many spelling errors, you'd never lose more than say 10% of the total possible points.

I agree with all of the above, for the record (except I've sometimes seen grammar and mechanics take a higher percentage than 10%. One of my recent colleges set it between 25% and 50% depending on the assignment). And this was a general education freshman composition course, so expression of ideas should have been given *at least* equal weight to the mechanics of writing . . .

AR.

I teach a lot of comp, and I'd never use a grading scheme like the one originally described.

My office mate, on the other hand, is old school. Any assignment that hits a threshold for grammatical errors -- a pretty low threshold -- receives and automatic F. I'm not sure about the quality of their ideas, but they do seem to learn not to write sentence fragments.

I don't know how anybody could justify a negative grade. Maybe for something so egregious (cheating, dangerous activity in a lab, or the like) that it was worse than no effort?

[the_geneticist]

That's not only cruel, but counterproductive. Unless it's one of those fields where lives hang in the balance so that errors are critically important, then students ought to be encouraged to attempt to answer even if they're not entirely sure. Grading schemes (or financial rewards, etc.) must not *disincentivize behaviour that would be considered desireable.

That sounds like some incredibly pedantic grading there.  With nothing said about the quality of the student's ideas or expression of them.  Sounds like the teacher missed the forest for the trees.

Sounds quite unreasonable. Was the course focused specifically on the mechanics of writing? Otherwise, I can't see any justification for such a punitive grading scheme (and even then, negative scores?!?)
I've seen rubrics taking grammar and spelling into account, but this always represented a finite portion of the total score. So no matter how many spelling errors, you'd never lose more than say 10% of the total possible points.

I agree with all of the above, for the record (except I've sometimes seen grammar and mechanics take a higher percentage than 10%. One of my recent colleges set it between 25% and 50% depending on the assignment). And this was a general education freshman composition course, so expression of ideas should have been given *at least* equal weight to the mechanics of writing . . .

AR.

I teach a lot of comp, and I'd never use a grading scheme like the one originally described.

My office mate, on the other hand, is old school. Any assignment that hits a threshold for grammatical errors -- a pretty low threshold -- receives and automatic F. I'm not sure about the quality of their ideas, but they do seem to learn not to write sentence fragments.

I don't know how anybody could justify a negative grade. Maybe for something so egregious (cheating, dangerous activity in a lab, or the like) that it was worse than no effort?

I had a Theatre 101 professor who used a grading scheme that could go negative.  His exams were 1/2 essay & 1/2 multiple choice.  For the multiple choice, there would be 50 correct answers.  All questions would have at least one correct answer, but it never said how many per question.  You got +2 for every correct answer you found.  And -2 for every Incorrect answer you circled.  And -2 for every correct answer you didn't find.  The exam ended with folks frantically counting and agonizing over whether it was better to turn in an exam with 48 answers picked or to keep looking (or with 54 answers picked and agonizing over erasing).  He did it to minimize cheating and "lucky guessing".

[reverist]

I teach a lot of comp, and I'd never use a grading scheme like the one originally described.

My office mate, on the other hand, is old school. Any assignment that hits a threshold for grammatical errors -- a pretty low threshold -- receives and automatic F. I'm not sure about the quality of their ideas, but they do seem to learn not to write sentence fragments.

I don't know how anybody could justify a negative grade. Maybe for something so egregious (cheating, dangerous activity in a lab, or the like) that it was worse than no effort?

Back in my freshpeep writing course, we received two grades: one for content and its expression, the other for grammar/punctuation. After a certain number of grammatical/punctuation errors, we received an F for that portion of the grade. But if you managed an A on content, it was a C overall. So it was a little tough, but in a very finite way that wasn't actually too bad.

[apl68]

That's not only cruel, but counterproductive. Unless it's one of those fields where lives hang in the balance so that errors are critically important, then students ought to be encouraged to attempt to answer even if they're not entirely sure. Grading schemes (or financial rewards, etc.) must not *disincentivize behaviour that would be considered desireable.

That sounds like some incredibly pedantic grading there.  With nothing said about the quality of the student's ideas or expression of them.  Sounds like the teacher missed the forest for the trees.

Sounds quite unreasonable. Was the course focused specifically on the mechanics of writing? Otherwise, I can't see any justification for such a punitive grading scheme (and even then, negative scores?!?)
I've seen rubrics taking grammar and spelling into account, but this always represented a finite portion of the total score. So no matter how many spelling errors, you'd never lose more than say 10% of the total possible points.

I agree with all of the above, for the record (except I've sometimes seen grammar and mechanics take a higher percentage than 10%. One of my recent colleges set it between 25% and 50% depending on the assignment). And this was a general education freshman composition course, so expression of ideas should have been given *at least* equal weight to the mechanics of writing . . .

AR.

I teach a lot of comp, and I'd never use a grading scheme like the one originally described.

My office mate, on the other hand, is old school. Any assignment that hits a threshold for grammatical errors -- a pretty low threshold -- receives and automatic F. I'm not sure about the quality of their ideas, but they do seem to learn not to write sentence fragments.

I don't know how anybody could justify a negative grade. Maybe for something so egregious (cheating, dangerous activity in a lab, or the like) that it was worse than no effort?

This discussion over negative grades reminds me of Peppermint Patty's comment when her teacher assigned a letter grade of "Z" on an assignment.  "Ma'am, that's not a grad, that's sarcasm!"

[Langue_doc]

Overly anxious student emailed me on Saturday requesting an extension of the deadline for an assignment.

Me: Stu, you submitted your assignment!

Students are probably under extra stress as the hybrid and in-person classes are going online this week.

[dr_codex]

I teach a lot of comp, and I'd never use a grading scheme like the one originally described.

My office mate, on the other hand, is old school. Any assignment that hits a threshold for grammatical errors -- a pretty low threshold -- receives and automatic F. I'm not sure about the quality of their ideas, but they do seem to learn not to write sentence fragments.

I don't know how anybody could justify a negative grade. Maybe for something so egregious (cheating, dangerous activity in a lab, or the like) that it was worse than no effort?

Back in my freshpeep writing course, we received two grades: one for content and its expression, the other for grammar/punctuation. After a certain number of grammatical/punctuation errors, we received an F for that portion of the grade. But if you managed an A on content, it was a C overall. So it was a little tough, but in a very finite way that wasn't actually too bad.

Some of my colleagues in History do this, too. They often include an option to revise the writing.

My attitude is a lot more holistic: I ding essays for mechanics, grammar, punctuation and more, but mainly because they are getting in the way of communication. That is, I don't distinguish between what someone is trying to express and what they are expressing.

[Thursday's_Child]

"Hi Dr. WrongName,

Is there any way I could take the quizzes I missed?"

Fantasy response:

After their answers were made available before each of the relevant exams?  Let me guess - despite it being so late in the semester, you are sure it would be very helpful to show me that you are actually able to pass something.  Isn't that so precious...

Actual response:

Dear student;

No, there is not.

Sincerely,

Dr. CorrectName

[AvidReader]

Regular class meetings at my campus have ended. My on-campus students take their final exam tomorrow, at a date determined before the beginning of the semester. Every student taking this class (dozens of sections) takes the exam at the same time. The date and time are on the syllabus. I have announced them in every class meeting since the beginning of November. I have been sending out reminder emails for the past two weeks and sent another one this afternoon.

Reply to today's reminder email from a student who last attended class (or communicated with me) in September, has turned in 1 (of 6) major pieces of work, and just barely has a grade in the double digits:

[no salutation]
I will have trouble taking my exam, I have a [time the exam starts] class tomorrow and it's doesn't get over until [halfway through exam time]. I don't think i'll have enough time to finish it in the time frame.
[no signature]

I am clearly missing something here. Why . . . ?

AR.