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

[ciao_yall]

Student who is a little older than traditional students just shared that, because she was homeschooled and just took a few odd community college classes when she turned 18, this was her. First. Group. Project. Ever.

[Charlotte]

Student who is a little older than traditional students just shared that, because she was homeschooled and just took a few odd community college classes when she turned 18, this was her. First. Group. Project. Ever.

Hopefully, she participated in a good homeschool situation and not a bad one.

[Langue_doc]

Students were given the opportunity to revise a couple of assignments for higher grades. Guess how many of them were actual revisions? One student was creative enough to use a different font for the same assignment.

I'll have to start taking off points for submitting so-called "revised" assignments.

The head bang is for the time I spent comparing the "revised" assignments with the original ones.

Same class, yet another opportunity to revise an essay for a higher grade.

Other than moving a few words around in the introductory paragraph, "revised" essays are identical to the original essays. One supposedly "revised" essay now has a missing title.

If students refuse to read the feedback and waste their time merely shuffling a few words around intead of actually revising, which would help with their upcoming assignments, it's their tuition money going down the toilet. I'm paid to give detailed comments, so I'm not complaining.

Are there any high schools where points are given for merely submitting a "revised" version of something, regardless of whether anything was changed? It seems to me there must be something in these students' pasts making them think this will work.

I think it's a bit more complicated than that as I do get the occasional student submitting the same assignment, fingers crossed that I won't see the absence of any revisions. With this particular class, this was the third instance of several students submitting unrevised assignments The earlier submissions were given detailed feedback and the class was also shown the difference between global and local revisions. These students have a chat room and seem to come up with ways to game the system as I found out when several of them submitted the same response for another assignment.

High school teachers probably do give points for submitting what students claim are revised versions. Teachers don't have the time to grade or even read all the assignments as the class size is around 26 (according to students in an earlier class) and the teacher has to teach 5 or 6 sections of English on any given day. In our city and state, students can submit all their "missed" assignments before the end of the school year.

I had to remind students some years ago at another institution that attending high school is a requirement, but that college is a choice and that the students have to decide if it's worth their while to not take their education seriously. In this institution, students for the most part are quite motivated. I've never had such an unmotivated class in at least a decade.

[apl68]

Students were given the opportunity to revise a couple of assignments for higher grades. Guess how many of them were actual revisions? One student was creative enough to use a different font for the same assignment.

I'll have to start taking off points for submitting so-called "revised" assignments.

The head bang is for the time I spent comparing the "revised" assignments with the original ones.

Same class, yet another opportunity to revise an essay for a higher grade.

Other than moving a few words around in the introductory paragraph, "revised" essays are identical to the original essays. One supposedly "revised" essay now has a missing title.

If students refuse to read the feedback and waste their time merely shuffling a few words around intead of actually revising, which would help with their upcoming assignments, it's their tuition money going down the toilet. I'm paid to give detailed comments, so I'm not complaining.

Are there any high schools where points are given for merely submitting a "revised" version of something, regardless of whether anything was changed? It seems to me there must be something in these students' pasts making them think this will work.

I think it's a bit more complicated than that as I do get the occasional student submitting the same assignment, fingers crossed that I won't see the absence of any revisions. With this particular class, this was the third instance of several students submitting unrevised assignments The earlier submissions were given detailed feedback and the class was also shown the difference between global and local revisions. These students have a chat room and seem to come up with ways to game the system as I found out when several of them submitted the same response for another assignment.

High school teachers probably do give points for submitting what students claim are revised versions. Teachers don't have the time to grade or even read all the assignments as the class size is around 26 (according to students in an earlier class) and the teacher has to teach 5 or 6 sections of English on any given day. In our city and state, students can submit all their "missed" assignments before the end of the school year.

I had to remind students some years ago at another institution that attending high school is a requirement, but that college is a choice and that the students have to decide if it's worth their while to not take their education seriously. In this institution, students for the most part are quite motivated. I've never had such an unmotivated class in at least a decade.

Well, it's good to hear that this class has been an outlier.  Maybe a lot of them have hit their walls in this pandemic year.

[fishbrains]

Student who is a little older than traditional students just shared that, because she was homeschooled and just took a few odd community college classes when she turned 18, this was her. First. Group. Project. Ever.

That's kind of hard to imagine. She's never been in a group project at church? With her family? At a job? With volunteer or mission work? At a home-school camp? It's not like most home-schoolers just sit around the house in total isolation. Even the wacky Adam-and-Eve-rode-dinosaurs-to-church homeschool crowd does group projects with their kids.

Anyway, I've heard stranger things I guess.

[AvidReader]

Student who has never attended class and has not turned in a single piece of work all semester, large or small, decided last week that it would be nice to take the midterm. I don't know why.
[. . . ]
Stu has missed 7 weeks of work. Stu cannot pass even if Stu takes the midterm. If Stu wants credit for doing something, Stu could come to class or submit a different assignment. There are dozens of other available items.

Stu continues to email 2-3 times per week asking that I reopen different, random past assignments. I do not accept late work, as is clearly stated in the syllabus. I repeatedly reply with the same two sentences reminding Stu of this policy.

Midterm grades just went out, and I sent a class announcement telling students how many points they should have by now in order to have a chance of passing (or in order to have a shot at each grade tier).

Stu's response to the class announcement:

hey how you doing [avid] i just making sure you said if i turn in missing assignments right?

I am just exhausted.

AR.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

That sounds really aggravating AR.

I guess I'm in a grumpy mood and I think I have a good reason to be. Stu who has been driving me nuts all semester wanted me to give stu a 'point for fun' on a test even though stu didn't know the answer. Um, no. You're a pain in my ass.

A la Seinfeld, "No point for you!"

[kaysixteen]

I suspect you may well find that most hs students do little, if any group work, more or less ever.   I cannot recall ever assigning such efforts there, at least not at all often.   There are many reasons why this does not fly in most hss.  One, students are often unable to get together regularly or reliably with classmates outside of school, and there is *nothing* teachers could do about this.  Two, the slackers as freeloaders problem would be very much magnified in hs contexts, as would the expected complaints from high achievers and/or their parents.   Three, some hss students will be noticeably *brighter* than others, and the less bright groupmates, however they may try, well....

There really is no pedagogical reason to force groupwork in hs, and little reason for most undergrad courses either.

[Langue_doc]

Student who has never attended class and has not turned in a single piece of work all semester, large or small, decided last week that it would be nice to take the midterm. I don't know why.
[. . . ]
Stu has missed 7 weeks of work. Stu cannot pass even if Stu takes the midterm. If Stu wants credit for doing something, Stu could come to class or submit a different assignment. There are dozens of other available items.

Stu continues to email 2-3 times per week asking that I reopen different, random past assignments. I do not accept late work, as is clearly stated in the syllabus. I repeatedly reply with the same two sentences reminding Stu of this policy.

Midterm grades just went out, and I sent a class announcement telling students how many points they should have by now in order to have a chance of passing (or in order to have a shot at each grade tier).

Stu's response to the class announcement:

hey how you doing [avid] i just making sure you said if i turn in missing assignments right?

I am just exhausted.

AR.

Stu sounds like a PITA. I would send a terse response advising Stu to refer to the policies in the syllabus and also to your responses to Stu's emails (include a number here) on this topic. I would add a sentence to the effect that you will no longer be responding to emails about late or missing assignments. You could also submit a progress report if your institution allows you to do so after the mid-term evaluations

[AvidReader]

evil_physics_witchcrafts, that is nuts. Perhaps you can tell your student that he/she can add the grade "for fun" in his/her own head.

I am handling my Stu by copy-pasting past email responses that encourage Stu to withdraw. I don't think I am allowed to stop answering student emails, but I do let each one wait 6-8 hours. Sometimes more arrive in the meantime. Stu is in a remedial course with mandatory attendance, so not having turned in any assignments is only one part of Stu's problem.

Stu had a paper due the day the midterm report went out, but --shockingly!-- chose not to submit that one either.

AR.

[mamselle]

Re: group work: I graduated HS in 1971, and group work was never a part of our schooling experience that I recall.

In college (Ohio State), where I started in 1973 (took a year off to work and go to Europe in between) and finished in 1976, group work was never mentioned except in the theatre directing classes where we did scenes with other students in the class, and that was pretty clearly meted out by the parts they had: if you learned your part, took your blockings, and delivered your lines as directed--or not--you were graded appropriately. No room for fudging.

My grad work in one setting (1980s) included four expressive therapies programs which involved group projects but those were very professionally handled because most of the other students were experienced practitioners with strong ideas and willing input, making it very enjoyable and, I found, a good learning context for creating the workshops and seminars in the liturgical arts that I was offering at the time.

My later grad work (1990s), was nearly all guided independent studies within a structurally dysfunctional department that offered good reasons for students to collaborate informally, for their own sanity (I set up a dissertation reading group to this end, for example), but did not usually require group projects by its very nature.

Group work had become a teaching tool "thing" for undergraduates by that time, however: as a TA I was assigned to assist with group work and mostly did so by setting up a couple of 15-min. group meetings during class. I listened closely to their conversations, monitoring for one or two predominant voices.

In those cases, I'd pointedly ask the outliers for their ideas about what had just been said a couple times, to help integrate them into the conversation (some unbalanced "leader-follower" setups result from the leader's lack of group involvement skills: those limping along behind may have never been looped in to begin with). Modeling the expectation that all were to be included may have helped teach that skill to the leaders who lacked it, and put  potential slackers on notice that someone was watching, and not to play that game.

I've also used it in choreographic settings, eliciting phrases and suggestions for how to join them together within a dance composition, and in music theory classes, where we often compose a piece together. But then, I'm usually the leader, and can be sure all are engaged directly. And grades aren't involved, the continuity, flow, and depth of communicativity in the dance itself is the judge of the group's success.

In adjuncting, I've found it less useful since, with 50 people in an Intro to Art Class, it's just not practical, and with 15 in a French I class, there aren't enough people to make more than 2-3 groups, although I would split them into small conversational groups about once a week to encourage interchanges in the language in class.

Again, I'd wander around the class, dropping in a word here or there or asking a question of an apparent non-contributor to keep them engaged.

Someone also told me once of their group work grading structure, but I've never had call to use it: I could look it up if it's useful, it's designed to balance point offerings among the individual members and the group as a whole, to correct for freeloaders.

Just musing, since it's now a "thing" with a history.

M.

[AmLitHist]

I never did any kind of group work, either in K-12, undergrad (3 degrees), or grad school (MA-Research and ABD).  Maybe disciplines have something to do with it?  (BS Accounting, BA English, BA Biology, MA English, PhD work American Studies) The closest I came was having a lab partner in the biology degree, and even then, only in Gen Bio and Gen Chem; we also had the option of working alone if we wanted, and I usually did, because I did that degree as a non-trad. older student with kids (and thus it was easier to work alone than trying to schedule odd-scheduled follow ups around my/kids' schedules with a lab partner).

I've assigned some group work to students over the years, but all that remains now is the online/asynchronous peer editing in Comp classes. Virtually all my English colleagues have done the same.

YMMV, of course. I'd imagine there are some fields where group work is much more useful/necessary.

[Langue_doc]

I've assigned some group work to students over the years, but all that remains now is the online/asynchronous peer editing in Comp classes. Virtually all my English colleagues have done the same.

Yup, this is the only group work I assign in my online asynchronous classes. In classroom classes I have students work in groups on short ungraded assignments. One student from each group makes a report to the class. This is rather painless for the students as they don't have to coordinate schedules outside of class and also don't have to put up with classmates who don't contribute to the assignment.

[teach_write_research]

Students worked together to answer a question on a low-stakes assignment. Their answer, conceptually, made no sense for the topic. Like, no idea what someone was thinking. The question was a simple reading comprehension that could be answered from the textbook. Well that all took a lot more of my time than it needed to given that it was a simple low stakes reading comprehension assignment. Sigh. It would have been easier if they had just skipped it or said I don't have the book.

[Caracal]

Students worked together to answer a question on a low-stakes assignment. Their answer, conceptually, made no sense for the topic. Like, no idea what someone was thinking. The question was a simple reading comprehension that could be answered from the textbook. Well that all took a lot more of my time than it needed to given that it was a simple low stakes reading comprehension assignment. Sigh. It would have been easier if they had just skipped it or said I don't have the book.

What's the point of making that group work? I sometimes break students into groups, but its usually to discuss some short piece of reading or document and answer some conceptual questions on it that should require a bit of thought. Mostly, I'm just trying to break up the flow of class and create conditions in which some of the students who don't talk much in class will engage a bit.