Another student gets mad in chat

This exchange happened yesterday morning in the online technical writing "online office hours" that I hold three times a week:


Female Student joined the Chat

Julie Daniels joined the Chat

Julie Daniels: Morning, Female

Male Student joined the Chat

Female Student: Morning, Julie.

Female Student: Male, how's your project coming?

Male Student: Eh, it's getting there. Dealing with a lot of other frustrations first though.

Julie Daniels: @Male - frustrations are part of it, I think! :-)

Female Student: @Male, frustrations related to developing your project?

Male Student: Frustrations with everything related to this class. I sent Prof. Daniels a few e-mails.

Julie Daniels: @Male - when did you send me emails??

Male Student: Yestesday about this time.

Julie Daniels: @Male - ah, I don't go online over the weekends, so I'll check my email right now

…

Female Student: I'm off to work. Goodbye.

Female Student left the Chat

Julie Daniels: @Male - are you still there?

Male Student: Yes.

Julie Daniels: So do you have any questions to ask?

Male Student: Not particularly, just wanted to make sure you read my e-mails.

Julie Daniels: Yep, I'm reading them right now!

Julie Daniels: I'm writing responses, too

Julie Daniels: Check your email! :-)

Male Student:  I am. finding some of the important points I made to be "skipped"

Julie Daniels: @Male - what do you mean?

Male Student: For example: "As I mentioned in the syllabus, the way to find out how you're doing with the discussions is to look at the "stars" after your post." I look at my stars and see 4's and 5's. Those star ratings never tell me that I'm getting half my points cut.

Julie Daniels: I responded to your email sentence-by-sentence, just about!

Julie Daniels: @Male - well, the half points came because you only answered half the question

Male Student: And when was I gonna find out that that was why? It happened for 4 weeks.

Male Student: And I couldn't look at my grades to see the trend because as far as I could see my grades weren't updated.

Male Student: As far as I was concerned I was answering the questions properly when I receiving 4-5 stars on each of my posts.

Male Student: I also was certain that I was answering all of the required questions. Maybe it was poorly emphasized in my writing style, I don't know.

Male Student: I have a tendency to, when given a couple related questions, to answer them at the same time.

Julie Daniels: @Male - I believe we had two questions in discussion for weeks 3, 4 and 5, not all weeks

Male Student: Alright, yeah, it was actually 3 weeks. 2 3 and 4.

Julie Daniels: @Male - yes, perhaps your answers are not as fully developed or sustained as they could be: specifics matter, and strong discussion posts will look more like the examples in the syllabus

Male Student: Well, how am I supposed to know I was doing something wrong?

Julie Daniels: Repeating oneself in a discussion post doesn't really show that the student is "discussing" or even really reading the prompts fully

Male Student: What *I* saw was 4/5 stars filled in next to my post.

Julie Daniels: @Male - well, I guess you know now! Or you could have read other students' posts

Male Student: I know now? Really? That's it?

Julie Daniels: @Male - yep, and so that would be 9 points out of 10

Male Student: It took HALF the semester to find out.

Julie Daniels: @Male - well, I'm not sure what else to tell you; an online course isn't an independent study, so the instructor doesn't communicate one-on-one with every student . . .

Male Student: yeah, 9 points out of 10. Or so I thought. Then i found out I get 4. But I don't find out I got only a 4 until 2 weeks later.

Julie Daniels: . . . the only tools we have are the course tools

Julie Daniels: and it sounds like you're using them . . .

Male Student: I can't use them.

Male Student: I can't look at my grades to see if something is going wrong because my grades keep staying way out of date.

Julie Daniels: @Male - the grades should be up-to-date . . . ?

Male Student: Recall that the same day I inquired about my low discussion points I also was waiting for my instructions to be graded.

Julie Daniels: @Male - yes, I recall

Male Student: so if that's not even up, how can I think my discussion posts are?

Julie Daniels: So are you able to move forward with discussions now?

Male Student: Especially when the point values I'm expecting aren't what I'm getting.

Julie Daniels: Have you checked in for this week's discussion yet?

Male Student: I can't even move forward with this class.

Male Student: This is completely ridiculous.

Julie Daniels: @Male - ??

Julie Daniels: I have to say that I don't understand your comment here: you have all your assignments with a ton of feedback from me -- why can't you move forward?

Julie Daniels: (I'm very confused!)

Male Student: I told you why. You skipped a lot of details, and didn't do much to combine how different things add up to very large problems.

Male Student: I'm already down to a 68% in the class, and when I keep losing points and not having any idea why until half the semester later, I can't do crap to fix that.

Male Student: And of course when you say "Well, now you know for the future" with only a couple weeks left, that's just stupid.

Male Student: I had ZERO way to figuring it out before.

Male Student: So if I have to suffer because I can't actually look into something, that's completely unfair.

Julie Daniels: @Male - well, my feedback on documents is the way to figure things out

Male Student: How does that help my discussions?

Julie Daniels: the grades tool is an insufficient way to figure things out

Julie Daniels: You're right that you can't change the past -- can't change the past discussion -- but you can do better in the future!

Male Student: Plus, you're forgetting that I also noted in the e-mail several poorly worded things in the assignment descriptions.

Male Student: Are you freakin' serious?

Male Student: Just so you know, I've talked to other people about how all this is going, I've actually been recommended to talk to the head of department.

Julie Daniels: Did you get a chance to read my responses to your email?

Julie Daniels: Did you get a chance to read my comments on your assignments?

Male Student: Yeah. I'm still waiting for the other half where you respond to where I have a point.

Julie Daniels: @Male - I sent as many responses as I knew to send; I don't know what you mean by "the other half"

Male Student: You skipped responding to anything where I actually made my point.

Julie Daniels: I guess you'll have to send me another email, then, because I responded to everything that I thought you asked

Male Student: To use this sentence again "As I mentioned in the syllabus, the way to find out how you're doing with the discussions is to look at the "stars" after your post. "  When I *LOOK* and *SEE* a 4 star and a 5 star post every week, I *BELIEVE* I am doing a 9 star job.

Male Student: And then I get a 4.

Male Student: But I can't see that I got a 4 til 3 weeks later.

Male Student: So I keep doing what I do the next two week cause I think I'm getting 9 stars, which is pretty good.

Julie Daniels: @Male - yes, I remember that you asked this question already, and I responded that some weeks we had two discussion questions to respond to

Male Student: So then the next two weeks I do my same 9 star job. After all 3 weeks, I find out I get 12 points.

Male Student: You see the issue?

Male Student: There was no indication anywhere that I wasn't doing a 9 star job.

Male Student: So there was no way for me to know that I wasn't doing things right.

Julie Daniels: I guess I could say that the indication was in the number of questions that showed up in each discussion space . . .

Julie Daniels: . . . and you're right that you must have missed that indication about what the discussion each week consisted of

Male Student: Like I said, as far as I could consciously tell, I was answering them.

Male Student: And getting 4/5 stars.

Male Student: Please, stop avoiding the fact that there was no way for me to see that I wasn't doing it right.

Male Student: If I'm taking a math class where I'm LEARNING math, do you think the teacher is doing their job if they don't tell me that I'm doing it wrong?

Male Student: Likewise, if you're not giving any indication of me doing my assignments wrong, and it's apparently a consistent issue, are you really doing your job of teaching me the right technique?

Male Student: Or am I paying to not learn?

Julie Daniels: @Male - I'm not sure how to answer your messages here, other than to say what I have said

Male Student: Why aren't you sure how to answer? Because it would admit flaws in the curriculum?

Julie Daniels: There are many ways in our class for students to see how they're doing: the grades tool is just one (my feedback is another, reading other students posts, reading examples, analyzing the samples, reading the textbooks, etc.)

Male Student: None of those address the SPECIFIC example I'm presenting.

Male Student: Except perhaps reading others' posts, though I can quite easily counter that.

Male Student: What if they also lost half points for also answering only one of the questions? I can't see that they did.

Male Student: So if I see another 5 start post similar to mine, then I can't say I did mine wrong, now can I?

Julie Daniels: @Male - your message here indicate to me that you're frustrated and angry

Julie Daniels: But I can't do anything about the past at this point

Julie Daniels: And I do want to remind you that these chats are archived, in case that makes a difference to you

Male Student: See? You're avoiding it again.

Male Student: Have you noticed that?

Male Student: You wanted specifics, and details right? Well I presented them.

Male Student: And now you're trying to avoid what I'm talking about.

Julie Daniels: @Male - I am also thinking that you're misunderstanding something: the grades percentage might be sending you the wrong message . . .

Male Student: Percentage?

Julie Daniels: you mentioned that you're seeing 68%?

Male Student: Yeah. That's points earned / points I've tried to earn * 100

Julie Daniels: I think that's out of the total points possible for the whole course, which is not done yet . . .

Male Student: My own math.

Male Student: No, that's not total points.

Male Student: That's total so far.

Julie Daniels: Ah, okay: your own math!

Julie Daniels: Then never mind -- I was just trying to figure things out

Julie Daniels: Looks like you missed a quiz, missed blog post points -- but in other assignments, you're doing okay

Julie Daniels: The first progress memo was low, but your next two should be high, right?

Male Student: Probably not. Sounds like no matter how hard I try I lose points over something not explained clearly.

Male Student: Though I do have an excuse that won't be considered, that being the fact that I've already been yelled at for being on the computer too much and thus forcing me to not be able to use it as much.

Male Student: Of course, I'd also have an extra 5 points on the blog posts if it my 14 hour blackout was considering.

Julie Daniels: @Male - now that you know you need to complete three exercises on the progress memos, will you be able to do so?

Male Student: I know that I am very tempted to take the suggestion of talking to the dean.

Male Student: er, not the dead, head of english.

Male Student: Because let's face it, if someone isn't doing something right to demonstrate what they should be learning in the class, and the teacher doesn't tell me, the teacher isn't teaching.

Male Student: and since that's what the student pays for, they're not getting what they paid for.

Julie Daniels: @Male - I've just done the math for you, too, and I get that you've earned 344 points out of a possible 465 at this point in the semester . . .

Julie Daniels: That's 74%

Julie Daniels: not 68%

Julie Daniels: So maybe you're doing better than you think you are?

Male Student: I just added, foudn 515 points..

Male Student: Though this math is once again avoiding the discussion.

Julie Daniels: Maybe you used the wrong totals -- for Discussions, for instance, you'd use the total of 50 rather than 80 since we've just had five weeks, not 8

Male Student: Did that.

Julie Daniels: And for progress memos, I didn't use that total at this point because only the highest two memos count toward your grade

Male Student: Also only used 40 for blogs.

Julie Daniels: right, 40 for blog posts

Julie Daniels: so where do you suppose the extra 50 points come from?

Male Student: But like I said, this is a red herring.

Julie Daniels: I am not sure that I see it as a red herring since you began this discussion with unhappiness related to your grade percentage . . .

Julie Daniels: . . . so I thought I'd double-check for you

Male Student: I'm the student that only did half his calc 2 final because he knew that's all he needed for the only grade he was gonna get.

Male Student: er, calc 1 final.

Julie Daniels: the other big issue for you seems to be that you missed some weeks of the two-question discussion posts . . . and I can't do anything about that miss at this point

Male Student: Well, why didn't something happen then?

Julie Daniels: Pardon me? I don't understand your question

Male Student: I'm not learning if I don't get told I'm doing it wrong.

Male Student: If I say 2 time 2 is 5, and my math teacher never tells me I'm doing it wrong, did I actually learn math?

Julie Daniels: But you weren't doing anything "wrong" -- you were just missing some things (discussion questions, a quiz)

Male Student: Isn't that doing something wrong? It results is 55% of my grade being lost.

Julie Daniels: students get to choose what they ignore in an online class -- because it's not an independent study, and because I don't double-check every student's access to every item in our course, I can't tell you that you've chosen to ignore something . . .

Male Student: I chose to ignore? Way to blame the student.

Julie Daniels: But that's your choice to ignore the questions --

Male Student: Are you sure you didn't choose to see if one sentence answered two questions? Maybe you just skimmed through it?

Julie Daniels: I'm not "blaming" anyone, I'm just saying that students make choices

Male Student: As do teachers.

Julie Daniels: As do humans! :-)

Male Student: So like I said, are you sure you didn't *choose* not to see if one sentence answered 2 question?

Julie Daniels: @Male - no, I read the student posts thoroughly

Male Student: Or that instead of missing a question I just didn't have much of a response for it, so instead of losing not only half points for questions but also half points for my responses to others, it might have just been a 2 point deduction?

Male Student: Out of curiosity, do you still have access to the responses?

Male Student: Or discussions rather.

Julie Daniels: Anyway, I am going to sit quietly for a while to see if anyone joins the last 20 minutes of our chat --

Julie Daniels: I've said as much to you as I can at this point

Male Student: As much as you're willing to.

Male Student: I've shown this discussion to others already, they agree, you're avoiding the issue.

Male Student: Unanswered questions: Male Student: If I say 2 time 2 is 5, and my math teacher never tells me I'm doing it wrong, did I actually learn math?    

Male Student: Out of curiosity, do you still have access to the responses?

Male Student: Now off to find an e-mail.

Male Student left the Chat

Mash-Up

My literature students are supposed to keep reading journals for each class meeting's reading. They can then use their journal in their exams. I tell they that they can record anything related to what they're reading:  take notes, write summaries, brainstorm reactions, ask questions -- anything that's related to what they had read for the class meeting.


Here's one student's entry for Harriet Jacobs, who wrote the autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: 

"In 1874, Virginia Jacobs wrote a book entitled Miami. Which told a story of a writer, representing English literary history, who was born male during the Renaissance and started life as an Elizabethan, but turned into a women in the second half of the seventeenth century. Her protagonist's sex change dramatizes a major event in the history of English letters, namely the entrance of women into the literary marketplace. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the printing press, invested in the fifteenth century, led to an expansion of literacy as well as a reconceptualization of the role of the author."

I'm not sure where he copied this information from, but some of it is about Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando. And some of it seems to be copied from a history of the book. And I have NO idea what the "book entitled Miami" might be!


This student has already failed the class because he copied from the internet for his midterm take-home exam. And he's going to St. Thomas in the fall. Sad.

Why-Oh-Why

End-of-semester and final-exam pressure brings out the worst in some of us, the best in others. This semester, I've had quite a bunch of each reaction: the most recent headache is a bitchy student who copied from an online source in her final exam.


What's really amazing [and by "amazing" I mean ballsy and personally insulting] is that the student tweaked the original language in a way that indicated she'd thought through how she was going to fake her way through the exam.


Exam question [actually devised in consultation with students in the review session] was "What's the effect on the reader of the unnamed narrator(s) in Toni Morrison's Jazz?" We'd talked in class about who/what the narrator might be, especially in light of the novel's ending, and about the title as a framework/trope for understanding the novel's structure. So I expected an exam answer related to these topics.


Instead, the student wrote this answer:

The effect of having unnamed narrators creates a larger focus on the other characters. As an individual reads through the novel, they ignore who the narrator is and focuses on the story being told. Having this role, the narrator creates a jazz-like feel to the story. Morrison doesn’t reveal who this narrator is, so the reader doesn’t know whether they are male or female, white or black. All we are given is their view on the story being told.  

Up to this point, the answer is not good for a whole host of reasons, but it's consistent with the student's thin understanding of the novel and of how to think about / articulate ideas about craft. So while I didn't quite understand what she was talking about in the answer above, I really didn't think she was plagiarizing, until I started reading this next information (she'd smashed it all into the same paragraph, by the way -- I'm just separating things out here for clarity):

The interesting concept of Jazz is the reality of there being two narrators instead of one. There is the first narrator, an overt know-it-all who tends to be gossipy, who does not reveal that their knowledge is based strictly on observations until the end when it states, “So I missed it all together… I was so sure it would happen… I was so sure, and they danced and walked all over me. Busy, they were, busy being original, … while I was the predictable one, confused in my solitude into arrogance, thinking my space, my view was the only one that was or that mattered” (221). The second narrator who makes no claims to any of her knowledge and structures the character’s conversations and emotions without having any bias against them.  The reason I explain this as Jazz-like is because the novel seems to create a fluent form of improvisation through these narrators which is what jazz music is based on.

These ideas are completely, completely new -- no relation whatsoever to topics we discussed in class. And I'm sure you can see a distinct difference in style, syntax, and diction. So I quickly googled "overt gossipy Morrison" and found the following passage in an online article called "Narration and Intertextuality in Toni Morrison's Jazz":

instead of giving the reader one omniscient narrator, Toni Morrison chooses to use two narrators: One gossipy, overtly hostile voice which presents itself as omniscient; admitting only towards the end of the text to have based all of its’ conclusions on what it can observe (Jazz 220-1); And another narrative voice which often follows closely on the heels of the first, makes no claims to complete knowledge, involves no insults to the characters, yet is involved in framing most of their conversations, thoughts and feelings. . . .To create an omniscient narrator who is both first-person and third-person omniscient is jazz-like because this combination “symbolize an incredible kind of improvisation” (Micucci 275). We can say that Morrison draws upon jazz music as “the structuring principle” for Jazz.

You've probably figured out that the underlining exists to point out the obvious: the "plagiaphrasing" as Brenda Spatt calls it. Startlingly, the copied part is from the very first paragraph of the source article, and the student obviously had to spend some time tweaking the original language to sound like herself, changing "omniscient" to "know-it-all" and "incredible kind of improvisation" to "fluent form of improvisation" (she is a writing major, so she probably likes that slight alliteration).

I guess I will be using this example with future students, as something NOT to do.

Contraindications

This week has been a short work week because of the Thanksgiving holiday.  I started my week with the usual full Monday: I have three classes that day plus office hours, so I'm working from 9:45-3:45, pretty much non-stop.  This past Monday, I had asked a student to come by my office hours to chat.  Here's why:

A couple of weeks ago, two technical writing students (I'll call them Mo and Jeff) stopped by my office to express themselves, wondering where their most recent assignment was because they "needed feedback" so that they "wouldn't mess up" the next assignment.  Never mind that I had devoted half a class period to providing feedback to the whole class based on what I noticed on all their assignments.  On the board, I'd listed the things that had been done well and things that needed to be improved.  I had given individual feedback to about half the class, but not yet personally to Mo and Jeff.

Jeff also complained that I "didn't lecture enough" and so he didn't ever know what to do in class: if I talked individually to another student during workshop (after giving the whole class a task), he didn't know what he was supposed to do.  So the next class period, I "lectured" and then gave the students an exercise to apply that lecture.  Unfortunately, Jeff spent most of the lecture browsing through his grades on our course website instead of listening.

The biggest shock came that evening: my dean called me at home to say that Mo and Jeff had come by her office to complain that I didn't get their work back to them in time.  Mo in particular said that she thought I had "too much to do" and couldn't get my work done.  (I guess I should be impressed that Mo would take this strategy: it shows she's listened when I've talked about audience analysis and technical writing.  When my students have asked whether or not they have to remind me what projects they're working on, I answer with the fact that I am teaching 120 students this semester, and it's entirely possible that I would not remember their exact project.  Mo took this information and concluded that I had "too much to do.")

Anyway, the call from the dean was a shock.  I asked about contacting the students individually to say that I'd talked with the dean; she said okay.  I asked Mo to come to my office because I must have misunderstood something since our face-to-face conversation in my office the previous week had seemed to have ended well.

This Monday, Mo came by and said, "We talked with the dean because after we talked with you, nothing changed."  (Timeline update: they talked in my office on a Wednesday after class; the next class meeting was Monday, the day they expected to see some type of change.)

When I mentioned about the class "lecture" that Monday, she responded that she gets nothing out of class and it doesn't matter to her what happens in class.  When I mentioned that I also had returned her assignment *and* given her extra time to turn in the next assignment, she said that I should have done that for everyone because "probably other people have the same issue" (they don't).  She then spent quite a bit of time saying that 1) she was a bad writer 2) she was only taking the class because it was required and 3) she didn't get anything out of coming to class - it was a waste.

Hmmm.  So I flat-out said something like "You'll have to help me understand what seems to be a contradiction here: you say that you are a bad writer, you don't get anything out of class, yet you seem to want a good grade: how do you think that is going to happen?"  She didn't know.  She didn't think I could do anything in class, and she didn't think she could do anything.

I'm extremely puzzled: did she just want to vent?  Who, exactly, would she be mad at, and why?   She's told me that she's already earned her nursing certificate (but she can't find a job - I wonder why).  So I'm not sure why she's saying that this course is required for her program.  Maybe she just needs to get a B and sees that it might not be possible?

She also complained to the dean that she was active military and that I didn't give her the accommodations required.  First time I heard she was active military is when the dean told me.

So I'm a bit pissed off at Mo and Jeff: they're team.  He makes fun of her every chance he gets - he fancies himself the class clown - and she seems to need his large bulk as protection somehow.  The two of them will get through the course, but I can't imagine a grade higher than a C for either of them, given how they write and how they contribute to class discussion (two primary ways of earning grades in our class).