I’m just finishing up a gruelling grading session. This one was an opinion paper, but the assignment specifically stated that students would be graded on how well they use facts to support their position, and how well they used resources other than class notes.
I’ve got two papers that are annoying me. One has facts–but they’re all directly out of the class notes. The other has a single quote from an outside source, and no facts whatsoever.
They both meet the minimum page requirement. They both discuss the topic of the assignment. So, do these students deserve a C- for just bothering to sit down (probably the night before the paper was due) and pound out an essay?
Based on experience, I don’t think the prof will let me give them D’s, but if it was up to me, that’s what they’d get.
(Disclaimer: I haven’t the foggiest idea what you teach or what the standard grading scale in your class is, I just feel more like playing armchair quarterback than grading my own students’ papers right now.)
No facts: D, for sure.
Class notes only: May be a C, if the facts are relevant and there’s nothing else horribly wrong with it, unless the title of the course includes the word “research,” in which case the student should probably receive a D for completely missing the point.
Just out of curiosity, what would they have to do for the prof to agree to give them a D?
Sounds like solid D work to me, too, but if the prof won’t back you up, go C- and realize that you’re probably the only one grading these papers who actually cares. Take some solace from that.
In the past, mild plagiarism (a single sentence lifted without quotes, say, or a paper without a bibliography that does use outside sources but doesn’t lift from them word for word) has warranted a D, and C-level papers with late penalties have been knocked down to D’s.
KneadToKnow, I have faith in my fellow graders. There are three of us who grade for this class. When whiners show up wanting a regrade, another grader gets a copy the paper with the original grade removed, and we almost always come out within a plus or minus of each other.
I’d say it depends on the class. If it’s an undergrad class, especially one that a lot of people need to fulfil their GE requirements, then I’d give them both Cs for making the page requirement and staying vaguely on topic. If this is an upper-division class, or one central to getting a degree, then they’d be lucky to get Ds.
Sounds like you’ve given this a lot of careful thought.
Like Miller I’d guess that it depend on whether it’s for upper of lower division work.
Given the basic requirements, just going from class notes but using them well to construct the argument would translate into a C–assuming that a C denotes merely average work. Sort of “didn’t go one step beyond the obvious sources but used them competently”. And that’s being ravingly charitable. IMO it’s not unreasonable to expect demonstrated proof of outside reading to support a paper. Anything less is perilously close to regurgitation.
My personal vote would be a D, but maybe there are some other factors involved. Is there anything unusual about the class? I’m thinking back to my TA days ::shudders:: with some survey courses for freshmen who were basically probationary, i.e. barely made the cut for admission but given a chance to work their way up to snuff.
The way I would look at this is what would the papers have merited if they HAD fulfilled the exact requirements. I tend to count off a letter grade for each major trangression. If the first paper would have merited a B on if they had used outside sources, then I would give it a C for not using them. If it would have been a C paper, then it should get a D. etc.
Of course it depends on what the purpose of the paper is. Is it to teach the students how to support their opinions with facts? Is it to teach them to do research? Or is it to teach them to just have an opinion? This is vitaly important. If it is the first, then the first paper shouldn’t get graded down very much. If it is the second, then you need to slam them fairly hard.
From your OP I feel that, all things being equal, the second paper should get the poorer grade because they didn’t support their opinion with facts. But, I don’t have enough info to truly judge.
While a lot of criteria vary from class to class, and sometimes from prof to prof, in all the college level classes I took, it was pretty much required that we have facts(properly cited, of course) to prop up anything we said. That applied to straight up factual reports, to opinion papers, to argument papers, and even to charts and graphs. The paper with no facts whatsoever is by those standards completely unacceptable, and in the classes I took would probably have gotten an F.
The other paper’s a little harder. While it’s at least acceptable, it’s only got one source for its facts–the class notes, for crying out loud. The other, better, papers in the class have at least some outside sources. Since a C is supposed to be average, and this paper’s pretty clearly below average in terms of the work put into it, I’d have no problem giving this lazy schmuck a D.
As far as the level of the class goes, it’s a science elective. It evolved from a class taught by a very prestigous professor that required students to write an essay to enroll, and a select group of students was admitted. (!) Nowadays, though, it’s taught by a different prof, there are no enrollment requirments, and it’s larger, with a wide variety of students of varying abilities.
I actually don’t know what requirements it fulfills–counts as their science elective, I guess.
The average grade is between a B- and a B, and it’s definitely drummed into their heads that they gotta have facts to support their arguments. A theme of the course is how do scientists make decisions? Why do they do the projects they do? What are the influenced by?
I decided that class-notes guy gets a C- because he does support his opinions with facts. For one-quote-man, I’m going to lobby for a D or D+.
Moonlighting as an adjunct prof. I have no TA and have to grade my own papers. My objective is to make sure the students learn what I am teaching them because 90% of them are going to work in the field I’m teaching.
I’ve developed some pretty good methods for achieving my goal but term papers are not one of them. What a huge waste of time they turned out to be. My time!
Being the prof., I have access to info about my students and I take other things into consideration when grading. I expect better stuff from students already working in the field than from some undergrad just taking the course as an elective. Why ruin some poor kid’s GPA just because they were interested in checking out my course?
Also, if they do well on my (not at all easy) exams, I am loathe to penalize them for not spending an inordinate amount time on a paper.
In general, I teach at a very high level, test at a moderately high level, and grade very generously.
It makes my course extremely popular. No student who passed my course has ever failed the licensing exam and every student who failed my course retook it and passed.
Basically, my point is lighten up and have a heart. Save the A’s for students who really tried and save the D’s only for the majorly insulting fuck-ups.
Trust me. There’s more red than black on these babies.
Podkayne grading: circle & write “Cite?”, circle & write “Cite?”, circle & write “Cite?”. . .
Good training for the SDMB, I suppose.
It’s not hard for me to write comments that tell the students what they’re doing wrong. I have a harder time coming up with positive comments because I find I take good writing for granted. When it’s done well, you don’t think about it, you just listen to the message–that’s the point of effective communcation! But I try to make at least one significant positive comment per paper.
ejrn, this course is entirely essays, with no exams or other work. It says so on the syllabus. They were also told from the start that the average grade was going to be a B-, which in the minds of many students makes the prof a stone-age reactionary. If they didn’t want to put in time writing essays and were uncomfortable with being graded solely on term papers, they should have run out of the class on day one. They had two papers written, graded, and returned before the add/drop deadline. If they found the papers too stressful and time-consuming, if they felt that the graders were heartless and hell-bent on ruining their GPAs, then they had plenty of time to get out.
Every reading assignment says that they’re going to be graded on how effectively they use resources from outside class. I’m reluctant to give C’s to people who didn’t bother to do the research, given that that’s the bulk of the work that goes into the assignment. Some students got C’s because they can’t write a proper sentence, organize a stream of facts and opinions into something coherent, or understand basic scientific concepts–but they went out and tried to do the work. These two, though, didn’t. They don’t deserve C’s which other students had to earn by working hard. If they want good GPAs, they better do the work–and if they want good grades in this course, they have two more papers with which to raise the average.
Podkayne, I find I really need a stamp that says “Cite?” and a stamp that says “Details!” Eith 9th graders, I am working harder on geting the 'Adetails" idea across-they all seem to think vaugly aluding to something is the same as explaining/describing it. And then claim that no one could write a five page paper.
Sometimes it’s helpful to baby the students even though these are adult college students. As in, if you do not use a resource other than class notes, your highest possible grade will be a “D”. If you do not use facts to support your paper, your highest possible grade will be a “D”. If it is not 3 pages long, your highest possible grade will be a “D”. Okay, now that we have that out of the way, here’s some things that will help you get an A.
One of my favorite profs had a strict 3 page limit, and would literally tear off any pages beyond that.
