I've had a good day, accomplished some important things, it seems (or feels -- pick your copula).
My FYC students took their midterm exam, and my three-exam option evidently worked pretty well since they all buckled down and impressed me with their serious attention to the task. I made three exams: an "objective" exam consisting of multiple-choice questions, short answer questions, matching, etc. This one was in response to a student who really, really didn't want to write an in-class essay. I made five copies of this exam for my 25 students, estimating correctly.
The second and third exams were in-class essays, one a version of previous exams which included five options. These options ask students to refer back to readings from their textbook in order to answer the questions. I made 15 copies of this exam, printed on green paper, which turned out to be about right.
The third version was a completely new exam, asking students to conduct a rhetorical analysis of two short essays that appeared this month as editorials in my NEA Advocate newsletter. They had to read these new essays and find some of the rhetorical strategies we've been talking about this semester, strategies readily apparent in the essays (sadly, one exhibited so many logical fallacies and FYC infelicities that it's embarrassing the writer is a higher education professional!). I printed 10 copies of this option, more than twice what I needed, on yellow paper.
The other important task for today was getting the Q&S Club Lending Library set up - finally! I started this task in August before the semester began. But I hadn't labeled all the books (thought it might be a task for the Q&S Club members, but no one's been showing up to meetings except the club president). Today I printed signs, created the sign-out sheet (the honor system here), and stacked the bookshelf outside my office. So far, 35 books are available, mostly non-fiction. I hope they'll be safe in the hallway without monitoring. (Speaking of monitoring, the club president and I put up a table full of literature about "ally week," hoping that the materials don't get discarded by a bigot -- it's happened on campus before.)
So lots of work done: exams created, essays collected, students tutored (good online office hours today with my online students), library created, collegial conversations had with many (don't get me started on Turnitin.com, which one of my colleagues thought might be a good thing to purchase -- NO!).
Evacuation roots
5 hours ago
2 comments:
I don't know much about Turn0it0in.com -- why do you object to it?
Well, it's a long story: Turnitin works by having student essays run through an online database (and then the student essays are saved in that database). Student essays are compared to existing essays in the database and online, flagged as plagiarism for various infractions or copied portions. Turnitin gets used on some campuses across the board, where every student has to submit her/his essay to it.
Problems include 1) adversarial relationship between student and faculty, with the implication everyone is a cheater 2) false positives 3) student intellectual property infringement 4) cost (many free ways to "catch" plagiarism exist).
This year, Turnitin is also sponsoring "academic" presentations at our national conference, College Composition and Communication Conference: they company does an amazing marketing push, playing the pathos card unethically, in my view.
These are just the beginning points for me. I know some folks find that it "makes their lives easier," but then their lives must be pretty different from mine! :-)
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