Another dispatch from grading Hell (fourth circle), in which the reader gains some insight into circumstances which evoke my sympathy, and circumstances which do not.
I have this pedagogical strategy where I try to make my students think more than they have to write. One way this strategy manifests itself is in how I deal with case studies on finals exams.
Strategies for grading fairly.
I am in grading Hell. I expect to be here until at least Memorial Day (Monday), and possibly through Tuesday. (Does that mean I’m actually in grading Purgatory? Please advise.)
Anyway, in a private communication, PhysioProf asked,
As you get grumpier from grading, do you grade harsher?
If I did, that would be an unfortunate situation for those whose papers I get to last, wouldn’t it?
Thankfully for my students, I make serious efforts to apply a uniform level of harshness (or leniency) across the whole pool I’m grading. Here are some of my strategies:
Death is not an option: giving in to temptation.
Which would you totally do if you didn’t know better (and suspect someone might catch you)?
Friday Sprog Blogging: pond water.
The elder Free-Ride offspring got to go on a field trip this week to an area lagoon. The high points of the visit included seeing a Steller’s Jay (we more frequently encounter scrub jays), looking at a possum skull, and being pointed in the direction of the turkey vultures who were eating the rest of that particular possum.
But the favorite part of the field trip was the visit to the laboratory (which I’m guessing might have been air conditioned) to look under the microscope at some pond water.
How hot was it?
The classroom I taught in this semester was fairly hot. Even when it was chilly outside, the temperature in the classroom was uncomfortably warm.
Of course, I think it might have been worse for me (pacing in front of the whiteboard, trying to keep things lively) than for the students most of the time. But today, we had the final exam in that room. And unlike most class meetings, every single chair in the room was filled.
And we experienced record highs, temperature-wise.
So, how hot was it? I give you the testimony of one of the students taking the final today:
Connections.
Because it strikes me as somehow related to my last post, and because Memorial Day is the Monday after next, I’m recycling a post I wrote last year for WAAGNFNP:
On Memorial Day, because I really needed to do something beside grade papers for awhile, I decided to go to the nursery to buy some plants. First, though, because the kids (who had the day off from school) were actually entertaining themselves pretty well, I poured myself another coffee and decided to actually read some of the articles in The Nation issue on climate change.
Ethical considerations in encouraging conservation.
After what has felt to me like a cooler than usual April and beginning of May, we seem finally to be changing seasons here. (OK, changing seasons with a vengeance — apparently our temperatures yesterday were record highs.)
Of course, in this part of California, we have two seasons: the green season and the gold season (which some insist on calling the brown season). The winter, and the winter rains, are over. Now it’s time for things to dry out.
This, as Michael O’Hare notes, means that water districts are trying to work out what to do about anticipated water shortages. He writes:
Why it’s so hard to get that course you need.
There’s an article in Access (the glossy magazine put out by our School of Journalism and Mass Communication) about why so few of our students manage to get their degrees in four years. Part of it has to do with the fact that most of our students work — many the equivalent of full time (or more) — and many have long commutes to get here. As well, many who start out taking courses at community colleges discover that some of those credits don’t transfer.
But a lot of the challenge, it turns out, has to do with lining up all the classes to fulfill all the major and general education requirements:
SJSU academic advisor and instructor Michael Randle, who has been working at SJSU since 1998, believes that understanding the requirements, knowing the prerequisites and organizing one’s priorities can help students graduate from SJSU in the time they desire. Randle, who teaches the lecture courses “Success and Science” and “Success as Transfers,” has seen a variety of factors that cause students to stay at SJSU longer than four years.
“Many need remediation (students do not receive credits toward graduation in remedial classes). A lot of our students work and because they work, they have very specific scheduling needs, which force them to take classes later on. Another factor is that when students devote their time to work, many don’t pass their classes and have to repeat them. Last but not least, some courses are only offered in a specific semester, forcing students to wait,” says Randle.
From a student’s point of view, that course you need which is only offered in a specific semester can be a real source of irritation. Why the heck doesn’t the school offer the courses you need more frequently?
Here’s some insight from the faculty end of course scheduling.
Death is not an option: end of semester edition.
Which do you choose?
Behind door #1:
Friday Sprog Blogging: can we dissolve an avocado?
As promised last Friday, today we report the results of our investigation of the solubility properties of an avocado. To get the disappointment out of the way up front, we will not be reporting Ks.p. values.
Since we had some around, we decided to use conical tubes to hold the avocado pieces and the experimental solvents. I didn’t want to mark the tubes with Sharpies (because we’ll probably re-use them) and we don’t have the cool colored tape you find in biochemistry labs, so we used a system of plastic cups to keep clear on which tube held which solvent. (The cups also served as our test-tube rack.)