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

[Puget]

It's whack-a-mole alright.
And it is *hard* to fail my labs.  As in, you have to stop coming to class & not finish most of it.  So many formative assessments & partial credit opportunities because I want them to succeed.  Tell me what you learned, even if the experiment "failed", you will earn full points.
That being said: incomplete, logically inconsistent or missing answers don't = 100%

Same -- 40% of the points are for low-stakes weekly assignments where it is easy to get 100% just by trying. I even drop the 2 lowest grades in several of these categories. The only way to really fail is to not do homework, not do the in class assignments (aka, not attend) AND do poorly on exams (the latter being a natural consequence of the former). Generally only a few students a year actually get below a C-.

Often it is the students with a B+ or even A- (sometimes the first of their precious grade inflated lives) who are the worst grade grubbers. No honey, a B+ is not going to ruin your whole future.

[bio-nonymous]

[/quote]

Often it is the students with a B+ or even A- (sometimes the first of their precious grade inflated lives) who are the worst grade grubbers. No honey, a B+ is not going to ruin your whole future.

Ha! Yep. Imagine if you will, a student who got a 4.0 in high school (or a "5.3", whatever that means) and then a "4.0" in their undergrad at wherever U. Now they are in, say dental school or a physician's assistant program, and they are shocked to find out that they cannot spend all of their time outside class on fantasy football, working out, playing intramural sports, watching sports on TV, and going to bars and still maintain their precious 4.0 streak. They are shocked, I tell you, to find out Grad School is hard...

[kaysixteen]

Yes, but whose fault is it if these kids have a grade-inflated ethos wracking their minds, and what should be done about this problem?

[Antiphon1]

It's the parents, too.  You haul your kids to every after school extracurricular activity for decades, show up at every open house, dillegently "help" with homework, and hang your ego (not the child's) on  HS GPA/scholorships, it's gonna be tough when some arrogant (irony intended) college professor fails to see the brilliance of your spawn's efforts.  Heaven help the poor child who has to carry the burden of their parents' overinflated expectations. 

[Parasaurolophus]

Our classes pretty much all meet once a week for three hours. This semester, holidays mean my Monday class meets for 9/14 weeks. Two weeks ago, the roads were flooded out so I cancelled class. Today, just before we started, the power went out.

So I'm pretty sure they're cursed.

[the_geneticist]

Students,
If you want help during office hours, you need to have tried the materials on your own first. 

Conversations like:
Did you try the homework? No
How about the practice problems? No
Have you looked at your quizzes? No
Talked with your TA? No
Looked at the lecture slides? No

are telling me that you are simply behind.  I can't magically get you "all caught up".  I can help you plan out what you need to do, but I can't learn it for you.

[Puget]

Exam 2 had a very negative skew - median was 83 (about where I want it) but mean was only 77 because there were some very, very, low scores -- one student only got 26% and there were several others in the 30s and 40s.

I did academic advising alerts for them, and one followed up to ask if there is "anything I can do" to improve her grade -- so I looked at her Moodle report, and she first accessed the study guide two hours before the exam, so yes, I have an idea of where she might want to start if she wants to do better on the final!

Unsurprisingly the other super lower scores similarly have Moodle reports indicating they haven't been doing much or any studying.

[the_geneticist]

Exam 2 had a very negative skew - median was 83 (about where I want it) but mean was only 77 because there were some very, very, low scores -- one student only got 26% and there were several others in the 30s and 40s.

I did academic advising alerts for them, and one followed up to ask if there is "anything I can do" to improve her grade -- so I looked at her Moodle report, and she first accessed the study guide two hours before the exam, so yes, I have an idea of where she might want to start if she wants to do better on the final!

Unsurprisingly the other super lower scores similarly have Moodle reports indicating they haven't been doing much or any studying.

At least that's a clear case of "you need to look at the materials earlier"!  And it's obvious to you that they were entirely unprepared, hopefully that lesson sinks in for the student.

Does anyone here use the so-called Exam Wrappers to have students reflect on what they missed and why?  Our students HATE these with a passion.  It's awkward to go through an exam and figure out what you got wrong and why, but it's a good way to really think about what you're doing and learning.
But if we ask them at the start of the term how they are going to study, they all say that they will study every day/go to office hours/try all of the practice problems.  There is a serious disconnect with what they say they intend to do and what they actually do. 

[kaysixteen]

What exactly is an 'Exam Wrapper'? (BTW I assume that the capitalization indicates it is some sort of proprietary thingee?)

[statsgeek]

I just had to call in two of my good students because their online quizzes are VERY similar - same wrong answers to the same MC questions, very similar responses to the short answers, same start and end times, and even completing the questions in the same order at very close to the same times (I assume they don't know I can see the log of their responses). 

I wish they knew how much this hurts me, even beyond the "ugh..now I have to do the paperwork" part. 

[sinenomine]

What exactly is an 'Exam Wrapper'? (BTW I assume that the capitalization indicates it is some sort of proprietary thingee?)

I don't believe it's a proprietary thing, just jargon. Basically, it's a metacognitive prompt to encourage students to reflect on their work/progress.

[kaysixteen]

On what basis, beyond similarity, can you conclude cheating occurred?

[the_geneticist]

What exactly is an 'Exam Wrapper'? (BTW I assume that the capitalization indicates it is some sort of proprietary thingee?)

I don't believe it's a proprietary thing, just jargon. Basically, it's a metacognitive prompt to encourage students to reflect on their work/progress.

The original was from Marsha Lovett from Carnegie Mellon University.  There are a few variations, but the main idea students are asked to tally up which questions they got incorrect on an exam and *why*.  Did they misunderstand a term? Second-guess themself? Not read the question carefully? etc.
Then, they plan out what they will do differently as preparation for the next exam. 

The logistics can be tricky.  You have to give students a copy of the exam questions (or post online) and give them access to GradeScope (or whatever system you use) so they know which questions they missed.  If everyone took the exam on time (no one out sick, no waiting for students at the testing center) AND you let them take the exam questions with them, then it's easy.  Same if you post a .pdf of the exam questions.
But if you're determined that the students are NOT allowed to keep their exams or you limit access to being able to look at exams only during class and insist they give them back/don't take pictures, then it's honestly a disaster.

[statsgeek]

On what basis, beyond similarity, can you conclude cheating occurred?

What would you say are the odds of them moving through the quiz questions in the same order (not exactly the order the questions appear on the page) and at approximately the same rate?  As I told the students, it's not impossible but it is unlikely that much would be that similar. 

Update - they both told me they were working in the same room but not together.  I have handed it over to our Honor Code process for follow-up. 

[kaysixteen]

WRT this similarity=cheating episode, exactly what are the standards the Honor committee at your school needs to demonstrate, in order to convict a student of cheating?

WRT the Exam Wrapper, this sounds like a more sophisticated way of simply requiring, as an assignment, students to fix the mistakes they made on the tests, something I first learned to do from my hs math teacher?