While prepping last night for class today (yes, I am still an Awesome procrastinator), I realized that my initial plans for my class are, well, a bit high-brow.
In case you don't remember slash did not take the class that I now teach, it is lame. And easy. But, it is the best way to do things like yell at incoming Freshies about unintentional plagiarism and show them how to use big-kid databases.
A big part of the course is using quality search terms, which sometimes means using a variety. One of the exercises in the beginning of the class is pulling 3 key words from a thesis and coming up with 2 synonyms for each keyword. Easy, right?
Apparently, wrong. The class is almost over and they still do not get it. Well, to be fair, many of them do. Others, however, are the definition of awful. For example, the term "family" had the synonym "blood". Am I being ridiculous here, guys? I mean, I think it is fairly obvious that you should use "relatives". I was *not* that bad when I took the class--and I do not understand how the average grade right now is a 71%. Okay, mathematically I do because I have 1 kid who is not turning anything in, but taking that aside, average is 76%. Zawhat?
Are my expectations really that high? I mean, I am the good kind of educator that discusses common mistakes on an assignment after grading, but they are still not getting it. I cannot imagine that my expectations are too high, since I have no expectations after they plagiarized their assignment on plagiarism.
Yay for teaching strategies like diversification, I suppose, because now they get to do a worksheet on this as group work! Hurray! That means that I can plan next week while they are in class this week.
Best. teacher. EVER!
1 comment:
Okay, but you have to remember that you're teaching a required course. It means that you're going to have a nice average of people who a) Care a lot even though they might think the class is worthless (this was me, btw, when I took it) b) Don't care much but put in just enough effort to pass, and c) Are too drunk to type.
So when you average out the 90%s, the 70%s, and the fails, then I totally understand why you're in the mid-seventies.
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