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.