Monday, December 12, 2005
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The world needs ditch-diggers, too.
About Me
- Angry Professor
- I am a tenured faculty member at a large state university. My teaching efforts primarily consist of delivering statistics lectures to social science majors. These experiences have colored my perspective somewhat.
Disclaimer
This blog is 100% FERPA compliant. It is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The Angry Professor is the creation of Mr. Norrell, who lives in Guam with four rhesus monkeys and a gecko. He has never taught at a university.
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11 comments:
Is that real data?
The distribution is real. I only have two points on the line (the Ds and the As) and I interpolated the rest.
And don't get on me about grade inflation. I use a straight scale. I'm just a fabulous teacher. So there.
From my own experience, I found students in sucessive years having an increasing sense of entitlement that didn't require them to make any effort. They seemed to think that because they (their family, really) had paid a bunch of money, they deserved a good grade, and it was just a matter of figuring out what the "trick" was for a particular class.
My own plot (replacing office visits with emails, because this was long ago enough that my students could remember not having email) would look like this: /U
I got the most visits from the Cs and the As; the Cs because they were desperately trying to hang on, and the As because they genuinely wanted to know more more more!
I sometimes wonder if the immediacy of email etc. has eroded some of the barrier between student and professor in a way they're not yet prepared to handle. I keep reading stories, either here or, e.g., the one about the guy who was randomly "hired" to write a paper for a desperate student, where emailing an authority of some sort asking for help is an acceptable solution to poor planning. I'm thinking this behavior had to be learned somewhere.
I'm also reminded of a story about a prof who gave her studeents her AIM/IM/ICQ/whatever handle. Some students used it exactly as they would with any of their friends! So the prof was innundated with meaningless "hey, what's up" messages. Some students were miffed when she wouldn't respond: "I can see UR on line, why won't you answer me?" And when she finally had to block some of her students, there may have been actual tears.
Trystero, I should have elaborated that y-axis: these numbers are the email traffic *after* the final grades were posted. My "not too late yet" data look more like your /U function.
I can't imagine giving my students my IM handle. My phone number is unlisted. I try to hide my car on campus. I'm tickled pink when they drop in to my office for a visit, but no WAY do those little boogers get a piece of my personal life.
these numbers are the email traffic *after* the final grades were posted
Why on earth would they send multiple emails then? Begging you to reconsider? Insisting that there must be some mistake? Whining and vieled threats? The mind boggles.
All of the above...
Trystero is right that the sense of entitlement has grown in recent years. After reading a tip on this somewhere (can't remember for the life of me), I've found that it's useful to explain to students (preferably at the beginning of the semester) that they have not paid for a grade, rather, they have paid for the chance to compete for a grade.
"I always wonder why, (WHY!) don't they put this kind of effort in before the grades are done." I always tell my students on the first day that the time to worry about their grade is now, not at the end of the semester, because at the end of the semester I just do the math.
RE IMing - I gave out an IM handle this semester for the first time, and only two students (out of about 60) used it, and both did so appropriately.
What JHS said. I've given out an IM name for years and only a few students ever use it; it only takes a little time to answer their questions, and they haven't used it inappropriately.
You know, with a program like Trillian, you can have multiple simultaneous logins to the same IM service; you could then have a separate student-oriented login and personal login.
i would just like to say to you, Angry Professor, that teaching any sort of "real" subject matter, like math or stat, to silly social i-wouldn't-call-it-science majors must be an absolute joke. i give you credit for putting up with them. to me, devoting your entire academic career to any socail b.s. (pun intended) is a waste of one’s life and financial resources. it's the reason why this country is failing and we refuse to recognize it and instead taylor coursework to meet the needs of people who simply refuse to learn something that is actually beneficial to society at large. just thought i'd throw it out there.
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