The sensitive soul. WebCT sometimes applies letter grades when you don't want it to, using an inappropriate and irrelevant grading system. The sensitive soul was logged on when the TA was experimenting with the grade system, and noted that the letter grade associated with her exam was an A. Happy, happy! When the grades were finalized, however, the letter grade was actually a C+. Sensitive soul demanded that her letter grade be raised to the average between and A and a C+, because she was so disappointed that she didn't get an A. How the instructor was to "average" two letter grades was left as an exercise. The special student. The Disability Office (DO) proctors exams for students with special needs. There are rules that students are to follow to use these services, which include, most importantly, notifying instructors that you will be taking your exams at the DO. These rules do not apply to Special Student, who, after taking all the other exams and quizzes with the rest of the class, walked into the final with a pile of DO paperwork and informed the proctor that he would be taking the exam later, at his convenience, at DO. Suggestions that he had failed to follow proper procedures were not worthy of his attention. The overachiever. This one enrolled in my graduate mathematics (applied to my discipline) course, convinced that his lack of prerequisites was not going to be an issue because he had such a strong math background otherwise. The overachiever skips classes, fails to turn in homework, is completely silent in the classes he does attend and has no clue how to work the problems on the (take-home) final, as evidenced by the two-page email of hopelessly malformed questions just received by Angry Professor. Guess who gets to stop working and re-present all the material to him here in my office? The otherwise occupied. Rather than take notes during lecture, Otherwise chose an alternative. After the last lecture of the quarter, he presented the instructor with a statistical summary of the number of times she said "um" during her lectures.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Students I have met this quarter.
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5 comments:
Oh my goodness--Blackboard has the same grading problem. Only it will also weight all of the entered grades inappropriately and then assign an irrelevant letter grade. I have to teach my TAs to always, ALWAYS, unclick the "make grade public" radio button.
I don't even use the gradebook function in Blackboard for this very reason - I just post the Excel file I use to track grades with potentially compromising information stripped out.
And last semester I had an Arrogant Overachiever - a student who made public displays of boredom in class and once asked me in front of everyone if the class was "ever going to get challenging." He was also nice enough to give me teaching tips because he'd once taught a intro-to-computers class before he started college.
Oddly enough, when he got a low B on a major assignment, he decided that I needed to retake my department's pedagogy course. (I'm an Angry Grad Student.)
I have quite a few sensative souls who would like me to raise their C to a B because they 'tried' real hard. Did I miss the memo where that said trying should now be calculated in the final? Why not give points for good penmanship and keeping within margins?
I think that I sat in that same back corner with Otherwise. A bunch of us math/science types took Data Analysis in the Social Sciences because it counted as a Social Science distributive requirement. (The poor geography majors struggled so!)
I'm going to draft the "trying hard" clause on my syllabus. Something to the effect of, "Grades are determined by the grading scale described on this syllabus. `Trying hard' is already counted in your gade in the daily homework, which is graded on the basis of effort rather than on correctness."
Have you met the famous "entitled" student? This student feels s/he deserves an A for the course because s/he (or her/his parents) paid to take the class. Actual learning does not seem to figure into the grade distribution calculations.
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