Topic: Bang Your Head on Your Desk - the thread of teaching despair!

[Caracal]

Ugh, yes, there are some students who are really clueless about technology. I suspect some of this is generational. I would never describe myself as good with computers-I don't really know what I'm doing, but I think  those of us who came of age in the 90s and early 2000s learned how to troubleshoot, mostly because we had to. Most of my "troubleshooting" is based on the assumption that I'm doing something dumb. Is the file actually open but I can't find it because I have every file on earth open on my computer? Am I looking in the wrong place to open it? Where is the file anyway? Only if all of that doesn't help, do I even go into the restart everything, see if that fixes it-see if I can open it on my phone-check and see if there's some software update issue phase etc...

I think people who are 18-22 now are just used to things working in an intuitive way and when something doesn't work, they don't really have this kind of mental checklist to go through.

Hello!
I am having trouble accessing the Essay Instruction and Topic file. It was sent as a file that cannot be opened using Word or even Notepad.
Can you send it as a PDF instead?

Thank you

The contents of the folder is three PDFs.

I suspect that the student is clicking fruitlessly on the 'folder' icon on Moodle, not realizing that I've set the CMS to automatically display the folder's contents on the front page...

That, or they're clicking the 'download folder' button and don't know what to do with the zipped file it generates. In which case, just click on the individual documents on the Moodle page. Sigh.

[marshwiggle]

Ugh, yes, there are some students who are really clueless about technology. I suspect some of this is generational. I would never describe myself as good with computers-I don't really know what I'm doing, but I think  those of us who came of age in the 90s and early 2000s learned how to troubleshoot, mostly because we had to. Most of my "troubleshooting" is based on the assumption that I'm doing something dumb. Is the file actually open but I can't find it because I have every file on earth open on my computer? Am I looking in the wrong place to open it? Where is the file anyway? Only if all of that doesn't help, do I even go into the restart everything, see if that fixes it-see if I can open it on my phone-check and see if there's some software update issue phase etc...

I think people who are 18-22 now are just used to things working in an intuitive way and when something doesn't work, they don't really have this kind of mental checklist to go through.

And by "intuitive" what is really meant is "easy to do the thing that most people want to do". AI in everything under the sun is good for doing "normal" stuff, but awful for things that are in any way non-standard. Young people are used to this kind of "no user-serviceable parts inside" approach to technology.

[Anon1787]

Does anyone offer students partial credit for leaving the answer blank to save you the time and irritation of having to read BS answers?

[kiana]

Does anyone offer students partial credit for leaving the answer blank to save you the time and irritation of having to read BS answers?

No, but I do say that everything that is written and not clearly crossed out will be graded, and anything that is irrelevant to the problem counts against them because it means that they don't actually know the answer to the question.

So at least the Bs answers tend to be short instead of rambling answers that are clearly "throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks"

[ergative]

Does anyone offer students partial credit for leaving the answer blank to save you the time and irritation of having to read BS answers?

No, but I do say that everything that is written and not clearly crossed out will be graded, and anything that is irrelevant to the problem counts against them because it means that they don't actually know the answer to the question.

So at least the Bs answers tend to be short instead of rambling answers that are clearly "throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks"

I just graded a batch of exams this weekend, and in my rubric I had a specific row for 'relevance' because I was so annoyed by people trying to define irrelevant stuff in the hopes of partial credit. There were definitely cases where vague answers got better grades than answers which said all the same right stuff as the vague ones plus extra wrong/irrelevant stuff. Part of demonstrating knowledge is knowing what to leave out.

[FishProf]

I usually grade essay exams as "points for everything you say that is both relevant and true".  I am reconsidering adding a "minus the BS and Fluff"

[ergative]

I was recently doing some second marking for an exam that included a grammar component. The first marker gave a passing grade to a student for correctly identifying something as a noun phrase. I pointed out that the student called everything a noun phrase, so how much credit had that likely-accidentally-correct answer really merited?

[the_geneticist]

I was recently doing some second marking for an exam that included a grammar component. The first marker gave a passing grade to a student for correctly identifying something as a noun phrase. I pointed out that the student called everything a noun phrase, so how much credit had that likely-accidentally-correct answer really merited?

Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good?
Even a broken clock is right twice a day?

[onthefringe]

I was recently doing some second marking for an exam that included a grammar component. The first marker gave a passing grade to a student for correctly identifying something as a noun phrase. I pointed out that the student called everything a noun phrase, so how much credit had that likely-accidentally-correct answer really merited?

Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good?
Even a broken clock is right twice a day?

I had a colleague who generated his exams randomly from an enormous, poorly curated pool of true/false and multiple choice questions, and sometimes his exams would end up having the same question twice. He always swore that when students asked what they should do about it during and exam he would answer "I guess that depends on how sure you are of your answer".

[Stockmann]

I usually grade essay exams as "points for everything you say that is both relevant and true".  I am reconsidering adding a "minus the BS and Fluff"

So how much points do they get for "No studying, therefore don't know the answers"? It's both relevant and true...

[ergative]

I usually grade essay exams as "points for everything you say that is both relevant and true".  I am reconsidering adding a "minus the BS and Fluff"

So how much points do they get for "No studying, therefore don't know the answers"? It's both relevant and true...

But it's not relevant. The question is not asking about the student's study habits. It's asking about philology or chemistry or engineering or whatever. Remember, as we tell all those students who whine about how haaaaard they worked on their C- essay, we don't grade the process; we grade the results.

[FishProf]

They might get one 'laugh-out-loud' point, depending on my mood at the time.

[teach_write_research]

argh. plagiarism. There are a few authentic sentences in the paper that take some of the sting out of it and at least the topic is interesting so I got something out of looking at the original sources. It's sad that I could have given some substantive feedback on their ideas. Instead it was a very boring round of highlighting words in student paper and highlighting words in the source. 

[dr_evil]

In the continuing trend of students asking to redo things, I had a student ask if they could retake the final. After the semester is over. SIGH.

And this is why I drink.

[dismalist]

I usually grade essay exams as "points for everything you say that is both relevant and true".  I am reconsidering adding a "minus the BS and Fluff"

So how much points do they get for "No studying, therefore don't know the answers"? It's both relevant and true...

Many, many years ago, in my first college economics course, I finished the written final  of four essay questions at least half an hour before the bell. Instructor, an adjunct, took me into his office, and graded my paper on the spot, giving a running commentary on my writings. Yes, yes, no, no, and such. Finally, he said: Great, but minus 10 points for bullshitting!

This was the same instructor who had earlier in the semester thrown a board eraser at me, frustrated that my thumbs up/thumbs down answers to the directional theory questions he asked were shooting 50/50. So much for class participation.

I loved every minute. Those were the days, my friends!