All Posts Tagged With: "essays"

Annual contest publishes the most hilarious examples

Each year, Times Higher Education, Britain’s premiere authority on universities, holds a contest. Lecturers submit the most egregious — and hilarious — mistakes that they’ve read in student essays and exams. Next week they will choose a winner.

But they’ve released the first round of entries already. Our favorite so far is that submitted by Ann Wood from the department of biochemistry at King’s College London. In a food science and technology course, a student advised on a test that it was necessary to use a “genital mixing action.”

We’ll report the winner next week. In the meantime, read a few more entires here.

Are you a TA or a professor? Have your students written something dumb? If so, please share in the comments section.

Is it wrong to pretend deadlines matter when they don’t?

Over my twenty-something years associated with universities, I have come to terms with a lot of things. I know how I like to teach and how to talk to students in my office. I have personal policies about electronic devices and when a personal touch is too personal. Yes, years after tenure, I pretty much have this professor thing figured out.

But I still haven’t found a way to handle due dates for assignments.

You would think it would be simple. Set a date and expect students to hand it in on that date. But what if the student gets sick or her mom dies or what if the student just didn’t bother and is willing to make up a story to get an extension? In short, in addition to the due date, you need a policy for extensions. For a while I had a policy borrowed from one of my own undergraduate classes which said you could have an extension if you requested it in writing and in advance. One year I tried giving two dates, one that was the official due date and one a week later that was the extended due date — in other words, I gave everyone an extension in advance on everything.

Sadly, whatever your policy on extensions, some will always try to get you to make an exception. Instead of asking in advance, they ask you the day of or the day after. Instead of taking the extra week as an extension, they think of the extended date as the real due date and then want an extension on that. And so it goes. At some point you always end up in an awkward conversation with a student (very awkward if the student is crying) and trying to figure out if he is telling the truth or not and if the allowance you are making for him is equivalent to what you allowed to someone else. And what if you have already said no to someone else?

And this is to say nothing about late papers. What happens when the student simply hands it in after the due date? Do you refuse to accept it? Or dock so many marks per day? How many? Do weekends count? Is there a maximum?

The whole thing is a nightmare.

The last few years, I abandoned due dates altogether. I simply indicated how many assignments were to be done and reminded my students (ad nauseum) that they needed to plan ahead to make sure they got them all done by the end of the course. This arrangement has the benefit, for me, of not having to deal with the issues related above.  I don’t have to entertain requests for extensions because there is no due date to be extended. Hand it in when it’s done.

By the same token, no due dates means no paper is ever late. So there are no late marks to worry about. Simple, elegant, and, best of all, great for students who (in theory) are free to work on my papers when they have time according to their own particular schedules. There’s just one problem with not having due dates.

Students don’t hand anything in.

As far as I can tell, without a specific deadline hanging over the heads of our young Damocleses, students, for the most part, simply put off doing the papers at all until its too late. I have precisely one student this year (in all my courses) who has kept up to the expected pace on paper writing in the absence of due dates. I have one course where the grand total of all papers handed in over the whole year is exactly one. Since September.

In a sense, the problem lies not with the students, but with every other professor in the university besides me. If other professors adopted my beautiful system, it would work for everyone. But since everyone else uses old-fashioned due dates, everyone else’s paper seems more pressing than mine. My students reason that they can always push mine off another week because mine can be handed in any time, but their paper for Professor Urgent is due tomorrow.

Obviously, I’m not going to be able to convince everyone to change their policies for my sake. So, what am I to do? Go back to the old system of due dates, extensions, and late marks? Never! I have a plan, but I’m unsure about it since I think it might be evil.

Here’s the idea: I set out my course outline with due dates as normal but do not include anything in the syllabus about extensions or late penalties. I am simply silent on that point. But in my mind I already know that students will assume there is some penalty for a late paper or that late papers might not be accepted. But their assumption will actually be wrong, because in my mind, I will have already decided that I will give any student any extension they want without penalty. And I will accept papers late without penalty. I just don’t tell them that. Then, when they come to my office worried that I will not accept their late paper or refuse an extension, I can be all magnanimous and say, “Oh, I understand. A dead gerbil can be very trying. When do you think you can have it in? Monday? Great.”

The student will think that I have been kind and generous and understanding. They will think I treated them as a person (which supposedly students like) when really I was going to give them whatever they asked for anyhow.

I feel a bit bad about this plan because it seems deceitful in a way. For one thing, there would be a policy in force that is not stated on the syllabus. On the other hand, the policy would still be applied equally, or at least, equally to everyone who asks.  Still, I worry that more diligent students might feel hard done by if they knew that others were getting extensions that they didn’t know were even an option. But then, as far as I can tell, even good students need to have a deadline, so maybe my lie by omission would be doing everyone a favour.

Would you rather get an F, or be made to rewrite?

This year, I seem to have reached some kind of breaking point when it comes to grading essays. At one time I kind of liked terrible papers — not because I took a perverse delight in giving a low grade — but because they were easy to assess. Utter incompetence cannot be hidden. But after ten years of such nonsense, it’s getting a bit old, and I’m tired of seeing the Fs pile up at the end of the year.

My first attempt to encourage better writing came a a few years ago when I instituted a generous rewrite policy in most of my courses, but that has had mixed results. Lots of students won’t rewrite papers no matter how badly they’ve done on them, and those who do rewrite often make only superficial corrections, hoping to get a few more points here and there.

I should point out that I’m not talking about papers that are simply dull or jejune; I’m talking about papers that do not even begin to address the issues at hand or remotely attempt to meet the most basic requirements.

Right now, I’m hatching a plan by which I would provide students with a list of basic things that must be included — and done correctly — in any paper. Essays must have a title; they must cite sources correctly; they must actually cite the text in question; they must be of the assigned length. And so on. If the paper does not meet all these basic requirements, it simply gets handed back, ungraded, and must be redone.

If the paper meets these deal-breaking criteria, then it will be assessed for its intellectual quality. If it does not rise to the level of a C-minus, it goes back with comments (inlcuding specifics on what needs fixing) but still without a grade and still must be rewritten. When the rewrite comes in, the student must include a note describing the changes and how the problems have been fixed.

I’m eager to try this out, and curious to see how students will respond. The optimist in me hopes that the lack of a low grade on a failing paper will help prevent students from getting discouraged, and the clear, tough guidelines will force them to be more scrupulous. I also hope the revision note will compel them to think about  real revisions and not just pretend that fixing a few spelling errors constitutes a rewrite. The pessimist in me worries that students will get stuck on the first paper and never finish even that, and so fail all the more completely (of course, many students give up after the first paper or two anyway).

I also wonder whether students will object to the no-grade they might get on the grounds that it should be up to them whether they want to accept the low mark. This, in effect, would be students fighting for their right to fail, but I wouldn’t put it past them. I could always remind students that they are still free to fail exams as badly as they want.

Without homework, where will students learn to do work they can’t do at school?

Homework, that fabled warrior in the fight against ignorance, is on the defensive these days. Students, have always reviled it, of course, parents have feared it, and teachers have accepted its rule as necessary if unpleasant.

But more and more one reads stories like this one, which recast the image and utility of homework. Where it was once seen as a vital chance to practice important skills, it is now increasingly seen as a needless burden that, if anything, actually impedes learning by stressing out the kids, and the parents, too, for that matter.

Fair enough. If elementary schools can teach kids more effectively without homework, who am I to say nay? Or yea. Or whatever. But as a university professor, I worry about what happens down the road. If homework can’t be justified in grade eight, say, how is it justified in grade ten, especially if those grade ten students have never been expected to do it before? Won’t homework in high school be even more stressful to those who have never had to do work out of class before? Will high schools ban homework, too? If they do, what will become of assignments that cannot be done during class because they require long periods of time to do properly? That is, what will become of the formal essay, that mainstay of education in the humanities and social sciences, and bedrock assignment in most university arts programs?Some high schools have already dropped formal essays in favour of in-class exams with essay questions, and university-bound graduates of those schools are already disadvantaged when they are asked to write real, university-level papers. The ones where you have to, you know, do research and write multiple drafts, and use a computer.

In other words, while homework may not be a help to elementary school students immediately, it may help in the long run by helping establish in them the discipline needed to work on learning outside of school hours. Has anyone studied whether developing the habit of doing work outside of school is valuable in itself? If not, we may be asking the wrong questions, and if we are, our misguided answers may leave us with students who are even less prepared for university than they are now.

How to make sure your term paper doesn’t miss the point

Figuring out just what professors want in a term paper can be tricky, but it needn’t be. Whether it’s your first paper in university, and you’re still navigating your way around the library, or you’re a seasoned pro, there are a few things you need to know.

And while much of what I have to say may seem obvious, redundant and self-congratulatory, it is really quite astonishing how many people go through their entire university careers without ever figuring out just quite how to write the paper professors are looking for.

For starters, if the assignment involves answering a question your professor has prepared beforehand, read it. I mean actually read it. And closely. If there is more than one part to the question, consider each part individually. How might they be related? Should each part be answered separately? Or should they be considered together within an overarching argument? Understanding the question is the first step to answering it.

You’d be surprised how many people do poorly on a paper because they failed to answer the question. They sort of go willy nilly through the whole process, and end up writing something completely foreign to what was actually asked of them.

Visiting your professor is quite possibly the most integral part of figuring out what they want. Some professors, especially in upper years when class sizes are smaller, will require you to meet with them. There is a reason for this. Of course there are intellectual freaks that can ace a paper without ever discussing it, but those who don’t bother will generally tend to do less well.

Professors will help you unpack the assignment, which is good because some essay questions are just plain ridiculous, like: “is world peace possible? Discuss.” If you come in with an idea that is overly ambitious, or otherwise unsuitable, they will rein you in. The good ones will anyway. Others will stroke their chins and mutter “interesting,” thus encouraging you in your folly. But if you’re lucky they will say something like, “walk before you run. You’re not writing a bloody history of the world now are you?”

Don’t show up unprepared and say something like “uh, so, what am I suppose to do?” Don’t be overly chatty either. Most professors don’t care what students in their intro to politics course think of the new Naomi Klein book. They just don’t. Sorry. This doesn’t mean they aren’t happy to help, or that they don’t mind discussing current events, but I’ve always found it stunningly obvious when I should just shut up.

While many professors have a verbosity affliction of their own, it helps to listen. They will often outline the entire essay for you. And if a professor recommends a book or an article, be sure to consult it and cite it in your paper. They might look for it.

If your essay is being marked by a teaching assistant, they will marvel at the notion that someone actually cares what they think! So bother them.

Find a paper or a book your professor has published, and see if there is any way you can at least explore his/her area of interest, if not actually incorporating their work into yours. At the very least you’ll know that your professor accepts the ideas presented. Flattery shouldn’t affect how they grade a paper, but who are we kidding!