I am currently teaching an online college level class. There are some amazing tools available now. I don't have to grade exams! The computer adds up the points and gives them to the students! There is written homework that does need to be graded for me. There is space for multi-media presentations, and discussions that everyone can have about the subject. I am impressed with set up!
I tend to be a teacher who has standards. I am concerned that students learn the material and should be graded accurately. I think in a subjective project, like a 250 word essay, that a good paper which fulfills the specifications of the assignment should get a B....that is between 80-90% in this school. What I am finding is that my students think that if they do the assignment and submit the most boring of papers that they deserve a 100%. I have been harassed by frequent email communications complaining and threatening me over and over that they want a detailed explanation of why they got a 92 or a 95 or a 98 and not a 100%! Any explanation is not good enough for them. If I give them encouraging feedback and say positive things, the encouragement is then thrown back in my face in the most unusual way.
"You said my paper was good, then why didn't you give me 100%. Why was I docked for 5 points".
I don't know. I thought the grade was a good one! Wouldn't you? I mean they got an A on the assignment! The ironic bit to one particular homework assignment was about optimism and pessimism, whether 'the glass is half full or half empty'. Everyone in the class spoke eloquently about how the glass is half full for them, in fact some students talked about how their glass is always overfull, and how great it is to be an optimist and how much more healthy optimism is....etc, etc. And then, they see a 95% as somehow lacking! This is amazing to me! But it gets weirder. One student who got an A began badgering me about those couple of points. She wrote me 5 communications trying to bully me into giving her a higher grade. When all her efforts failed she accused me of wrecking her desire to learn and took her favorite class and made it terrible for her, and that I was incompetent and not worth a pimple on a doctors ass! I am flabbergasted!
Where does this sense of complete entitlement come from in today's students? And more obviously, how in the heck did she know that I had a pimple on my ass?
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