Agreed. That’s a dogshit assignment and a program approving that kind of syllabus is similarly dogshit.
Comment on Transcribed text of Samantha Fulnecky's assignment, paper, and professor's comments
merc@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Let’s take a step back and look at the assignment itself.
- “write a … reaction paper”. What is a reaction paper? They didn’t have those when I was in school.
- “includes a thoughtful reaction to the material presented in the article”: That’s incredibly vague. What counts as thoughtful? How are they grading that?
- “The best reaction papers illustrate that students have read the assigned materials and engaged in critical thinking about some aspect of the article”: That’s it? The best papers illustrate that the student has read the assigned materials and thought about something in them. But, that’s only the best papers, acceptable papers what… don’t indicate that the student actually read the required materials? Or maybe they read them but didn’t actually think about them?
- “Does the paper show a clear tie-in to the assigned article?” Again, that’s it? It has to be related to the thing the student was supposed to have read?
- “Does the paper present a thoughtful reaction or response to the article, rather than a summary?” Ok, so you don’t get good points if you summarize without saying anything of your own. But, there’s no indication here on what “thoughtful” means. It could mean anything from deeply introspecting your own feelings about something, to doing some research to see if the observations / findings / results from something you’ve read match scientific studies.
- “Is the paper clearly written”: Only 5 points? Given how wishy-washy the other requirements are, this should be the majority of the points.
Given how terrible the assignment was, just about anything should pass as long as it’s clear the student read the article and thought about it. Even if their writing is shitty, that’s only 5 points.
Did she demonstrate that she read the article? I guess so. She didn’t quote from it, and only talked about a couple of aspects, like teasing as a way to enforce gender norms, and that encouraging diverse gender expressions could improve students’ responses. But, if that’s what’s in the article, she clearly demonstrated that she did read the article. I don’t know what a 10/10 would be in “show a clear tie-in”, given that it’s only a 650 word essay and you’re told not to summarize. But, it seems pretty clear she read it and that she wrote about what’s in the thing she read, so 8/10.
Did she write a thoughtful reaction to what she read, rather than a summary? Well, yeah. She didn’t summarize the article at all. You can argue how thoughtful her response was, but she engaged with the ideas in the article and reacted to them, just as she was asked to do. If thoughtful means “did you question your own beliefs”, then it wasn’t thoughtful. But, if thoughtful means “did you read the article and have thoughts, which you expressed”, then yes. 7/10.
Is the paper clearly written? It’s pretty shitty writing, 2/5. Luckily for her, how well it’s written is only 5/25 points.
So, 17/25 points for a shitty essay which, nevertheless, fully meets the requirements for a shitty assignment.
CHOPSTEEQ@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
Dagrothus@reddthat.com 2 days ago
Fair point, but i dont think it’s entirely unreasonable to use class syllabus + guidance from lectures as part of the grading criteria. The professor makes references to the goals of the class itself to justify the grade, so we as 3rd party observers cant be too critical as we’re missing important context.
laranis@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
Her paper is dog shit, but thank you for calling out this dog shit rubric for a flawed assignment. I’m old now, but I wouldn’t have been able to guess the bar would stoop so low. Scares the fuck out of me that this is what passes for an education.
merc@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
I fully agree that her paper is shitty. But, the ways in which it’s shitty aren’t criteria for the assignment, other than the bit about “is the paper clearly written”. I’d hate to give a hateful girl who did such sloppy work a passing grade, but I can’t see how you can claim her shitty writing didn’t mostly meet the criteria as listed.
IMO a reasonable grading rubric would be something like:
Both teachers make comments saying something like “you are being asked to support your ideas with empirical evidence”. If that’s true, it certainly wasn’t in the instructions the students were given. They were only asked for a “thoughtful reaction or response”. You could twist the idea that “thoughtful” is supposed to mean “supported by empirical, scientific evidence”, but it really doesn’t sound like that was the assignment at all. Maybe if every other assignment had been graded that way, and it was well known that a “reaction paper” had to use scientific evidence, and that “thoughtful” meant “carefully citing scientific evidence”, but as it is, it just looks like a really shitty paper that nevertheless meets the requirements of a really sloppy assignment.
EitherEther@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Yup. Shitty assignment. Shitty paper.
However the teacher in question gave her a 0.
She would have gotten the same grade if she didn’t turn anything in at all.
That doesn’t seem correct.
Teachers don’t "give” grades, students earn them. If the teacher felt that the paper didn’t meet the criteria, they should score it appropriately and provide context/reasoning.
A score of 0 feels "given”.