I think this "it's worth a shot" line is indicative of the New World of
Specialness.
I've heard this enough lately that I'm getting jaded, and I think these
"shooters" are jaundicing us. We are all going to begin to suspect that
there's no basis to a student's plea, but that it's just a shot in the dark.
Sigh. I hate this week.
Beth Benoit
Granite State College
Plymouth State University
New Hampshire
----- Original Message -----
From: Michelle Everson
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2007 7:08 PM
Subject: [tips] Re: Devil's Advocate: RE: The things students will say...
Stuart,
I appreciate the points you brought up here, and I certainly don't mean
to suggest that I think I do a perfect job of grading. The course I am
teaching (if I didn't mention it earlier) is an introductory statistics
course, and we do offer partial credit a lot, especially on homework
assignments. This is why the student ended up with this particular
percentage.
What bothered me most about this student e-mail is that it comes at
the very end of the semester, and rather than ask me to look at a SPECIFIC
assignment, this student seems to think I can easily go back through all
assignments (and there are many in this course!). After every assignment
I grade for students, I encourage students to come to me and share any
questions or concerns they have with me. This student never did that.
Plus, there were some opportunities where he could have earned extra
credit that he passed up, and there were certain assignments that he just
did not do at all. So, I felt his grade was justified. Incidently, I do
usually round up if students are very close to the next highest grade.
Had this student had a grade slightly higher than 89%, I would have likely
given him the A-.
I actually heard back from this student after I wrote to him this
morning with an explanation of why I would not change his grade. His
response was "Oh, I understand. I just thought it was worth a shot." So,
I guess getting a B+ is not so devistating to him after all.
Michelle Everson
Department of Educational Psychology
University of Minnesota
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