students
Let me tell you about students. Now, many of us have been/still are students. But come on. Please oh please tell me we were never like some of my students. Two things: the posters and the paper drafts. Let me set up the situation. Last week being Thanksgiving, we did not have lab. So the previous week, they turned in their group posters and developed hypotheses for their individual papers, drafts of which are due today. Ok. Ready?
I graded the posters yesterday. Some were quite good, receiving grades as high as 76/75. But the others. One talked about, oh I don't remember, water drainage and its effect on wildlife, or something like that. The introduction focused on one, the procedure on the other, and the data on the first, or possibly a previously-unknown third variable. Come on people! And the best part of that one: at one point they said "WE tagged all the animals in the area"!!!! If I wanted to be really horrible, I think I could technically get them for plagiarism, especially since they didn't cite most of their sources correctly, or at all.
And the most discouraging poster: was mostly handwritten, cited only one source (3 was the minimum), had no procedure (worth 15/75 points), and had a 2-sentence conclusion. I was so bummed about their score that I asked the class coordinator to grade it independently to see if I was being too harsh. I gave it a 39/75, and was generous in some categories. She gave it 38. So I feel better right now, but then I haven't given that group their grade yet. I'm sure they'll be thrilled.
And now to the papers. They are supposed to have a draft written for today, at least 50% of the paper should be complete, so they can do a peer review. They have had 2 weeks to work on this. Yesterday and the day before, I got several emails asking me: hey what was my hypothesis again? So. They did not write down the hypothesis (or lost it). They have not started work on the paper. And one girl has no idea what we are doing! Are we writing a scientific paper? How are we supposed to get the data when we aren't doing the experiment ourselves? Sheesh, they did the exact same thing for the posters: look up other people's work!
So today I'll get to find out just how many of them actually worked on the draft. Last time they did a peer review (for the posters) I explicitly told them to write out comments, and not just give +/-. About half of them really didn't. Three comments, out of about 15 scoring categories, is not being thorough. And I get to give them back their poster grades. Some will be thrilled, but then there's the 39/75. I think I'm going to be really happy that we are doing TA evaluations at the beginning of class, rather than at the end.
I just realized that I really ought to be getting dressed and ready for the day, or it will be class time before I know it. Oh boy.
I graded the posters yesterday. Some were quite good, receiving grades as high as 76/75. But the others. One talked about, oh I don't remember, water drainage and its effect on wildlife, or something like that. The introduction focused on one, the procedure on the other, and the data on the first, or possibly a previously-unknown third variable. Come on people! And the best part of that one: at one point they said "WE tagged all the animals in the area"!!!! If I wanted to be really horrible, I think I could technically get them for plagiarism, especially since they didn't cite most of their sources correctly, or at all.
And the most discouraging poster: was mostly handwritten, cited only one source (3 was the minimum), had no procedure (worth 15/75 points), and had a 2-sentence conclusion. I was so bummed about their score that I asked the class coordinator to grade it independently to see if I was being too harsh. I gave it a 39/75, and was generous in some categories. She gave it 38. So I feel better right now, but then I haven't given that group their grade yet. I'm sure they'll be thrilled.
And now to the papers. They are supposed to have a draft written for today, at least 50% of the paper should be complete, so they can do a peer review. They have had 2 weeks to work on this. Yesterday and the day before, I got several emails asking me: hey what was my hypothesis again? So. They did not write down the hypothesis (or lost it). They have not started work on the paper. And one girl has no idea what we are doing! Are we writing a scientific paper? How are we supposed to get the data when we aren't doing the experiment ourselves? Sheesh, they did the exact same thing for the posters: look up other people's work!
So today I'll get to find out just how many of them actually worked on the draft. Last time they did a peer review (for the posters) I explicitly told them to write out comments, and not just give +/-. About half of them really didn't. Three comments, out of about 15 scoring categories, is not being thorough. And I get to give them back their poster grades. Some will be thrilled, but then there's the 39/75. I think I'm going to be really happy that we are doing TA evaluations at the beginning of class, rather than at the end.
I just realized that I really ought to be getting dressed and ready for the day, or it will be class time before I know it. Oh boy.