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

[marshwiggle]

Maybe something like:

"A Hail Mary throw at the end of the game doesn't usually end up with a completed pass. Some poor receiver usually just winds up on their knees in the mud in the end zone..."

Just to put it in language they might understand...

M.

That's a decent metaphor. The only problem is that a football game is a discrete event, so there's no real cost to trying to throw the pass even if it is very unlikely to be successful. The players don't have other things they could be spending that 6 seconds doing, so they might as well give it a shot. A gambling/math metaphor about expected value captures the situation more accurately, but it is far more confusing than Mamselle's so much less useful.

Perhaps a better metaphor would be going to Vegas and spending all but your last $1, then going to the casino and using it in a slot machine to finance your trip home. Technically, it could work, but it's a ridiculously bad strategy.

[RatGuy]

I've got fifteen students in my summer class. We're in week 2. Today I had a non-zero number of students need pens to take the quiz. The level of engagement is right about nil.

[mamselle]

Apparently some people don't catch puns in midair, either.

;--}

M.

[Caracal]

Maybe something like:

"A Hail Mary throw at the end of the game doesn't usually end up with a completed pass. Some poor receiver usually just winds up on their knees in the mud in the end zone..."

Just to put it in language they might understand...

M.

That's a decent metaphor. The only problem is that a football game is a discrete event, so there's no real cost to trying to throw the pass even if it is very unlikely to be successful. The players don't have other things they could be spending that 6 seconds doing, so they might as well give it a shot. A gambling/math metaphor about expected value captures the situation more accurately, but it is far more confusing than Mamselle's so much less useful.

Perhaps a better metaphor would be going to Vegas and spending all but your last $1, then going to the casino and using it in a slot machine to finance your trip home. Technically, it could work, but it's a ridiculously bad strategy.

Its more like gambling the last 50 bucks on a long shot, hoping to recoup your losses, instead of using that money to buy your bus ticket home. It's bad that you've lost all your money, but you need to accept that, go home and rebuild things instead of chasing lost causes and ending up stuck in Vegas with no money.

[the_geneticist]

Our first exam is next week.  I think it's going to be a rude wake-up call for students who have been relying on their lab partners to answer the questions in their worksheets.

[OneMoreYear]

A student has cited an essay by studycorgi.com, which is apparently an essay writing service and "free essay database for inspiration" as a source in a research paper. The even worse part is that they are citing studycorgi b/c the free example paper has a graph from the US census (actually relevant to the student's topic). Instead of just going to the census site, so they could cite the graph correctly from the census, they cited it from studycorgi. Laziness? Absolute cluelessness? I don't know.

[mbelvadi]

That's particularly egregious but as a librarian I can tell you I run into students, and sorry to say even faculty, who just do not want to hear that they should make the effort to find the original, when it's a reasonably widely published source.  It comes up when they contact me asking how to cite in APA/MLA a quotation from an article/book that is itself a quotation from another source. And APA Manual doesn't help when it basically says don't do it and then gives the reference syntax for doing it anyway. Not talking about obscure/primary/private-communication originals here, but heaven forbid they should have to wait for an ILL request to go through so they can see the original text!

[apl68]

Not talking about obscure/primary/private-communication originals here, but heaven forbid they should have to wait for an ILL request to go through so they can see the original text!

Well, they may only have submitted the ILL request only a few days before their deadline to have it, not realizing that ILLs can take time.  I recall patrons doing that when I worked in ILL.

[FishProf]

And here it comes: Didn't do any work until the last day of the class, didn't do ANY Of the lecture quizzed, ended up with a 59.3%:

"Hi prof. hope you're well, I just need an explanation as to how I got an E in your class when I finished more than half of the assigned work. I'm not going to insult your intelligence but my grade should be at the lowest a C-."

Words fail me, for now.

[mamselle]

Consider your intelligence insulted?

Really, though--sorry it comes to this.

Head-scratcher.

M.

[Thursday's_Child]

And here it comes: Didn't do any work until the last day of the class, didn't do ANY Of the lecture quizzed, ended up with a 59.3%:

"Hi prof. hope you're well, I just need an explanation as to how I got an E in your class when I finished more than half of the assigned work. I'm not going to insult your intelligence but my grade should be at the lowest a C-."

Words fail me, for now.

Maybe tell Stu that you can't find a math error and ask Stu to show how s/h/it did those calculations?

[FishProf]

Fantasy reply:  I don't want to insult YOUR intelligence, but 59 < 60.

[kiana]

Fantasy reply:  I don't want to insult YOUR intelligence, but 59 < 60.

Oh hell, I DO want to insult your intelligence, and 59 < 60.

[downer]

I wouldn't give an open ended reply or invite any further discussion on the topic. I'd be reluctant to give an explanation at all, though there was one time when the student went to the chair after I said something like "The grade is correct. Bye." So maybe a minimal explanation.

[Chemystery]

And here it comes: Didn't do any work until the last day of the class, didn't do ANY Of the lecture quizzed, ended up with a 59.3%:

"Hi prof. hope you're well, I just need an explanation as to how I got an E in your class when I finished more than half of the assigned work. I'm not going to insult your intelligence but my grade should be at the lowest a C-."

Words fail me, for now.

Maybe tell Stu that you can't find a math error and ask Stu to show how s/h/it did those calculations?

I doubt the student did any calculations.  This sounds like the student believes that completion of half of the work (regardless of quality?) guarantees a passing grade. 
Does the student have access to their scores/percent in the CMS?  If so, I'd suggest a response inviting the student to review the scores and feedback on their work (letting you know, of course, if they find an error) and comparing it to the grading scale shown in the syllabus, which was provided to them on the first day of class.