I've been giving writing assignments in my class (4th-year Environmental Microbiology at the University of Waterloo) to help the students with their written communication, leading up to a group term project. Last week, I asked students to choose and summarize a scientific journal article; this week, I asked the class to critique another student's summary. I solicited feedback on the assignment, partly out of fear that the students might see it as being "too high school". I got a great comment on the section of my blog that I provided for this purpose, and I tried to clarify what it is I am trying to accomplish with these assignments. I'm going to provide them here on the front page, to try to get them a little more exposure and maybe solicit further feedback as to whether my experiment in writing skills is a worthwhile one.
Hey Dr. Scott, today's tutorial task was a little annoying. It's not difficult to summarize a summary (though it seems pointless to summarize a summary, but I understand there's a reason why we did that), but to do so in about 30 minutes while you're calling out people's names, people are shuffling around and leaving, and I am trying to understand what somebody else thinks they understand from a primary research article....summarizing a summary becomes quite difficult. Sure it's worth 1% but that makes it even more frustrating because you would think it would take a little less effort to gain the percent. That takes me to my next grievance...
The tasks, as simple as they are and meant to help us, should be worth more than a % each, perhaps 2%. They are easy but time consuming. And though one could argue that they are helping us towards the project which is a big chunk of our final mark, you won't be looking at the 'little' things for the big presentation as closely as you are looking at them now...and that makes me believe that the tasks should be worth more.
Please don't make us do another impromptu task unless everybody in the room is going to be quiet and not start leaving 10 mins into the task. Thank you.
My response:
Thanks, I really appreciate that depth of feedback. I don't have a good solution for handing back assignments - for privacy reasons, I can't put them in the middle of the room and ask people to grab their own, and if you just tell the class to come and pick them up, many people don't bother. Since the most important part of the assignment is the feedback, I want to make sure people get them. I hoped that calling names would be unobtrusive, but I'll try to find a better compromise in the future. There were several logistical issues that I didn't consider ahead of time (what if someone comes in late? what if someone doesn't hand in assignment 2?) that I will need to work out before I try an experiment like this again.
Regarding the effort and the marks, my feeling is that I'm not asking students to do anything they shouldn't be doing already for their group projects. In a perfect world, I wouldn't bother assigning grades for the assignments at all, as I feel the exercise and the feedback from it is the important thing. Besides, if the point of the exercise is to help you improve at something you're not already good at, how can you be expected to get a good mark?
Here's an open secret about teaching: if you want students to take something seriously, you have to assign a grade to it, no matter how small. I want you to do it regardless of how much or how little of your grade it is worth, and you (as a class) won't do it or take it seriously if I don't grade it. Studies have shown that attaching a grade to a task is the (only!) way to assign importance to it, and that's why some classes will assign a trivial grade to things like participation: if you want students to talk, make it worth a mark.
As far as the effect this will have on my grading the final group project: Again, I am asking for things you should be doing anyway, and hopefully giving you feedback to keep you on the right track, as well as practice at writing and communicating effectively. My expectation is that each assignment should require between half an hour and an hour of effort above and beyond what you were already putting in for your group project. You get a mark for completing the assignment and putting the effort into writing clearly, and the real value is the chance to catch mistakes before they become habits. This should result in a final paper that is easier to read and more properly constructed, showing a more polished effort deserving of a higher grade (to say nothing of the effect on my mood while grading it!) On the other hand, if your final project still exhibits these mistakes despite the practice you've had with the assignments, I am going to be far less lenient when grading them.
Ultimately, I would expect that the majority of the class will get full marks on the majority of the assignments, while learning how to write properly and improving everybody's grades not just on the final report, but on the exams as well. If I have to give everybody in the class an A because everybody learned how to do these things properly, I'd imagine I'll find a way to sleep at night.
I don't want to "dispute" your comments and I certainly don't want to discourage anybody else from posting negative comments or constructive criticism. However, I feel that the teacher-student relationship will be beneficial to everybody if the process of teaching is transparent. If some of what I say here helps you to understand why I'm asking you to do these things, then you'll feel better and do better work. If you still think I'm full of it, let me know, and it'll help me to become a better teacher.
