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.