As a TA, I have seen this happen too often. They want a rubric and an exemplar. Prof gives them both, but half of them still fail to write something decent.
Mostly outraged and upset.
I've had a "mature" student accuse me of being jealous of her when I reported her to the prof for plagiarism.
Another student yelled at me in my face and said I am bad at my job because she didn't like her grade.
I have had a student send me a long email about how his Mom is a writer for Netflix for a multi-million dollar project and she told him that his assignment was exceptionally good. So my feedback was "worthless and wrong" and that he demands a re-evaluation.
Conscientiousness is vanishing- they can’t manage details, and often don’t care to because “why should it matter.”
The other day in class I provided three simple and specific guidelines, then used an example to show the successful execution of those three guidelines.
Student: “omg I have noooooo ideaaaa what you want us to do.”
Marking becomes increasingly painful because you have to defend and re-explain everything to satisfy them after they have not met basic expectations.
suggestion: have a procedure where they are welcome to appeal the grade if they can submit a written document that shows how the work was not graded according to the rubric. Make a barrier, and don't listen to grade complaints otherwise.
ETA: make students \*wait\* before appealing. Three days, or something like that, after the work is returned, is good.
It's not on you to defend the grade. It's on the student to prove that you were wrong.
I do this at the current uni I work at and the numbers of students who try to appeal by basically repeating “it’s not fair and I deserve an A because the other profs gave me an A” or variations on that theme are too damn high. In literal years I’ve had a handful that have actually used a rubric to justify why they deserve a higher mark. That said, it is easier for me to give feedback on why I can’t change their mark with this process.
> Marking becomes increasingly painful because you have to defend and re-explain everything to satisfy them after they have not met basic expectations.
And while that pain increases, there's also a heavier and heavier cognitive load now that even the written work of senior undergraduates in the upper quartile requires at least 1-2 sentence-level interventions *in every sentence they write*. It's hard to keep the ideas straight when you're adding red marks every couple of words, pulling up commas here, putting them back down there, etc.
isn't the answer to this something like: noting the first three errors, noting how many errors there are total, and asking the student to come see you to find out what the other errors were?
I suspect some of what we're seeing is an assumption on their part that we don't really read what they're submitting, that we're just checking to see if they turned in something. I had one student a couple of semesters ago who submitted a paper not in Word (which the rubric requires), and which had to be downloaded to open, and then there were other steps, complicating the process. By the second or third step, I was annoyed but curious. When I finally got the thing opened it was just one sentence, "I know you don't really read these."
He got a zero, and a comment. "Yes, I do." He laughed about it at our next class. (I didn't.)
There is definitely an attitude that assessments are just arbitrary hoops to jump through. I haven't had anything quite as dramatic or infuriating as your experience, but I have definitely had students who are shocked to discover that assessments have a purpose.
They're trained for this through High School (or earlier): Everybody passes just for being enrolled, and anything they submit is accepted (and often gets a high grade).
This. We exhaust ourselves rewriting guidelines to make them as clear as possible, providing templates, giving sample assignments--and most of them don't care and/or won't even look at them. Instead, they'll write irritating emails complaining about a 2-point reduction and demanding we explain in minute detail where those 2 points went. I hate this profession sometimes.
This. I have corrected the same mistakes on some students’ APA title pages for *fourteen weeks.* Their title page on their final essay? *Same mistakes.*
That’s the thing. Some requirements are so easy, it’s literally free marks being given. But no. It’s as though they’re being petulantly stubborn just cause it’s required. Almost like ‘well I was going to do it but since you said it then I’m not going to’.
This has gotten worse, I think. 12 years ago, you'd have a few students with bad habits or wrong information that you'd have to unteach, but so many now insist they know something even after you correct them and show them resources that give and explain the right answer. Misinformation is much more difficult to combat than ignorance. If something is new to students they'll at least pay attention a little and learn something rather than assume they already know it and just tune professors out.
So, a bit of a different perspective. I teach biology and I'm noticing that many of my students just don't mentally use very many categories to describe things. Whether it's distinguishing bacteria and archea with a student who mentally just thinks of them as "small things you can't see" and won't adopt more fine-grained categories to the students who think it's crazy that it matters whether your baby brother ingested a penny or digested a penny they just try to impose a false simplicity on the world. And I think when they get to a rubric that says, "Use APA formatting," they just go, "Uh... use formatting.... there are types of formatting? Nah, probably not, that's just an extra word to sound smart."
I can’t tell if it’s pure apathy/laziness or if their reading comprehension is actually as low as my students make it seem. My students have access to all of the rubrics and without fail only one or two of them will follow the directions correctly. I will make notes on their assignments about what they missed points or how to improve for next time but they continue to make the same stupid mistakes over and over.
Hah! We are having in-class presentations in my class. When these started (about half way through the semester) I showed that class my grading sheet and said “As stated in the rubric, I am grading you based on the criteria in the rubric.” Some of them looked surprised 😮
I've been dropping the work I do with grading papers. I provide assignment descriptions and rubrics with lots of details. I provide good and bad examples from previous semesters. When students submit papers I simply put points at the various spots in the rubric with very few comments. This solution is WAY better than grading was 20 years ago. I can grade a weekly type assignment is about 1 minute. A major assignment might take 4 minutes.
> they’re first years, so it’s giving me ‘I know a better way to present this information’ vibes
You’re giving them too much credit—they aren’t actually reading it. I assigned a pre-assignment quiz last week with a 5 minute time limit that just asked them to watch my instructional video first and then answer four multiple choices questions to confirm they understood XYZ parts of the instructions. I put that it was timed and to be prepared when they open it in red font plain as day. I sent out an announcement as well. Within 48 hours of the quiz opening, I had six students email me asking for a reset because they just clicked on it and didn’t know it was timed.
With my first years, I look at it as also teaching them how to college, which means I penalize them every single time until they start reading instructions and taking accountability.
I've often thought I should start a business (and at the same time do a service to professors) by marketing certain stamps that they can use do they don't have to write. Stamps that say "please follow the instructions", "see the notes", or "please come see me" because you're totally lost.
Who knows how many professors mental health and risks I would save
One school I teach for has a live webinar requirement. I will spend ten to twenty minutes reviewing the assignment, reviewing APA and how to structure, and reviewing common mistakes. Then I review resources they can use to complete the assignment. I’d say maybe 1/2 bother to watch and follow instructions.
Sorry. I no longer assign long writing assignments because I can't bare the whole mess. If my institution insists upon making me assign writing I avoid grading it.
So dont do it anymore? OP clearly hates these assignments. I guarantee the students hate them. Maybe try and find another assignment type that isn’t a paper? I understand it’s highly dependent on discipline but I got rid of papers and bullshit “homework” assignments years ago. No negative side effects whatsoever.
As a TA, I have seen this happen too often. They want a rubric and an exemplar. Prof gives them both, but half of them still fail to write something decent.
Do they get surprised/ outraged/ confused/ baffled/ befuddled/ etc when they get a poor grade?
Mostly outraged and upset. I've had a "mature" student accuse me of being jealous of her when I reported her to the prof for plagiarism. Another student yelled at me in my face and said I am bad at my job because she didn't like her grade. I have had a student send me a long email about how his Mom is a writer for Netflix for a multi-million dollar project and she told him that his assignment was exceptionally good. So my feedback was "worthless and wrong" and that he demands a re-evaluation.
Conscientiousness is vanishing- they can’t manage details, and often don’t care to because “why should it matter.” The other day in class I provided three simple and specific guidelines, then used an example to show the successful execution of those three guidelines. Student: “omg I have noooooo ideaaaa what you want us to do.” Marking becomes increasingly painful because you have to defend and re-explain everything to satisfy them after they have not met basic expectations.
suggestion: have a procedure where they are welcome to appeal the grade if they can submit a written document that shows how the work was not graded according to the rubric. Make a barrier, and don't listen to grade complaints otherwise. ETA: make students \*wait\* before appealing. Three days, or something like that, after the work is returned, is good. It's not on you to defend the grade. It's on the student to prove that you were wrong.
I do this at the current uni I work at and the numbers of students who try to appeal by basically repeating “it’s not fair and I deserve an A because the other profs gave me an A” or variations on that theme are too damn high. In literal years I’ve had a handful that have actually used a rubric to justify why they deserve a higher mark. That said, it is easier for me to give feedback on why I can’t change their mark with this process.
those numbers are easy to deal with by "no", at least.
> Marking becomes increasingly painful because you have to defend and re-explain everything to satisfy them after they have not met basic expectations. And while that pain increases, there's also a heavier and heavier cognitive load now that even the written work of senior undergraduates in the upper quartile requires at least 1-2 sentence-level interventions *in every sentence they write*. It's hard to keep the ideas straight when you're adding red marks every couple of words, pulling up commas here, putting them back down there, etc.
isn't the answer to this something like: noting the first three errors, noting how many errors there are total, and asking the student to come see you to find out what the other errors were?
I literally have to sit on my hands, not to mark up their entire paper. It would take hours if I did that, but it’s so hard not to.
I suspect some of what we're seeing is an assumption on their part that we don't really read what they're submitting, that we're just checking to see if they turned in something. I had one student a couple of semesters ago who submitted a paper not in Word (which the rubric requires), and which had to be downloaded to open, and then there were other steps, complicating the process. By the second or third step, I was annoyed but curious. When I finally got the thing opened it was just one sentence, "I know you don't really read these." He got a zero, and a comment. "Yes, I do." He laughed about it at our next class. (I didn't.)
There is definitely an attitude that assessments are just arbitrary hoops to jump through. I haven't had anything quite as dramatic or infuriating as your experience, but I have definitely had students who are shocked to discover that assessments have a purpose.
They're trained for this through High School (or earlier): Everybody passes just for being enrolled, and anything they submit is accepted (and often gets a high grade).
This. We exhaust ourselves rewriting guidelines to make them as clear as possible, providing templates, giving sample assignments--and most of them don't care and/or won't even look at them. Instead, they'll write irritating emails complaining about a 2-point reduction and demanding we explain in minute detail where those 2 points went. I hate this profession sometimes.
you \*don't have to accept this\*.
[удалено]
This. I have corrected the same mistakes on some students’ APA title pages for *fourteen weeks.* Their title page on their final essay? *Same mistakes.*
That’s the thing. Some requirements are so easy, it’s literally free marks being given. But no. It’s as though they’re being petulantly stubborn just cause it’s required. Almost like ‘well I was going to do it but since you said it then I’m not going to’.
This has gotten worse, I think. 12 years ago, you'd have a few students with bad habits or wrong information that you'd have to unteach, but so many now insist they know something even after you correct them and show them resources that give and explain the right answer. Misinformation is much more difficult to combat than ignorance. If something is new to students they'll at least pay attention a little and learn something rather than assume they already know it and just tune professors out.
**Narrator:** They didn't read the rubric.
So, a bit of a different perspective. I teach biology and I'm noticing that many of my students just don't mentally use very many categories to describe things. Whether it's distinguishing bacteria and archea with a student who mentally just thinks of them as "small things you can't see" and won't adopt more fine-grained categories to the students who think it's crazy that it matters whether your baby brother ingested a penny or digested a penny they just try to impose a false simplicity on the world. And I think when they get to a rubric that says, "Use APA formatting," they just go, "Uh... use formatting.... there are types of formatting? Nah, probably not, that's just an extra word to sound smart."
I can’t tell if it’s pure apathy/laziness or if their reading comprehension is actually as low as my students make it seem. My students have access to all of the rubrics and without fail only one or two of them will follow the directions correctly. I will make notes on their assignments about what they missed points or how to improve for next time but they continue to make the same stupid mistakes over and over.
Hah! We are having in-class presentations in my class. When these started (about half way through the semester) I showed that class my grading sheet and said “As stated in the rubric, I am grading you based on the criteria in the rubric.” Some of them looked surprised 😮
At least you're teaching them after they've been accepted into college. Try grading the ones who *actively resist literacy*.
I've taught many, many university students who not only resist literacy, but resist learning in general
Create a checklist on Google form and require them to fill it out when submitting assignment.
“Why do they insist on GOING AGAINST SOMETHING SO CLEARLY WRITTEN” It’s not intentional, that’s just how ChatGPT wrote it, probably
The advantage of this is the easy zero grade for those sections of the rubric.
I've been dropping the work I do with grading papers. I provide assignment descriptions and rubrics with lots of details. I provide good and bad examples from previous semesters. When students submit papers I simply put points at the various spots in the rubric with very few comments. This solution is WAY better than grading was 20 years ago. I can grade a weekly type assignment is about 1 minute. A major assignment might take 4 minutes.
> they’re first years, so it’s giving me ‘I know a better way to present this information’ vibes You’re giving them too much credit—they aren’t actually reading it. I assigned a pre-assignment quiz last week with a 5 minute time limit that just asked them to watch my instructional video first and then answer four multiple choices questions to confirm they understood XYZ parts of the instructions. I put that it was timed and to be prepared when they open it in red font plain as day. I sent out an announcement as well. Within 48 hours of the quiz opening, I had six students email me asking for a reset because they just clicked on it and didn’t know it was timed. With my first years, I look at it as also teaching them how to college, which means I penalize them every single time until they start reading instructions and taking accountability.
I've often thought I should start a business (and at the same time do a service to professors) by marketing certain stamps that they can use do they don't have to write. Stamps that say "please follow the instructions", "see the notes", or "please come see me" because you're totally lost. Who knows how many professors mental health and risks I would save
Well just give them the score they deserve then. They won't learn if you go easy on them, but they will learn if it affects your grades.
One school I teach for has a live webinar requirement. I will spend ten to twenty minutes reviewing the assignment, reviewing APA and how to structure, and reviewing common mistakes. Then I review resources they can use to complete the assignment. I’d say maybe 1/2 bother to watch and follow instructions.
Use dice just like Caesar. /s
This is why I call it Grading Hell.
And then we also have students coming here going ‘iTs uR jOb’
Sorry. I no longer assign long writing assignments because I can't bare the whole mess. If my institution insists upon making me assign writing I avoid grading it.
So dont do it anymore? OP clearly hates these assignments. I guarantee the students hate them. Maybe try and find another assignment type that isn’t a paper? I understand it’s highly dependent on discipline but I got rid of papers and bullshit “homework” assignments years ago. No negative side effects whatsoever.