It’s not possible to win in such arguments, as you (not just you, but all of us) will always be “wrong” in some way.
It’s time to bring in RoboTeacher, who can be customized to cater to everyone’s whims.
*Does anyone out there take distance ed courses or teach them? How is “attendance” measured in such a course? I’m curious.
**Biffy[/]b: Yes, I would love a yam right about now. With warm butter.
As a cynic, I bet you didn’t even read my post. Bastards.
As one who tends towards mild compulsion, I went back through all the posts in this thread and finally found your gooey, stinking post. And read it. 
Figures.
And not one thought about contacting the family for a DNR?
As a postal worker, I give this an “it’s not worth the bullets”. Instead, I shall pace up and down for some time, muttering to myself and devising plans against the OP. Plans I shall be too chickenshit to ever carry out.
As a translator, I find this doesn’t work in any language.
As Gertrude Stein. As Gertrude Stein. As Gertrude Stein. As Gertrude Stein. As Gert…
As Senator Joe McCarthy, I would like to know if you REALLY ARE A COMMIE?!
Yes, well, first off, a large thank you to each and every one of you smartasses that felt compelled to add in your own grading scale; I tried to be clever with my own three, but everyone else’s here is really quite hilarious. Especially the planning one.
Anyway, back into the thread:
I could have sworn that I had seen you use grades before, mhendo, but 30 minutes of searching was all that I could bear. If it was other posters, then I find that behavior equally annoying from them. I just felt compelled to pit yesterday when I saw you deciding that the world was just lost without your grading input.
Frankly, I know that you think that you’re grading because in class discussion is so important, but I still disagree that it should be graded off of. I think another poster made an excellent point when asking if you could recall coherent arguments from 15% of the class. The people that naturally show up anyway are the ones that are typically the most motivated and interested by the material, and I’d rather have an in-class discussion with 10 interested students and 22 students compelled to be there by attendance. And in more than some small way, I feel that ego does drive a majority of attendance policies. Of course a prof would never admit it, but when I see them getting all emotional about students not showing up, I just don’t get the vibe that they are doing so because of their great concern for the educational experiences of the class. If they really cared solely about the educational experience of the class, I feel they might waste less of the time of people that actually managed and bothered to show up with endless monologues on how, “you guys are paying me to talk!”
Now, I’ll say this slowly: I understand your argument about how in-class discussion is beneficial to both other students and is a way to demonstrate a critical part of the educational program. I understand, but I disagree. I don’t think that this person’s input is likely to be as valuable if they are attending solely for a grade, and I don’t think that professors can grade fairly based upon their perceptions of a students in class input. My disagreement alone is not proof positive that I’m a fucking moron that can’t read.
And for god-sakes, don’t respond with grading posts.
I took 2 and 1/2 years of liberal arts classes before entering the BSN program-they were required. I tested out of college English requirements, but took Shakespeare in summer anyway, 'cause I love it that much. I took a myriad of social science courses, met the math requirment in HS (thank God-I would never had made it otherwise) and also took the sciences, and continued my German studies. I took a religion couse in summer school because I felt that my program was getting science heavy–got hell from my counselor about it, too… :rolleyes: Now I am so glad I did–I do not regret any of my course work and wish I had taken 5+ years to do a minor in sociology. What I do regret is going into nursing at all, but that’s another thread!
Nurses are versatile people–I also carried 18-20 hours each semester up to nursing. Dia knows what that hourly amount was–time has mercifully expunged it from my memory–it was damn hard, I can tell you that!
mhendo --forgive me. I have been snarkier than usual and got into a spat that was none of mine.
I actually think you are correct in you POV (though I don’t see the OP as “wrong” either)–the FEW profs I had that encouraged independent thought and critiques of their positions, I look back on with respect. I had one English history prof who loved to mix it up with students–he was a bonzer teacher.
The HS teachers I had for my AP classes also encouraged in class debate–and critical thinking was reinforced and demanded.
I do wish that my nursing profs had encouraged that “microscope” not only on the pathology and care of pts, but also on the field of nursing and its more unappealing aspects–again, another thread.
viva,
I usually teach 3-4 Internet-based courses every quarter (geography). As students are only required to attend campus to take exams (or in one of my courses, take exams and give a presentation), attendence as it is commonly known is a non-issue. One way of dealing with this (at least with regards to where I teach) is tracking whether students have completed assignments, exams, papers, etc over the course of the quarter. There are deadlines every week, and one can get a decent idea who is completing the assignments on a regular basis and who isn’t.
I use my tracking system (for financial aid purposes) to weed out those that have enrolled in the course but haven’t done anything (usually these are students that have not formally dropped) or for those that simply “disappear” (student has completed several of the first assignments and taken the first exam, but subsequently haven’t completed anything else). As the exams are generally worth the most in determining a students final grade, missed/non-completed assignments, papers, etc are not usually cause for dropping a student from the course roster (and, yes, we have the authority to do so if the instructor feels that the student isn’t “attending” - completing necessary coursework).
There are ways of insuring “class participation”. Chat sessions can be set up where students interact with the instructor/other students. Topics for discussion can be posted on a mesage board, and instructors can/may require students to provide reponses.
The first (chat) I’ve found doesn’t work very well. Largely becaue students taking on-line courses work, have families, etc. and are too busy to log on-line and interact with others. I used to have a weekly chat session where I and other students could interact electronically. But I generally had only one or two show up each week (out of abut 30 students enrolled). Timing/scheduling is difficult to say the least.
Topics for dicussion are better (at least for me) - I provide students with a topic and a list of questions to answer and they are required to provide their answers by a specific date (and can be used to track whether students are “attending”). I’m hoping to improve upon it in the future by getting more interaction in some fashion. But it’s difficult - again, timing/scheduling is key.
For the one course where I require students to give a presentation, they must come to campus to do so. Otherwise, their final grade will be affected. I spread the presentation sessions out over several days and times so that students can choose the session most convenient for them. In some cases, I will allow students to give a presentation to me only (especially for those fearful of public speaking) - but only if they arrange this with me well before the scheduled presentation sessions. For those students that do not live in the local area, I require students to send me a videotape of their presentation.
Didn’t even cross my mind…are you an activist judge? 
Maybe the solution is for programs or “tracks” or whatever they are called now should be altered in some way. Or maybe the classes should just be smaller–and maybe the TA’s should be CARE about the students ( I really didn’t ahve good experiences with TA’s–they were all busy grad students with a “don’t give me anymore work” attitudes). Or maybe the discussion questions should be altered–I dunno.
IOW, maybe (and this is idealistic of me) the teachers should absolutely so love their subject that their enthusiasm carries the students along until they, too, are as fired up about it as the teacher. It can happen–I had an American history teacher in HS and that English history one I mentioned before…both gave me the gift of a love of history that serves me well to this day.
I do have to put most of the onus on the prof/TA–if you cannot spark interest in the majority of the class–re-evaluate your approach. (not saying you, mhendo in particular here).
And there will still be students who just don’t give a shit–but they will be a distinct minority.
So, let me get this straight. You can’t find any instance except one when i used grades, even after a rather determined search. But you’re sure you’ve seen it elsewhere on these boards, maybe from me, maybe other posters. And yesterday you decided that my one example of this egregious behaviour deserved to stand as the representative for all these other alleged examples?
Well, OK, if that’s what it takes to get my first pitting, i guess i’ll be happy with it.
Well, i’m currently into the 11th week of a semester in which i’m taking a 25 person class for about 3 hours a week. Not only can i remember who has participated in the discussions, i can remember quite a lot about who spoke on each occasion, and what they said.
For example i remember, straight off the top of my head, that when i asked the class to explain Emerson’s argument in his “Divinity School Lecture” four weeks ago, student A.B. summarised the very difficult argument with considerable skill. And when we discussed Ben Franklin’s autobiography a couple of weeks before that, students B.C. and C.D. had a lot of interesting observations to make about Franklin’s notion that the appearance of virtue is as important as the virtue itself. And in discussing the Transcendentalists, two students, D.E. and E.F. both noted similarities between Romantic ideas and those of Eastern belief systems such as Confucianism. I could go on.
Obviously, i’m not going to violate my students’ confidence by revealing their names, or even their real initials. But i can assure you that i remember exactly who each letter pair above represents. And this stuff is just straight off the top of my head, and is merely a supplement to the notes i make during and after every class to remind me of who is participating, and at what level of understanding and sophistication. For example, i know that students F.G. and G.H. both say about the same amount in class, but it’s quite clear that one tends to speak in generalities, while the other offers a close and intelligent analysis of the actual readings.
I’d be willing to bet that many other college teachers could give you similar summaries of their class’s performance over the course of the semester.
At about the half-way mark this semester, i handed out a course evaluation, asking the students to answer some questions about the course. I asked them for their feedback on my lecturing style, the content, the readings, the class discussions, and anything else they felt like talking about. Quite a few of them said that the class discussions would be more productive if more students participated, and if it turned into more of a round-table discussion rather than a back and forth between me and the students. I completely agree, as this is the sort of dynamic i hope for in every class.
Some even suggested calling on people by name, so this is what i have started to do, despite the fact that i generally avoid this because some people are shy about speaking in groups. But i figure that some people are also bad at writing papers, and we don’t let them ignore the papers just because of that, so why shouldn’t students have to demonstrate their commmunication skills as well? Anyway, i started calling on people if the class discussion flagged, and it has helped. Sure, it’s still often the same people speaking up voluntarily, but more people have been pulled into the discussion. What’s amazing is that some students clearly are nervous about being called on, and yet when i do call on them, they have smart and sophisticated answers. Some, on the other hand, tell me that they haven’t done the reading. So calling on people not only allows for a better discussion, but it also helps me determine, from among the non-talkers, who is silent because they are nervous, and who is silent because they are lazy and haven’t done the reading.
Well, ideally, so would i. But i have an obligation to the students themselves and to my employer, and this obligation often involves requiring certain things that the students might feel are unreasonable, but that educational professionals and the university administration have determined are necessary for the student to receive a proper education.
I’m interested at how you arrived at the conclusion that these professors of whom you speak are not motivated by “great concern for the educational experiences of the class.” Did it ever occur to you that the harangues about “paying me to talk” are an effort to get students to make the most of their (often very expensive) education? I also tell my students that turning up actually saves them time in the long run, because they don’t have to do catch-up, and they don’t miss stuff that we talk about in class that is essential to the educational experience, but that they might miss if they just wing it in the week before the final exam.
Also, while i’ve tried so far to speak in general terms about the broad pedagogical benefits of turning up, i also want to say something about the people who are doing the teaching. We actually, surprising as you might find this, know some stuff! And, in many cases, we actually know some stuff that even the smartest undergraduate might not know. This is not necessarily because we are smarter than those undergrads, but because we have spent a whole bunch of time reading and studying and thinking about and talking about the very material that we are teaching.
While a smart undergraduate might be able to read John Winthrop’s “A Modell of Christian Charity” and explain some of its key arguments and ideas, chances are that the undergrad might not have understand the full significance of Winthrop’s sermon unless i help out with some context—context that goes all the way back to Augustine, that involves also an understanding of the Reformation, and of debates and schisms within the Protestant church in the early 17th century, as well as the particular circumstances in England at the time.
Of course, i could assign another 200 pages of reading that would help the undergrad get all this stuff, but we tend to get complaints that we assign too much reading already. The fact is that, in many courses, there is far too much context and too much material to deal with, especially if we take account of the fact that every student we teach is probably taking 3 or 4 other courses. Our job is to help the students understand by giving them information that they don’t get directly from the readings, and by helping them understand the readings themselves.
When i was reading the mid-semester evaluations that the students gave of me and the course, among the most gratifying thing was that quite a few students wrote that i obviously had great knowledge of my subject matter. I take some pride in that, and in being able to impart some of my knowledge and, hopefully, my enthusiasm to the students.
No, you’re right, it isn’t.
I disagree with your argument as presented here, and i believe that it is contradicted by a considerable amount of educational research and experience on the part of professionals in many different disciplines. But you are completely entitled to your opinion on the matter, and i’m fully willing to concede that there different students are likely to get different levels of benefit from things like compulsory attendance and participation. But, pedagogical issues aside, colleges and universities, and faculty members, also feel the need to set certain rules and requirements and to make them the same across the board. I don’t need to tell you what sort of complaints and howls of derision would ensue if some students were asked to work under different academic rules than other students.
Also, more relevant to this thread, if you can show me anywhere in the other thread where you made a similar argument, and where i called you a moron, please do so. Furthermore, if you can show me any case where the quotes you put in the OP came in response to an argument even vaguely similar to the one you just made, i’d be very surprised.
Here are those same quotations, in the context of what they were responding to:
and
and
and
and
and
and
That’s all 7 quotes that you used in the OP, with the actual bit you quoted in bold.
Not one of the people to whom i was responding there actually addressed the argument i was making, which was that attendance and participation, in and of themselves, have pedagogical benefits that make them necessary in humanities course. They all continued to base their argument on the assumption that there is no justifiable reason for requiring attendance, that attendance is completely incidental to student performance.
I don’t not agree with your argument, cited above, that attendance doesn’t have any real value. And your belief that a lot of professors require attendance simply as an ego trip is, in my experience, incorrect. But at least you have (finally) actually attempted to make an argument that addresses the issue of whether requiring attendance actually has educational benefits for the student.
Don’t worry, this course is not for credit.
Nothing to forgive.
If the OP of this thread demonstrates anything, it’s that i can be as snarky as hell. And i don’t give it without knowing how to take it.
There are plenty of snarky people on these boards, and snarky is something i can live with. The ones i get really annoyed by are those who are snarky but who either can’t or won’t supplemnent their snarkiness with rational debate. I’ve made clear in multiple threads who i believe those people to be, so i don’t need to name any names here.
Bonzer? WTF?
I haven’t heard anyone use the word “bonzer” since i left Australia. Is this some mid-western thing that i don’t know about.
Glad to hear you had a good history prof. Having a good teacher makes a class much more pleasant. Having had the occasional bad one, i know that from persoanl experience.
Well you needn’t be so blunt about it.
As a chemist I was going to grade on a scale but all I could find were balances.
No, actually, i’m not. If i had to use a particular phrase to describe my political position, i guess it would be Democratic Socialist.
But even then, things are more complicated than that. On social and cultural issues, i tend toward the libertarian. On economic issues, i recognise that private enterprise works well in some instances, but i also believe that the state can play a useful and active role in the economy, rather than sitting back and watching the capitalists fight it out. When people point out problems with government programs, my tendency is to believe that, with the will and the right attitude, we can fix the problems rather than assuming that all government involvement is necessarily evil and corrupt.
I am, however, a Godless atheist. And happy about it.
Um…coupla things. 1. I didn’t know you were from Australia (neat!)
and 2. “bonzer” came floating up from the miasma that is my brainpan at present.
I am not Aussie or Kiwi–and I don’t use the term, either. I am assuming that it means “cool”, “all right”, “interesting, and intelligent and appealing” etc–Jeebus, if it doesn’t–that’s what I thought it meant!
It just seemed to be the best word to describe the man I was referring to (and he was American).
Welcome to my mind–sometimes it’s scarey, but it’s mostly fun.
That’s pretty much right.
If there’s a modern Americanism that best captures the spirit of “bonzer,” i guess it would be “awesome,” although it’s not a perfect fit.
Of course, the Australian tendency to not pronounce the “r” means that we end up saying “bonza,” and indeed that’s how some people spell it.