I would love to see a student’s ability to quickly learn new material reflected in his grade. However, as we both agree, this isn’t realistic. (I wrote “I don’t believe that any of those qualities are (or can be) reflected in a grade.”, and you responded “I agree with you here.”)
Also, I’m not sure how grading based on attendance would incorporate quick-learning into the grade. I believe you’re saying that if a teacher has more time with a student, this quality can be better assessed. I don’t believe it’s true in practice that teachers incorporate this attribute into a student’s grade.
I agree.
I disagree. The state put rules in place, but the OP amended them with her own. The state did not put the specific rule in place we’re debating; the OP did. Or at least that’s my understanding.
Heh. Good point.
None the less, it doesn’t change the notion that many people do look at grades, and that ultimately good grades are one of the primary rewards for hard work at school.
You are really too disingenuous to live, you slimy prevaricator. Do you really need to consume our time and attention here by implying that ANYONE on this freaking planet thinks that the state would specify rules for attendance that would apply to every type of classroom setting in such detail that individual professors would not necessarily have to amend them? You’re a disgusting person to try to have a civil discussion with. So I’ll just dole out a little more abuse. Fucking retrograde shitpile. Festering gob of pus.
If the student can’t be bothered to attend class, he should at least make a minimal effort to find out if his lack of attendance will adversely affect his grade. A simple 30-second phone call to the professor prior to signing up for Viva’s class would have alleviated the conflict they are currently having.
The burden is on the student, not the professor. Why? Because it’s the student who wants the degree.
Exactly. Or he could have read the syllabus when he added and then changed his mind if it wasn’t to his liking. (Not that it would be easier or better in anyone else’s class, and in some cases it would be much more stringent.)
He has never once bothered to contact me by phone, note in my mailbox, or email. Had he done so, I would have replied as fast as I possibly could.
We could probably blue-sky a few ideas here and invent a new standard of breaking every grade up into sub-categories, but until such a scheme is in place, the grade is a pretty vague and arbitrary reflection of many sub-skills, including the ability to read the syllabus and follow basic directions.
I don’t look at the student-professor relationship as one of customer-provider. It’s more like contestant-adjudicator.
It’s like paying a consultant to evaluate your business model. Simply because you’re footing the bill doesn’t mean you’re going to get the news you wish to hear. If your business model is inferior, the consultant will tell you so, and you will still have to pay him. That is the arrangement.
By the way, Bill H., this is what vivalostwages posted about the absence and tardiness policy (bolding mine).
You may want to re-examine your accusations that vivalostwages has been unfairly requiring attendance: according to this, she is only required to set the consequences for absence within the confines of her own grading formula, and to invent a policy that establishes a cutoff before tardiness becomes absence: more than X minutes late, student is considered absent, or something.
As her problem student has come in as late as 45 minutes to an hour-long library seminar, are you seriously suggesting a policy generous enough to give him no consequences at all?
However, I actually disagree with one part of the “students are customers” bit: namely, the section about "employers outside the University are also our customers. "
No, they’re not. As Paul Goodman says in his classic essay against grading (everyone knows that one, right?), why on earth should professors think their job is to supply business with fresh bodies? That may be one result of professors’ jobs, but so is keeping the IRS or the book publishing industry in business–we don’t therefore conclude that we work to keep the IRS or publishers fully employed. It’s great that businesses want to peruse our evaluations and guess that the results of our evaluations can be extrapolated to their own concerns–they’re probably correct in that assumption–but I’m fucked if I want to think of ANY part of my job being a lower-level product-tester for GM or IBM or Mom’n’Pop’s corner bodega. To businesses who want to presume they have a say in what goes on in my classroom, where they have no qualifications to judge, I say, “Thank you and Fuck You. If you care so much about how I evaluate my students’ performance, you can just conduct your own specialized (and very expensive) aptitude tests yourselves. if you want to use mine, then learn to live with my methodology.”
And if that businessman is Bill H., I’ll add “You cheap goat-felching dimwit.”
“But, but…I do deserve the right to shoot par at the U.S. Open!”
</private whine of mine>
Nice link, Viva. Although, I can see pseudo’s point about employer’s should not be seen as customers (directly)…I also realize that some larger corporations do give donations to some universities as a gesture of goodwill and as an opportunity to help the universities produce graduates that they in turn may employ in the future. If I were in your position, like you…I wouldn’t cater to them, but I also wouldn’t tell them to fuck off either. There is a type of symbiosis going on there.
Yes they are. Or, at least, they can be. Perhaps not in the same direct sense that I’m a 7-11 customer every time I consume a Slurpee, but still, employers consume University products: students, in this case. Employers don’t pay the University directly, but if they didn’t consume students from some particular University, what do you think would eventually happen to enrollment?
I’m not exactly sure I understand what you’re saying here. If it’s “businesses shouldn’t meddle with the individual decisions in the classroom,” then sure; you’re right. But being a “customer” doesn’t imply that the customer makes nitpicky demands. I’m a customer of GM, but I’m not interested in what goes on on their engineering labs and design studios. I only care about what the finished product looks like and how it performs.
Which is exactly analogous to what employers might care about when acting as customers of the University (aka, “hiring graduates”). I doubt that GM or IBM is seriously peeved that students get too much Hemmingway and not enough Fitzgerald; or that midterms were 25% of students’ grade instead of 30%. However, GM or IBM could rightly complain if graduates can’t write a brief memo, or concisely compare two options, or use a spellchecker, or do any of the more specialized things that their degree says they ought to be able to do. And so if you mean that “businesses should have no input at all into skills taught are taught,” then I disagree.
I just read this whole thread, so I might as well contribute my $.02.
The kid isn’t a bully. He is immature, and a bit of a brat.
The OP is also behaving badly, though. A teacher is supposed to be more mature than the student, and not as quick to sink to their level.
The views on attendance and participation from many posters here, especially the teachers, is very naive. A students grade should be based on his performance in tests, not his ability to brownnose the teacher in class discussion, and show up every day. Forced participation and strict attendance taking were both hallmarks of all the bad professors I had in college. The good teachers are usually content to teach those who show up and let the grades speak for themselves, IME.
Well, i guess this thread wouldn’t have been complete without yet another stupid and egregious mischaracterisation of the reasons for class attendance and participation. I know it might make you feel better to think that attendance and participation are required simply as a sop to the overinflated egos of college professors, but the fact that you believe this does not make it true. And if you truly believe that test performance should be the only arbiter of student progress and the only determinant of student grades, then i submit that you know very little about education.
Well if you read it you did not do it very well. A C+ at best. Perhaps you would care to counter one or two of the arguments in favor of the attendance/grade correlation at a level a bit deeper than “nuh-uh”?
Well, I know as a business owner (who has monthly staff meetings), that if an employee(s) misses those meetings, I have to spend quite a deal of time repeating myself for the benefit of the absent employee(s); time that could be put to better use (like reading/posting on a message board :rolleyes: ). That is where I can sympathize with the OP, especially when the student/employee acts like it’s not a big deal. It has nothing to do with ego, just the frustration of repeating yourself for the benefit of a self-centered student/employee. Do that year after year, and then you’ll understand why there are attendance policies.
Businesses are not our customers, nor are students, nor is the government. If I were pressed I would concede only that “society” is our customer, and we can’t favor one segment of society above the others. Do you suppose I teach students to write because business demands writing skill? If that were so, I’d demand a hell of a bigger salary because I’m providing a vital skill that business would be crippled without. No, I’m teaching students how to write because they need that skill, business needs that skill, government needs a citizenry able to express itself, the teaching profession needs future teachers, etc.
Business may find my evaluations useful for their own purposes (i.e., they read transcripts to find out who I think is truly literate, who not so much) and they’re welcome to do so. But that doesn’t mean I want, or welcome, or even tolerate, dim bulbs like Bill H. opining about what we teach or how we teach it or why we teach it.
Part of the reason my paycheck has my university’s name on it, and not Bill H.‘s company, or the government’s imprint, or the students’ imprint is that I am being paid to impart skills (and sometimes wisdom) to my students as a trained, rigorously qualified, independent agent of the academic community. The day I feel that the government is able to prevent me from teaching ANTIGONE, with all its anti-authoritarian values, or business is able to curtail my teaching ALL MY SONS, with its underlying anti-capitalist message, or students are able to force me to stop teaching grammar because it’s not relevant to them, is the day I quit teaching.
All these voices can be heard. But we will listen only to those voices that make sense to us, and make the decisions that we think finally serve our real customers–the whole society–best.
I’ve read most of this thread now (glancing over the alleged parallels between business and university) and thought that I’d at least chime in with my views on attendance at university classes. I have only ever had one class at university (I’m a student at present) which gave any sort of grading influence to attendence records. This was clearly stated in the syllabus and so was no issue as far as I’m concerned. For each tutorial (discussion hour) we attended we recieved 1% (there were 10 tutorials). Attendence at our lectures was, however, not mandatory.
I can’t imagine any reason to make attendance mandatory either. A lecture as I see it is the professor presenting an idea to the students without any real interaction. This is something which can be achieved by the student in other ways as well (reading the book, perhaps). This is very different from a discussion hour. However, I also don’t feel that discussion hours should have mandatory attendence either. These, as I see it are a time when I am given the opportunity to exchange my ideas and thought with both the professor as well as my fellow students. It is a privledge, and often a useful one, but not something that I should be forced to participate in. Seen in this way, both the lectures and tutorials are simply efficient means for the student to acquire the necessary knowledge to pass the course - whether they choose to take advantage of them should be entirely up to them. The assessment of whether the student has acquired the knowledge can then take any number of forms depending on what the prof feels is appropriate (essays, written tests, oral tests, …).
I will try to elaborate on this view later… need to go turn in an essay then go sleep (and miss a (non-mandatory)lecture and a tutorial) as I’ve been up for 2 nights now trying to get two essays in on time, and for one of the first times in a long time actually managed to do it as well.
Well, other have weighed in here, but I think it’s awfully naive to make presumptions about something one may know little about. Unless, of course, you have actual experience in teaching.
Define test - I think you’ll be surprised that one way to test students is to engage them in discussion in class on a particular topic - particularly on a topic that may elicit different interpretations (as may be the case in a literature class).
In addition, the feedback one may elicit from the instructor (and other students) may help deepen one’s knowledge on the topic in question - precisely one of the goals/objectives that the instructor may be trying to achieve. So class attendence and participation are ways of ensuring that this type of “testing” can take place.
You may br right in certain circumstances - forced attendence/class participation may not necessarily be the correct way for students to learn the material or demonstrate their knowledge of the topic/subject. Good instructors know what works best given the students they deal with and the material being taught. But I don’t think it’s entirely appropriate to discount those who have actually taught a particular subject by stating that their approach is “naive”.
As I’ve stated previously, I don’t really care for mandatory attendence policies. I’m forbidden by my institution to based a portion of a students’ grade on attendence alone. But we as instructors may have little say in establishing such policies if it is mandated by the institution (or by the state). I’m still required by law to take daily attendence for financial aid reasons. Whether I choose to evaluate students on activities, discussions, etc. done in class is perferctly within my perview. And if students aren’t in class when a particular activity/discussion takes place, then there overall grade will suffer accordingly.
I can’t make students come to my classes, but if they don’t come to my classes on a regular basis then their final grade will reflect it (and it does to a large degree - good attendence = good grade; poor attendence = poor grade, based on all the different evaluation methods I employ).
If attendance is such a good way to test people why exactly does it normally constitute no more than 5% of my grade?
The fact is that discussion is a pretty piss poor way of grading someone. I would wager that in a class of 25 people that the professor could not tell me one point that each student made during a discussion 5 weeks ago. What exactly are professors grading on then? Again I would wager that for a discussion grade unless they have some elaborate system it is merely their impression of that student. Ask them to point to a specific argument a student made that led to this impression and I doubt they could answer.
Contrast that with a written essay test. A professor can re-read an essay as many times as is needed to accurately assess a students knowledge. He can point to specific reasoning and examples from the students essay to justify a grade. I can go to a professor and ask why I got a C+ instead of a B on an essay and he can say well you mentioned X,Y and Z but you left out an important point in Q plus point R was inaccurate.
Clearly the written test is a much more accurate and reliable method of assessing a students knowledge of the material. If the purpose of grading students is to assess their knowledge why not use the much more accurate method?
I do recall instances in which this particular student seemed surprised and a bit disoriented when he heard others talking about something which had come up earlier (when he wasn’t there yet). That’s what happens when one comes in half an hour late or more. He was startled to hear that one of the outside essays can be resubmitted by the end of this month. (This is also in the syllabus, but never mind that; it’s been too much trouble already.)
There was also the time when he wandered in an hour and a half late into a mostly-dark classroom (I was showing a film which was the jumping-off point for a discussion and an argumentation essay), hurried to his seat and in the process nearly tripped over (and almost pulled out) the DVD projector power cord which plugs into an outlet in the back of the room–despite my whispered warnings to “watch out for the cord!” He should have known there was a film on that day as well, but then we’re back to the “ess-word” again.
So it’s not just a matter of being stuck on a rigid policy. Coming in late and ignoring the syllabus can cause a student not to know what the hell is going on, which can also lead to missed opportunities and hence to grades that are lower than they could have been.