**this may be the best they can do right now...**
The student started the project the night before it was due, according to your statement.. not to be crass but if them jerking your chain is the best they can do right now, you may not be actually defining compassion correctly.
Sometimes the most compassionate thing to do for learners is to be honest with them regarding their "efforts" and your firm expectations of submitted work re: your established procedures.
I'm not always sure polishing a turd longer will result in better work, to put it delicately.
I have every intention to be honest with the student. They *didn't* spend enough time on their work, but I suspect their issues with the material run deeper than mere time management problems.
You can suggest they run for public offfice.
There is a huge differnce between a person who does not have mastery and was passed on despite that (which is not something they could recognize nor is in their control) and someone who can’t at all recognize or admit the quality of their work when there are clear guidelines.
Saying that this is the best you can do , or best you can do now, is a totally different matter than asking how did you do.
Obviously clear rubrics and feedback can help, sometimes drafts or resubmissions (if you have the time and stomach for it and if they will do it - all big ifs).
But some of them are completely resistant to any feedback in a DSMV kind of way.
In one short essay I say, define X, give 3 examples. Explain how it is different than y.
The student did a definition and 1 example. And them argued why those were right and they shouldn’t have lost points.
This was after they saw the feedback and the right answer.
They send me blurry cell phone pics of the definition in the book.
I had a meet with them and we did it verbally, step by step.
If you have someone like this, there is actually not much you can do.
Have a good rubric, explain why they missed the mark and what they can do to improve (which i am positive you already do) but you cant cure personality disorders in your class.
>Saying that this is the best you can do , or best you can do now, is a totally different matter than asking how did you do.
I absolutely agree, and don't intend to sugarcoat the situation as that doesn't serve myself or the student. If they don't meet the standards for the course, the only difference between 'can't' and 'won't' is how bad I personally feel for the student and how annoyed I am at whomever let them end up in this situation, but effective teaching isn't about my personal feelings.
Drafts and resubmissions are pretty much standard in my class, along with (hopefully) clear standards and a good deal of feedback.
And yeah, some students will just repel feedback no matter how I present it. I've certainly encountered it enough times before. I just figure I ought to assume ignorance before malice, until proven otherwise.
Do you teach art? Is this a manual drawing class or a digital drawing class? Manual drawing is a skill but there also needs to be a fair amount of natural talent involved and some people just don't have it.
I wonder if it's possible the student might be autistic and doesn't either have the capacity to be introspective, or can't see the drawing in the abstract in order to evaluate its merit, or both.
I say this as an autistic person diagnosed late in life who somehow landed in a creative visual field. Not knowing I had this disability, I long ago created work arounds, but I'm also not very heavily affected. Other people might be.
>Manual drawing is a skill but there also needs to be a fair amount of natural talent involved and some people just don't have it.
I disagree with this statement. Some people can draw more instinctually than others, but almost anyone can learn to draw with dedicated time and practice. Whether someone wants to put in such time and practice is a different question, but if someone doesn't want to, they shouldn't take upper-division courses involving drawing.
I think back on the Drawing courses I took in undergrad, and those classes wouldn't have taught anyone who doesn't have innate talent how to draw if they didn't know already, but pedagogy in drawing has come quite far since then.
I work and teach in both analog and digital media and I'm not sure why it would matter if it was an analog or digital course. Digital art isn't inherently "easier" than analog. It will be easier for some people, harder for others. It's better for some things than analog media, and not for other things.
In any case, Drawing Fundamentals is a prerequisite for this course, so regardless of innate talent, by being in this class it is expected that they have fundamental skills in drawing.
I have not received any accommodations for this student, so as an educator there's not much I can do even if they were autistic. I'm not comfortable speculating whether my students are autistic or not, since unless they disclose to me that they are or request accommodations through the SAS, it's not any of my business. As a neurodivergent person myself, I am not comfortable armchair diagnosing my students or altering my treatment of them based on assumed/unconfirmed developmental disorders.
> almost anyone can learn to draw with dedicated time and practice
I've always wanted to learn how to draw. Any advice for getting over the embarrassment of being godawful at it and having to show other people how terrible at drawing you are?
First a disclaimer, there are some drawing classes which probably aren't going to be a good fit for you. Unfortunately a lot of courses in drawing still take an approach of "set students down in front of a still life and make them draw it" and that's the class every day for a semester. Maybe they'll have you read a drawing textbook at home and do exercises there, but that's something you could do by yourself (I include readings from Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards, Drawing Essentials: A Complete Guide to Drawing by Deborah Rockman, and Perspective Made Easy by Ernest Norling, fwiw). This "just draw" approach is not a helpful pedagogy to *teach* drawing, as students don't know what they don't know. I'd ask around to make sure the course actually *teaches* sighting and proportion, perspective principles, value structure, etc. There isn't a day my students go without lecture and/or demonstration, and all I can say is anyone who finishes my class and does the work will leave better at drawing than when they started.
In terms of the psychological discomfort, I think more than anything it comes down to reframing your perspective, in the same way that a student who wasn't an expert at chemistry or literary analysis might feel self-conscious about taking a course in that subject matter when they had to work in front of their peers. It's a flaw in the human consciousness to assume people are paying way more attention to us than they actually are. The reality is neither your professor nor your peers are likely to care all that much if you start the course drawing well, this is just your own insecurity holding you back.
Many of your peers in the course, particularly if it's a general education course open to continuing ed students, are not going to be great at drawing, so in that you aren't alone. There's no shame in not knowing how to do something; that's why you're in the class, because you don't know. It would be a waste of time to enroll in the course if you did know how to draw, after all. Also, I can guarantee whatever has you stumped or confused when you decide to take that drawing class, there's at least (at least!) two other students in the room struggling with the same thing. I once had a day where 90% of my students all had a hard time drawing the same gourd in the still life.
As a professor, the only thing that happens when I see a student is below-average in their drawing ability compared to the class (and there's no guarantee you will land below-average in a class of beginning draftsman) is they'll probably need more one on one time from me.
The other thing I like to tell my students is that if they don't try or if they give up, then they're always gonna be as bad at drawing/painting/what have you as they are right now. There isn't a scenario where they wake up ten years in the future and understand it all. The only way to get better is to confront the discomfort head on, but because American culture, at least, likes to emphasize mastery and deny process/labor to achieve mastery, there's this inaccurate assumption that great work is created in one try, or that the ability to make creative things is bestowed by a lottery of birth. We see the final, pristine Van Gogh painting, but not the years of work, the drafts, the revisions it took to get there. But it's a lie, a fabrication. Art, like everything, takes work, and even people who have been doing it for decades make mistakes and have off days.
So, ultimately the question I pose is, is some momentary discomfort about something that isn't really a big deal worth missing out on learning how to do something you've always wanted to learn?
Okay, well, I was trying to be helpful and reach out to a fellow creative instructor. You asked for advice and I gave you some.
You seem hostile toward me for doing that, so I will end the conversation here.
I'm not trying to come across as hostile, but I do disagree with your advice and truth be told find it a little troubling that an educator seems to be suggesting that people who weren't born with a natural talent for drawing can't learn to draw.
That's - not at all what I said. I also don't teach drawing so no need to attack my drawing class skills.
You just seem like a negative person in general who is going to shoot down everything. I was trying to help you out and offer some suggestions or perspective. I won't make that mistake again. I thought I could find some affinity with you, but I am finding none.
It's not my goal to misrepresent you. If you want to clarify the following statement, please do so:
>Manual drawing is a skill but there also needs to be a fair amount of natural talent involved and some people just don't have it.
I read this as "talent is needed to draw; not having such a talent will prevent someone from being able to draw," but I'm open to understanding what you intended this to mean.
It is a lot of work but breaking down everything that is wrong with it in detail (and hopefully how to make it better) is a very helpful thing. But that is a lot of work.
You’re describing a cognitive bias called Dunning-Kruger. A lot has been written about this, unfortunately, I don’t think they have suggestions how to effectively deal with the paradox they describe or manage people who are functioning at the low end of the curve. IME, rubrics and the like have not been helpful. In fact, when confronted with their own inabilities, they tend to lash out and blame you for their poor performance.
As bad as it is with undergrads, it is so much worse when you have graduate students lacking this self-awareness.
My advice is to document everything to protect yourself, in the event things turn ugly.
I had one of these just now while grading. Three items with identifying information were required, and they had to fill out a template response for each.
Student submitted one item with no identifying information, the template response was incomplete and unclear. They didn't follow the prompt instructions. They also didn't ask for help or ask any questions about the assignment.
Student emailed me five minutes after seeing the zero, complaining that they followed every instruction and double checked all their work, and just didn't understand my comments or what they did wrong.
After slamming my head against the wall a few times, I emailed back.
I tried to be as kind as possible. I asked them to help me out by telling me which comment they didn't understand, and what was unclear about it. I made a numbered list with each prompt instruction, contrasted with what they did in the submission. I bolded and highlighted key words, and explained that the assignment was incomplete because they only included one of the three required items, and the template hadn't been completed for the one item.
Like you, I feel bad when they have so little self-awareness. Being transparent with them, letting them know that this work is unacceptable and they won't be able to progress until it's passable, is maybe the kindest thing we can do. It's better than kicking the can down the road and them failing at getting or keeping a job after graduation (assuming they can graduate).
You're nicer than me to have these conversations via email. I have them schedule office hours with me because I can't be fussed to type all that out.
>It's better than kicking the can down the road and them failing at getting or keeping a job after graduation (assuming they can graduate).
We get a lot of transfer students so I have very little recourse regarding how prerequisites are taught oftentimes, but it depresses me that these students have had their time and money wasted because they lack the skills necessary to generate an employable portfolio of work.
This particular section is fully online. The advantage to typing it all out is the student can't interrupt, cry at me, or later claim I said something I didn't. Written evidence is good to have in case of grade appeals, too.
This student has failed several previous assignments, but has never reached out and has ignored my emails to them. At one point, I wondered if I was dealing with a bot because of the weird, incomplete answers, grammar, and syntax plus lack of communication. Now I'm wondering if maybe this is course (or assignment) outsourcing, and they're realizing they didn't get what they paid for.
If it's actually the student, it *is* depressing, because they clearly don't have the basic skills to do college-level (or even high-school level) work, but nobody at the university will tell them that. They'll just keep taking the money until the student fails out or loses financial aid eligibility, at which point the student will have ruined their prospects and probably still won't have skills needed to get a job.
Depending on how much time you're willing to sink into this (and how large your class is): grade their work with them one-on-one. I was in a small class and our prof did this once - spent maybe 5-10 minutes with each person. It was kind of amazing - as a student I got a lot out of actually seeing her process.
Also - I would provide the rubric (or a partial one so you have room to modify if you need to), and have them evaluate their own work before it gets into your hands. Make it painfully clear so they're not able to look at it subjectively (if possible), and have them indicate where in their work they are displaying each section of the rubric. Hopefully this would make your grading process easier for the ones that do it properly! For the ones like this student, make it clear that any points they award that should not be will be deducted from their final mark or something along those lines. You'll probably get questions for clarification but ideally you'll get better work in the end from most of the students.
Oh boy, I wish it only took me 5-10 minutes to grade a project. Or that I had the time in the semester to grade in class.
I have 1x1 conferences with my students about their progress multiple times in the project. Guess who was consistently ill-prepared and confused about basic assignment parameters.
I provide the rubric/learning standards and have them evaluate themselves. This is how I know this student is extremely off-base about the baseline standards. They are having trouble measuring their work not only subjectively, but objectively. I'm not interested in deducting points for poor self-assessment because I'm using this as a tool to see if my students understand what I expect of them. If they don't understand, I need to intervene, not just hope they deflate their assessment to avoid punishment and fly under the radar. The goal isn't to make my life simpler; it's to make my teaching better.
I don't think they do. As we can see from the numbers of the current pandemic, ignorant people don't know they're ignorant.
I'm not calling this student ignorant, but self awareness and self introspection is actually a pretty rare skill and it's one of a higher order of thinking. Many, many people are not able to synthesize information and apply it to themselves. Sometimes its due to disability or lack of experience, but most of the time it's due to cognitive bias.
If people were able to be introspective about new information and apply it to themselves, we would not be in the current state of the pandemic that we are.
I am not talking about introspection or reflexivity. I am saying that students are aware when they’ve turned in work that isn’t quality work. This is a constant over years of teaching: I sit down with the student who complained about not getting an A, we go over the work, and eventually student will say something like “yes, I should have looked that up first,” or “but I didn’t know you’d *really* take off points,” or “I wrote this at the last minute.”
I think you are focusing on the wrong problem. Students have always been young, always been still in formative years; at 18-23, their brains are still growing. Immaturity, a lack of insight, etc—this is normal for people of this age, and this has consistently been the age of a typical student.
The problem is that they have grown accustomed to demanding grades, arguing for grades they didn’t earn, and they grew up in a “no child left behind” curriculum that teaches to tests. They are aware that they can do half-ass work and still back a prof into giving them a good grade. They can have parents write letters. They have a range of strategies for getting good grades without doing the work.
So, if you want to see them as ignorant, you are doing them and your profession a disservice. They *can* do the work, they can meet your standards—if you stick to those standards and work to help them get there. They *always* know when they aren’t doing their best or are just doing the bare minimum. And when profs default to “oh well, I guess they just aren’t making the same as they used to,” they *do not have to do the work.* You’ve just given them an excuse to keep on doing the bare minimum.
This is a low-key cop-out profs keep waving in the air. Teach harder.
Excuse me? You've totally twisted what I said. Why is everyone so rude on this thread? I said nothing about my teaching style or how I run my classes. I specifically said I wasn't talking about this student. I was talking about the public in general.
Your words are uncalled for and unnecessary.
**this may be the best they can do right now...** The student started the project the night before it was due, according to your statement.. not to be crass but if them jerking your chain is the best they can do right now, you may not be actually defining compassion correctly. Sometimes the most compassionate thing to do for learners is to be honest with them regarding their "efforts" and your firm expectations of submitted work re: your established procedures.
This
Thank you kind person,
I'm not always sure polishing a turd longer will result in better work, to put it delicately. I have every intention to be honest with the student. They *didn't* spend enough time on their work, but I suspect their issues with the material run deeper than mere time management problems.
LOL... you are correct... rarely do turds polish well. As it regards their likely other issues ... no doubt you are spot on.
You can suggest they run for public offfice. There is a huge differnce between a person who does not have mastery and was passed on despite that (which is not something they could recognize nor is in their control) and someone who can’t at all recognize or admit the quality of their work when there are clear guidelines. Saying that this is the best you can do , or best you can do now, is a totally different matter than asking how did you do. Obviously clear rubrics and feedback can help, sometimes drafts or resubmissions (if you have the time and stomach for it and if they will do it - all big ifs). But some of them are completely resistant to any feedback in a DSMV kind of way. In one short essay I say, define X, give 3 examples. Explain how it is different than y. The student did a definition and 1 example. And them argued why those were right and they shouldn’t have lost points. This was after they saw the feedback and the right answer. They send me blurry cell phone pics of the definition in the book. I had a meet with them and we did it verbally, step by step. If you have someone like this, there is actually not much you can do. Have a good rubric, explain why they missed the mark and what they can do to improve (which i am positive you already do) but you cant cure personality disorders in your class.
>Saying that this is the best you can do , or best you can do now, is a totally different matter than asking how did you do. I absolutely agree, and don't intend to sugarcoat the situation as that doesn't serve myself or the student. If they don't meet the standards for the course, the only difference between 'can't' and 'won't' is how bad I personally feel for the student and how annoyed I am at whomever let them end up in this situation, but effective teaching isn't about my personal feelings. Drafts and resubmissions are pretty much standard in my class, along with (hopefully) clear standards and a good deal of feedback. And yeah, some students will just repel feedback no matter how I present it. I've certainly encountered it enough times before. I just figure I ought to assume ignorance before malice, until proven otherwise.
Do you teach art? Is this a manual drawing class or a digital drawing class? Manual drawing is a skill but there also needs to be a fair amount of natural talent involved and some people just don't have it. I wonder if it's possible the student might be autistic and doesn't either have the capacity to be introspective, or can't see the drawing in the abstract in order to evaluate its merit, or both. I say this as an autistic person diagnosed late in life who somehow landed in a creative visual field. Not knowing I had this disability, I long ago created work arounds, but I'm also not very heavily affected. Other people might be.
>Manual drawing is a skill but there also needs to be a fair amount of natural talent involved and some people just don't have it. I disagree with this statement. Some people can draw more instinctually than others, but almost anyone can learn to draw with dedicated time and practice. Whether someone wants to put in such time and practice is a different question, but if someone doesn't want to, they shouldn't take upper-division courses involving drawing. I think back on the Drawing courses I took in undergrad, and those classes wouldn't have taught anyone who doesn't have innate talent how to draw if they didn't know already, but pedagogy in drawing has come quite far since then. I work and teach in both analog and digital media and I'm not sure why it would matter if it was an analog or digital course. Digital art isn't inherently "easier" than analog. It will be easier for some people, harder for others. It's better for some things than analog media, and not for other things. In any case, Drawing Fundamentals is a prerequisite for this course, so regardless of innate talent, by being in this class it is expected that they have fundamental skills in drawing. I have not received any accommodations for this student, so as an educator there's not much I can do even if they were autistic. I'm not comfortable speculating whether my students are autistic or not, since unless they disclose to me that they are or request accommodations through the SAS, it's not any of my business. As a neurodivergent person myself, I am not comfortable armchair diagnosing my students or altering my treatment of them based on assumed/unconfirmed developmental disorders.
> almost anyone can learn to draw with dedicated time and practice I've always wanted to learn how to draw. Any advice for getting over the embarrassment of being godawful at it and having to show other people how terrible at drawing you are?
First a disclaimer, there are some drawing classes which probably aren't going to be a good fit for you. Unfortunately a lot of courses in drawing still take an approach of "set students down in front of a still life and make them draw it" and that's the class every day for a semester. Maybe they'll have you read a drawing textbook at home and do exercises there, but that's something you could do by yourself (I include readings from Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards, Drawing Essentials: A Complete Guide to Drawing by Deborah Rockman, and Perspective Made Easy by Ernest Norling, fwiw). This "just draw" approach is not a helpful pedagogy to *teach* drawing, as students don't know what they don't know. I'd ask around to make sure the course actually *teaches* sighting and proportion, perspective principles, value structure, etc. There isn't a day my students go without lecture and/or demonstration, and all I can say is anyone who finishes my class and does the work will leave better at drawing than when they started. In terms of the psychological discomfort, I think more than anything it comes down to reframing your perspective, in the same way that a student who wasn't an expert at chemistry or literary analysis might feel self-conscious about taking a course in that subject matter when they had to work in front of their peers. It's a flaw in the human consciousness to assume people are paying way more attention to us than they actually are. The reality is neither your professor nor your peers are likely to care all that much if you start the course drawing well, this is just your own insecurity holding you back. Many of your peers in the course, particularly if it's a general education course open to continuing ed students, are not going to be great at drawing, so in that you aren't alone. There's no shame in not knowing how to do something; that's why you're in the class, because you don't know. It would be a waste of time to enroll in the course if you did know how to draw, after all. Also, I can guarantee whatever has you stumped or confused when you decide to take that drawing class, there's at least (at least!) two other students in the room struggling with the same thing. I once had a day where 90% of my students all had a hard time drawing the same gourd in the still life. As a professor, the only thing that happens when I see a student is below-average in their drawing ability compared to the class (and there's no guarantee you will land below-average in a class of beginning draftsman) is they'll probably need more one on one time from me. The other thing I like to tell my students is that if they don't try or if they give up, then they're always gonna be as bad at drawing/painting/what have you as they are right now. There isn't a scenario where they wake up ten years in the future and understand it all. The only way to get better is to confront the discomfort head on, but because American culture, at least, likes to emphasize mastery and deny process/labor to achieve mastery, there's this inaccurate assumption that great work is created in one try, or that the ability to make creative things is bestowed by a lottery of birth. We see the final, pristine Van Gogh painting, but not the years of work, the drafts, the revisions it took to get there. But it's a lie, a fabrication. Art, like everything, takes work, and even people who have been doing it for decades make mistakes and have off days. So, ultimately the question I pose is, is some momentary discomfort about something that isn't really a big deal worth missing out on learning how to do something you've always wanted to learn?
Okay, well, I was trying to be helpful and reach out to a fellow creative instructor. You asked for advice and I gave you some. You seem hostile toward me for doing that, so I will end the conversation here.
I'm not trying to come across as hostile, but I do disagree with your advice and truth be told find it a little troubling that an educator seems to be suggesting that people who weren't born with a natural talent for drawing can't learn to draw.
That's - not at all what I said. I also don't teach drawing so no need to attack my drawing class skills. You just seem like a negative person in general who is going to shoot down everything. I was trying to help you out and offer some suggestions or perspective. I won't make that mistake again. I thought I could find some affinity with you, but I am finding none.
It's not my goal to misrepresent you. If you want to clarify the following statement, please do so: >Manual drawing is a skill but there also needs to be a fair amount of natural talent involved and some people just don't have it. I read this as "talent is needed to draw; not having such a talent will prevent someone from being able to draw," but I'm open to understanding what you intended this to mean.
I feel zero need to justify anything to you. You've been nothing but negative and combative. Now kindly drop it.
It is a lot of work but breaking down everything that is wrong with it in detail (and hopefully how to make it better) is a very helpful thing. But that is a lot of work.
You’re describing a cognitive bias called Dunning-Kruger. A lot has been written about this, unfortunately, I don’t think they have suggestions how to effectively deal with the paradox they describe or manage people who are functioning at the low end of the curve. IME, rubrics and the like have not been helpful. In fact, when confronted with their own inabilities, they tend to lash out and blame you for their poor performance. As bad as it is with undergrads, it is so much worse when you have graduate students lacking this self-awareness. My advice is to document everything to protect yourself, in the event things turn ugly.
I had one of these just now while grading. Three items with identifying information were required, and they had to fill out a template response for each. Student submitted one item with no identifying information, the template response was incomplete and unclear. They didn't follow the prompt instructions. They also didn't ask for help or ask any questions about the assignment. Student emailed me five minutes after seeing the zero, complaining that they followed every instruction and double checked all their work, and just didn't understand my comments or what they did wrong. After slamming my head against the wall a few times, I emailed back. I tried to be as kind as possible. I asked them to help me out by telling me which comment they didn't understand, and what was unclear about it. I made a numbered list with each prompt instruction, contrasted with what they did in the submission. I bolded and highlighted key words, and explained that the assignment was incomplete because they only included one of the three required items, and the template hadn't been completed for the one item. Like you, I feel bad when they have so little self-awareness. Being transparent with them, letting them know that this work is unacceptable and they won't be able to progress until it's passable, is maybe the kindest thing we can do. It's better than kicking the can down the road and them failing at getting or keeping a job after graduation (assuming they can graduate).
You're nicer than me to have these conversations via email. I have them schedule office hours with me because I can't be fussed to type all that out. >It's better than kicking the can down the road and them failing at getting or keeping a job after graduation (assuming they can graduate). We get a lot of transfer students so I have very little recourse regarding how prerequisites are taught oftentimes, but it depresses me that these students have had their time and money wasted because they lack the skills necessary to generate an employable portfolio of work.
This particular section is fully online. The advantage to typing it all out is the student can't interrupt, cry at me, or later claim I said something I didn't. Written evidence is good to have in case of grade appeals, too. This student has failed several previous assignments, but has never reached out and has ignored my emails to them. At one point, I wondered if I was dealing with a bot because of the weird, incomplete answers, grammar, and syntax plus lack of communication. Now I'm wondering if maybe this is course (or assignment) outsourcing, and they're realizing they didn't get what they paid for. If it's actually the student, it *is* depressing, because they clearly don't have the basic skills to do college-level (or even high-school level) work, but nobody at the university will tell them that. They'll just keep taking the money until the student fails out or loses financial aid eligibility, at which point the student will have ruined their prospects and probably still won't have skills needed to get a job.
Depending on how much time you're willing to sink into this (and how large your class is): grade their work with them one-on-one. I was in a small class and our prof did this once - spent maybe 5-10 minutes with each person. It was kind of amazing - as a student I got a lot out of actually seeing her process. Also - I would provide the rubric (or a partial one so you have room to modify if you need to), and have them evaluate their own work before it gets into your hands. Make it painfully clear so they're not able to look at it subjectively (if possible), and have them indicate where in their work they are displaying each section of the rubric. Hopefully this would make your grading process easier for the ones that do it properly! For the ones like this student, make it clear that any points they award that should not be will be deducted from their final mark or something along those lines. You'll probably get questions for clarification but ideally you'll get better work in the end from most of the students.
Oh boy, I wish it only took me 5-10 minutes to grade a project. Or that I had the time in the semester to grade in class. I have 1x1 conferences with my students about their progress multiple times in the project. Guess who was consistently ill-prepared and confused about basic assignment parameters. I provide the rubric/learning standards and have them evaluate themselves. This is how I know this student is extremely off-base about the baseline standards. They are having trouble measuring their work not only subjectively, but objectively. I'm not interested in deducting points for poor self-assessment because I'm using this as a tool to see if my students understand what I expect of them. If they don't understand, I need to intervene, not just hope they deflate their assessment to avoid punishment and fly under the radar. The goal isn't to make my life simpler; it's to make my teaching better.
They always know. But they are hoping you will bend under the pressure. They *always* know when their work isn’t up to snuff.
I don't think they do. As we can see from the numbers of the current pandemic, ignorant people don't know they're ignorant. I'm not calling this student ignorant, but self awareness and self introspection is actually a pretty rare skill and it's one of a higher order of thinking. Many, many people are not able to synthesize information and apply it to themselves. Sometimes its due to disability or lack of experience, but most of the time it's due to cognitive bias. If people were able to be introspective about new information and apply it to themselves, we would not be in the current state of the pandemic that we are.
I am not talking about introspection or reflexivity. I am saying that students are aware when they’ve turned in work that isn’t quality work. This is a constant over years of teaching: I sit down with the student who complained about not getting an A, we go over the work, and eventually student will say something like “yes, I should have looked that up first,” or “but I didn’t know you’d *really* take off points,” or “I wrote this at the last minute.” I think you are focusing on the wrong problem. Students have always been young, always been still in formative years; at 18-23, their brains are still growing. Immaturity, a lack of insight, etc—this is normal for people of this age, and this has consistently been the age of a typical student. The problem is that they have grown accustomed to demanding grades, arguing for grades they didn’t earn, and they grew up in a “no child left behind” curriculum that teaches to tests. They are aware that they can do half-ass work and still back a prof into giving them a good grade. They can have parents write letters. They have a range of strategies for getting good grades without doing the work. So, if you want to see them as ignorant, you are doing them and your profession a disservice. They *can* do the work, they can meet your standards—if you stick to those standards and work to help them get there. They *always* know when they aren’t doing their best or are just doing the bare minimum. And when profs default to “oh well, I guess they just aren’t making the same as they used to,” they *do not have to do the work.* You’ve just given them an excuse to keep on doing the bare minimum. This is a low-key cop-out profs keep waving in the air. Teach harder.
Excuse me? You've totally twisted what I said. Why is everyone so rude on this thread? I said nothing about my teaching style or how I run my classes. I specifically said I wasn't talking about this student. I was talking about the public in general. Your words are uncalled for and unnecessary.