Week 8

I have just realised that I have lost an hour of my life. The clocks have sprung forward and so I am an hour behind "schedule". Just as well that I woke up a couple of hours earlier than planned. I am trying to make sure that I have lots of odds and ends tied up before the week begins. I am hoping to be able devote all my time and energy to grading second drafts of essays this week in order to get them out of the way for spring break. However, the gods have already conspired against me as a number of administrative meetings have been called and they are sure to sap my energy.

All last weekend was spent grading first drafts of essays. It is a really intense experience having to read essay after essay and remain alert and "positive". In the course of grading one may come across the same error hundreds, if not thousands, of times. I therefore marched into class, armed with a list of really annoying errors, which I hope will be removed from next drafts. However, being a realist, I know there will be a few students who will simply not "get it". They have been given a checklist and warned that as soon as I come across three errors that they have not at least attempted to correct - I stop reading. Here's hoping they take me seriously. If they don't and submit essays with the same errors, it will make life a lot easier for me as I will have a lot less reading to do and may well, quite easily get the papers graded by the weekend.

As well as getting their papers back this week, students were also required to attend a tutorial. I am pleased to say that they all turned up - eventually. There were at least 2 that turned up late but fate was on their side as I had time to fit them in, when eventually they did turn up. There were the usual few who confessed to having received "help" from loving family members and friends. One student turned up having missed both lessons during the week. He revealed that he hadn't come to class because he thought lessons had been canceled. The ironic thing is that in that particular lesson I had stressed that lessons weren't canceled because another student who was repeating and hoping for the same procedure as last semester, had specifically asked whether there would be lessons. Thankfully there was only the one student (known at present) that took it upon themselves to take the week off.

It is that time of semester - due dates for assignments - that students begin "dropping like flies". Each class is now well below the full quota and even many of those that are still coming to class will already be penalized for attendance. There are still 6 weeks to go and they will need to get through them without any absences. Unfortunately there are many repeating students who are repeating the behavioural pattern that caused them to fail in previous semesters.

The podcasts are now being hosted on my website. There were a few technical hitches (and still are) but not nearly as many as last semester. I believe some students are daunted at the prospect of having to listen to/view their classmates' podcasts. There doesn't seem to be the tradition of peer evaluation (although I have done a little already) and I get the distinct impression that their expectations for each others' work is not particularly high. It's good enough for the teacher to have to listen to but why should students be expected to have to listen to each others'. They have been warned that it is probably not a good idea to try and listen to all podcasts in one sitting. It will be interesting to see what feedback they give each other.

Week 7

The long awaited deadline for submission of first drafts of formal essay 1 has at last arrived. Despite being warned many times that the most common reason for students not being successful on courses is that they don’t read/listen to and follow instructions, there was considerable surprise when many essays were rejected because they did not fulfil basic requirements. As I collected essays I had a quick precursory look for basic things like inclusion of instructions and length and on this basis alone many essays were returned. The shock of it. When Mr David says he wants a minimum of 3 pages, he means it. Some students think they were clever and, through tampering with margins and putting huge spaces between paragraphs it looks as though they have written 3 pages. However, these students will have their essays returned with no feedback as they too have not met the minimum requirements. At least those who blatantly fail to attain the minimum standards, which was apparant on the submission day, had their essays returned immediately and most of them, by the next day had made the necessary changes and so only lose 10% for being late. The others however, will receive a rude awakening…

As usual when students screw up, I end up having to do lots of extra work. All those who submitted substand work initially had to resubmit their work to turnitin.com and so I had to keep logging in and deleting essays so that they could submit new drafts. I won’t be doing this in future and so students had beter make sure that they do what they are told in the future as there won’t be any second chances.

So, for me, it was one of those really trying weeks when I had to get lots of grading done. However, by Thursday evening, depite being up as early as 3am some mornings, I had only succeeded in grading 2 essays. This was mainly because of other responsibilities related to committee work within the Communication Program. Thus my weekend was spend conducting an intensive grading session through Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

This week was also the deadline for submission of podcasts. As usual there were the few who submitted files with such illuminating titles as “Track1” or “Podcast”. Even if they don’t read instructions, one would hope that students would at least use their common sense and realise that 70 students submitting files with names such as the above is just not a sensible thing to do. The bottom line is that the teacher needs to know whose work it is in order to be able to allocate a grade to it. Again, I had to spend many hours transferring these files to my website but I am pleased to say that there were not as many technical hitches as last semester. Yet again, the fact that some students live off campus has caused some problems with meeting deadlines. Students seem to think that all they have to do is tell met that they live off campus and they automatically get an extension. We all know that accessing drives from off campus is slow. If we start uploading a file that is 50MB at 4.55pm, we should know that we are not going to make a 5pm deadline. But of course none of this is the student’s fault. İt’s the Internet’s problem.

Week 6

From reading students' blogs, it would appear that the semester is now in full swing. Mid-terms have started and two deadlines for my Comm course loom large. Again, students seem to be struggling to organise their time properly as everything seems to be left to the last minute. In the last lesson for each section this week, I took a quick poll of who actually has started work on their essay. There were 1 or 2 students in each section. I then asked who was planning to have their essay written before the night before the deadline. All hands went up. I then asked who had planned on already having started their essay by that last lesson. Again all hands went up. We then contemplated the fact that not everything goes to plan and that for the deadline, they should assume that "Murphy's Law" will be in full force. I also warned them that although in each class there were 15 or 16 students sitting before me, it would be unusual (going by past experience) if I got as many as 10 essays from each section. I am hoping they will prove me wrong.

From all the students in my 4 sections, 4 of them booked a tutorial and came to discuss their first attempts at writing their essay. Students who do this tend to be conscientious and hard working. It's the ones who don't take the initiative and make any effort to ensure they are doing the right thing that one really needs to worry about. From these few tutorial I have had with conscientious students it is evident that there are some very basic misunderstandings about the text and what completing the task involves. Again students have displayed great difficult in answering the question but rather just talk about specific ideas from the text which they have isolated and chosen to write about. When questioned why they chose this particular part of the text to focus on, they have no explanation. One student didn't quite understand where our authors stopped reporting earlier research and started presenting their own. If conscientious students who plan and make a serious effort to ensure they are doing the right thing, have these difficulties, what can I expect to receive from the rest early next week?

I am dreading next week - because of course the ball will be in my court. I will have 4 sets of essays to grade and if all goes to plan, I will get them back to students in the first lesson of the following week. I do not plan on grading late into the night on Monday as it is my national holiday - St Patrick's day. However, I hope to get most of the grading done by the weekend.

Students seem to still think that I can give them permission to miss a class. They don't seem to realise that it is entirely their decision whether or not to miss a class. There are the same consequences whether they miss it simply because they don't feel like coming or whether they have a wonderfully dramatic excuse like being on the other side of the planet or God forbid - a death in the family. They are allowed three absences unpenalized so that they can deal with such dramatic events. A problem only arises if they have more than 3 dramatic situations per semester. And if they do...they just need to learn to deal with the consequences.

Week 5

On reading students blogs this week, an issue that has cropped up every other semester raises its head again. When explaining why they may not have done very well at a task, students tend to say things like "I didn't give Mr David what he wants" or "Mr David didn't like what I wrote" - the implication being that each teacher they have, wants something different, based on their arbitrary preferences and being successful is all about figuring out what individual teachers want and then giving that to them. No matter how many times you say that all you want is the answer provided in the text, it is still proving difficult to actually get them to look at the text for the answer to questions about the text. When trying to impress upon students the importance of a particular task by eliciting what it will contribute to their overall grade, students tend to just guess - proffering a series of numbers related to grades they have received for tasks in the past. The last thing they consider doing is consulting the syllabus which is sitting on the desk before them. So, it would appear that learning to discipline oneself to consult sources before responding to questions seems like a very important skill that needs to be learned. I guess its something to do with past experiences of being assessed where one is expected to have all answers to questions in their head. Open book exams - being allowed to consult texts - is so far removed from their experience that when allowed to do so, it just does not come naturally.

Another point about students blogs that is somewhat worrying is the confession that when I put students into small groups to discuss texts, rather than using this opportunity to get to know the text better, they are using it to get to know each other better. However, this week I have extended my threat to - being inspired by Facebook - poke anyone speaking Turkish and I have also been monitoring the groups more systematically and carefully.

We basically spent the whole of this week getting acquainted with the text on which our first major assignment is based. Collectively, each class displays a reasonable knowledge of what the text contains but I am not sure that when students work on their individual assignments, they will have a sufficient grasp of the complexities of the text. Last week students were assigned the reading of a text called "Internet Paradox" for their homework. As it is still relatively early in the semester, things are really only "hotting up". So, despite the fact that some mid-terms have begun, students are not under as great pressure as they will be soon. Getting a clear grasp of this text will greatly enhance their chance of doing a good job of their first assignment worth 25% of their overall grade. So, one constantly hopes that they will put in the effort now while they have the opportunity. I therefore took the time at the beginning of each lesson this week to check for "physical evidence" of students having read the task. Alas, in each section there were many students who showed no signs of even having read the text. How then can they expect to be able to write an insightful essay in the near future? How do they expect to be able to contribute to class discussions? I live in hope.

Week 4

At last we are getting down to some serious work. I am somewhat concerned that we haven't started work on writing our first essay yet, but I always find that it is a good idea to read, discuss and assess understanding of another text before beginning work on a text that will play a major role in assessment. To this end, students were assigned the reading of what is perhaps the "easiest" (but not shortest) text in their course book. As with last semester, at the beginning of the first lesson of this week, I solicited students overall impressions of the texts, its level of difficulty, level of interest, complexity of ideas etc. The overall impression was that the text was eminently readable and students felt that they understood it rather well. And so...on with the quiz - which again was judged to be fairly basic, didn't contain any tricky vocabulary/grammatical structures and which was straightforward and what one would expect. The grading was again done by peers and the appropriate answer for each question, identified in the text and then discussed. Students were again disappointed with grades but I was in no way surprised although I am still trying to develop a theory as to why students perform so badly. The most reasonable explanation appears to be that students are trying to answer the questions from their own perspective rather than reporting what the text has to say. As very few of them have done text based writing in the past, this is understandable. So, hopefully the easy solution will be to teach them how to incorporate ideas from other writers' texts into their own writing. As with previous semesters I also found that students were often unable to accurately grade their peer's work - often marking it correct when in fact it was wrong. This could be due to them not understanding the answer being presented in the text, not understanding what their peer had actually written or possibly even simply being unable to declare a friend's work as "wrong" and allocate it a "0".

Although we had no snow days this week, I am pleased to be able to report that I succeeded in reading all students' blogs - although admittedly I didn't post a comment for them all - but I did for most. As soon as I finish writing this, it will be time to return to them and read entries for week 4.

I have also now created a profile (with very basic information) in Facebook, with the intention of experiencing what it could contribute to one's social life. To date, two students have invited me to become "friends" and so I wait patiently to see what this "friendship" will involve.

Week 3

As mentioned last week, from the instructor's perspective, things are still moving slowly as, although it is week 3, because of constantly changing class lists, I haven't yet got onto the really serious work. Then, this week began with two free days caused by snow. I sometimes think that students don't view their instructors as human and think that we don't like having days off. Of course we do, but we are used to thinking more long term and have to worry about how we will get through the course work. Furthermore, I don't know if students actually know but Yuk has strict regulations about how long a semester should be in order for it to be considered valid. If lots of days are canceled because of snow, the university would have to compensate in some way by for example taking days off our spring break or extending the length of the semester.

I am glad that I am not the president having to make decisions about whether or not to cancel lessons. Unlike in other institutions, our president seems quite decisive. A friend of mine who works in Sabanci university had to go to class on Monday - spent most of the morning getting there and was then told that she could head for home at 2pm. All in all, it was a frustrating day for her as she spent most of it traveling and got very little work done. I also added to her frustrations by informing her on Monday afternoon that our president had already made the decision to cancel lessons on Tuesday. Her comment was "what a wonderful university you work for...". How many of us would agree with her?

As I write this, the sun is shining and temperatures feel like they are well into their teens. In the course of a few days there has suddenly been a dramatic change in the weather. This helps one think of Summer and the end of the semester - although we are only 3 weeks in. Still, it give the impetus to keep going.

Having had two days "off" this week, I am now concerned about how I will manage in the coming weeks. I of course didn't take the days off but used them to catch up on some "administrative" tasks. Most of the time was spent reading and responding to students' blogs. When explaining how do do a blog I showed students some examples from last semester. As in most cases, students were worried about how much they should write. I showed them examples of both extremes and I was quite surprised to find that most of them have gone for erring on the side of caution and writing lots. In particular I remember one student who reflected on the difficulties he had in writing 500 words for the diagnostic essay. When I finished reading his blog I quickly pasted it into MS Word and did a word count - 1,303. I don't believe he realized how much he was writing in his blog. One of my main goals in asking students to do this blog, is to give them the experience of writing in a more relaxed setting and allowing them to write as much/little as they want and not have to worry about being graded. I will of course continue to read the blogs each week but I hope students can appreciate that I may not always have time to respond with individual comments each and every week - especially during the weeks in which I am grading essays and conducting tutorials.

During the one and only lesson of this week, I gave feedback on the diagnostic essays. I know that students don't particularly enjoy these types of lessons as they appear to be simply a list of what not to do (after you have actually done them all). However, as the course progresses and they stop doing what they are not supposed to do, these feedback sessions will get shorter and shorter as they start doing what they should do. I must remember however to make sure that I give some positive feedback and congratulate them on their achievements and reinforce what is being done correctly.

Week 2

Ideally, in the first lesson of this week I should have been giving feedback on the diagnostics and we should then be moving on to the main focus of the course. However, because of all the movement of students, only about half of the class had actually completed an essay. So, instead I spent the first lesson of the week having a closer look at the syllabus. I did this by giving students a quiz. Syllabi, of their nature are not particularly interesting documents to read. I guess they should only be considered a point of reference to be consulted as and when issues arise throughout the semester. However, it regularly occurs that students claim ignorance after they have been penalised in some way. Therefore, I posed a number of questions related to problems that students had last year in interpreting and applying the rules laid down in the syllabus. Students seem to think that instructors are capable of carrying out complex mathematical equations such as deducting 15% of a student's grade as a penalty for absences. They think I will work out eg. what 15% of 74 is and then deduct that which will still give a student a passing grade. However, the reality is that the maths is simply 74-15=59 which is an F. Life is that simple. This seemed to be a revelation to most. Also many were surprised to hear that I am not into "curves". Don't they realise that writing instructors avoid maths as much as possible - it simply isn't our forte. I hope the quiz has helped to clarify what is and is not expected.

However, I know there are still students around who misinterpret what is said/written. I had a strange phone call just as I was about to rush off to class on Thursday. It was a student who lives on the next hill calling to tell me that he had set off in his car to come to class but had returned home because of poor driving conditions caused by snow. I looked out my window and saw a few snow flakes but they weren't "sticking". Being polite I thanked him for calling and told him that he should do whatever he thought was best. Later, from reading his blog, I learn that he believes that by phoning me, he in some way excused himself and that I would mark him present in class. I hope no other students think this or else I can expect my phone to be ringing constantly before each lesson.

As I expect students to keep a weekly blog, I had to make sure that I explained how to set it up in the second lesson of the week. Already the end of week 2 and we haven't really got started. About one or two students in each class had heard of or were keeping a blog already and so I had to spend quite a while explaining what it is and how to set it up. Initially I asked how many students actually like writing. I can't say I was surprised but for a writing teacher, it is disappointing to learn that, if one is lucky, as many as 1 or 2 students in each class actually enjoys writing. So, we are already at a disadvantage. If someone were to ask me if I like writing, I guess I'd have to say no - not really. It's hard work but then it can also be very rewarding. Although students may not actually be converted and say that writing has become their favourite pastime, I hope that they will, at the end of the course, at least feel more confident and take pride in their work.

So, now that they have all been instructed on how to set up their blogs it will be interesting to see what they say at the end of this week. I can already anticipate what some of it will be...