Grading Dilemma (To F or not to F)

[MsDarjeeling]

Nice to hear an update on this and it sounds like everything worked out for the best.

[somethinbruin]

After also speaking to the professor mentoring the TA's, I did end up giving these students each a D- (and one got a D). I adjusted the rubric to emphasize certain other categories over citation, but made my displeasure evident. I can't remember if I mentioned that the assignment prior to this one was an exercise in summarizing and citing an article, in which some of these students had similar issues. This assignment was an exercise to see if they could cite multiple sources and provide the appropriate citation and attribution. On meeting with one of them, I upgraded his grade to a C-, after he showed me how and why he made the mistakes, and pointed out that he'd attributed things in other ways. The others didn't come to talk to me, so I didn't work with them on their grade. 

 

I do agree that it's not possible to expect the same work from a freshman as an upperclassman, but this institution emphasizes rigor at all levels, and at least in theory we've got "highly selective" admissions standards. I think I'd done a pretty good job of emphasizing my point that citation is mandatory. Surely, for this next assignment they've understood the message. 

 

I think next semester, I'll build in more revision. Currently, they can only revise the two medium-weighted papers in the middle, not this one I had issues with or the final research paper. 

 

Sounds like you mediated the situation pretty well. I agree that it's important to "balance" your rubric so that it stresses what you want it to stress. I find my rubrics tend to be more weighted toward organization, development of a thesis, and appropriate support for an argument. Grammar/punctuation/citation have a place, but the higher order concerns come first, particularly since studies suggest that these lower order concerns diminish as students are taught revision skills and given opportunities to identify and correct error. So I don't like to fail hammer them on early drafts for this stuff because it should go away by the end of the course--but that's where portfolio systems and course-wide revision become crucial. We do have discussions that cover plagiarism/intent vs. source misuse and their implications throughout my class.

 

I tweak my course after ever semester, trying to weed out what doesn't work for me and maximize what does. I think you're right to consider ways to add revision (or peer review...peers catch a lot of nit-picky citation stuff) to your next course. Some of the advice here has been helpful, while others I think have strayed a bit afield. This typifies a divide I notice between comp/rhet instructors and faculty in other disciplines. Comp/rhet long ago prioritized into HOCs and LOCs, and largely made peace with this distinction, while some faculty in the disciplines are still of the mindset that you can grade writing by deducting two points for every split infinitive and misplaced modifier. I'm always struck by the expectation gap between comp/rhet faculty and professors in other disciplines, and it makes me sad when faculty miss the forest (students trying on ideas) for the trees (comma splices), particularly when the "trees" do not affect the comprehension of the text. 

 

When I started teaching, I thought I would be really stringent about citations (ie: missing one/a few is a major failure). I found that to be generally counterproductive. It made students obsess over the citations to the detriment of the writing and the ideas. I got better results trying to give them ways to enter the discourse community (ala Bartholomae) than I did being an enforcer. We (as advanced students) take for granted understanding the intricacies and complexities of MLA format (and the like). I routinely see students come in from high school who think they just have to throw a citation at the end of each paragraph. That's what they've been taught, if they've been taught to cite at all. In my class this fall, four students responded on a survey that they had never written a paper in high school. Another five said their longest paper ever was two pages. For these students, the 30 minute run-down on MLA that I give them is the most they've ever heard of citation styles, and then we expect them to nail it perfectly right out of the gate? I think that's a bit unrealistic. We shouldn't excuse the error, but we should recognize the difference between academic dishonesty, laziness, and a student who is actively trying to approximate a discourse he or she has no experience in. They may be trying to cite, recognize it as a gesture toward their own ethos, and not quite getting there yet. I feel this is an important distinction, and one that helps teachers keep perspective on just how formidable a task it is for some FYC students to step into academic writing. 

 

An ancillary question--if you are new to teaching, does your program require you to take a composition pedagogy course? Do you have a teaching mentor? These are two things that really helped me when I started teaching comp as a master's student. It was nice to be able to run these types of scenarios by my cohort (and we did this all the time) and my mentor. They always had great advice that wasn't readily apparent to me. And having a basis in comp pedagogy really changed how I looked at my role as a teacher and evaluator of student writing.

 

I'm glad you've come to a positive resolution here, and good luck with the rest of your semester!

[dr. t]

 I routinely see students come in from high school who think they just have to throw a citation at the end of each paragraph. That's what they've been taught, if they've been taught to cite at all. In my class this fall, four students responded on a survey that they had never written a paper in high school. Another five said their longest paper ever was two pages. 

     

[somethinbruin]

^^^Yup. But I am no longer surprised by this, nor do I dwell on it. I give an anonymous survey of their writing backgrounds when they come into my class so that I have a baseline idea of where I might need to focus. This semester I have quite a few more inexperienced writers than I have had in years past. Usually I only have one or two who never wrote in high school (out of about 50). This year my classes on the whole are at a much more basic level, and that is daunting for me as an instructor, but it can also be incredibly rewarding when you see students make improvements in logic, critical thinking, and composition in a short amount of time. 

[TakeruK]

When I started teaching, I thought I would be really stringent about citations (ie: missing one/a few is a major failure). I found that to be generally counterproductive. It made students obsess over the citations to the detriment of the writing and the ideas. I got better results trying to give them ways to enter the discourse community (ala Bartholomae) than I did being an enforcer. We (as advanced students) take for granted understanding the intricacies and complexities of MLA format (and the like). I routinely see students come in from high school who think they just have to throw a citation at the end of each paragraph. That's what they've been taught, if they've been taught to cite at all. In my class this fall, four students responded on a survey that they had never written a paper in high school. Another five said their longest paper ever was two pages. For these students, the 30 minute run-down on MLA that I give them is the most they've ever heard of citation styles, and then we expect them to nail it perfectly right out of the gate? I think that's a bit unrealistic. We shouldn't excuse the error, but we should recognize the difference between academic dishonesty, laziness, and a student who is actively trying to approximate a discourse he or she has no experience in. They may be trying to cite, recognize it as a gesture toward their own ethos, and not quite getting there yet. I feel this is an important distinction, and one that helps teachers keep perspective on just how formidable a task it is for some FYC students to step into academic writing. 

 

Although I did write longer essays in my high school, we never covered any sort of citation style at all. We were not expected/taught to do in-line citation, but we were taught how to write a bibliography. But the way that we were taught implied that there is only ever one way to do a bibliography! I think this was the norm in the area of Canada I grew up in since every single BA and BSc student at my university had to take a freshman English class that taught the mechanics of academic writing. That was the first time I even heard "MLA" or "APA" etc. and the first time that we learned to do in-line citations, and all of the complex rules. 

 

I found that the best way for me to learn all of these cases was to learn citations/mechanics separately from learning how to write and express ideas. We had simple exercises where the sole goal is to learn how to write several different types of MLA citations. Then, we moved onto a slightly more complex task -- writing a simple argument paper with supporting facts from 6 different sources, where the different sources have to be from a book, a journal article, an online article etc. just so that we learn how to properly cite things. The course also covered things like structure of essays, rhetroical devices and how to critique the writing of published works as well as our peers etc. So, although we did write actual content, the goal of the course is to learn style and we were mostly graded on style, not the content of our writing. The second mandatory English class for all BA and BSc students was a literature class where content / quality of our arguments were graded more strongly than style.

 

I am glad that my university and my instructor remembered that while correct writing style and citations come second nature to them, us students come from a huge variety of backgrounds and that they took the time to teach us how to write. That first English class is probably one of the most useful classes in my entire undergrad career because proper writing is so important. But I think I would have not learned nearly as much if I had to learn to write academically (i.e. style) while also learning how to analyse literature at the university level (i.e. content). I think it's important to teach these two aspects separately at first.

[somethinbruin]

I wish my course could be oriented like that, but it's not possible with my common syllabus. So I have to do citations/mechanics alongside writing with style/substance.