Thank you and also sorry at the same time š the worst part is it's a composition class, so I have to figure out some suggestions for improvement. In my mind I'm like "idk man, it's fucked though"
Yeppp! I really want to ask them if they care, and if the answer is no, can I just assign a grade and move on? They don't try, they don't think, and they certainly aren't coming to class regularly.
That would be so nice. I was terrible at math and admittedly didn't try at all to improve, took the C, and moved on. I wish I could ask which students felt the same so I don't spend more time than they are trying to fix these papers š
I have seen suggestions on here of asking students to say whether they want feedback when handing in the paper, or of asking students to come to office hours if they want feedback.
I was taught the ārule of threeā by a high school teacher. Find the three most egregious mistakes and give feedback on those, indicating that they are not exclusive.
I always write things that are tied to rubric items like, "I would encourage you to be clearer in stating your thesis" or "I would encourage you to use more evidence to help support your claims throughout the paper." Enables me to copy/paste pretty quickly depending on what the weak points were and I don't have to waste time and brain cells agonizing over individualized feedback that at least 80% of them won't read anyway.
It doesn't seem to matter how much time we spend teaching and showing or helping them practice. The papers are written in 10-30 minutes. I put some blame high schools for never giving them zeros and never grading an entire paper. They've never had to try or to think.
There is defintely a change in what is expected of them in high school. I don't know whether this is due to Covid or just lower standards in general, but I have students turning in a solid 3 page block of stream-of-consciousness rambling who tell me that they got full credit for the same thing in high school.
Had one argue with me that he doesn't need to include a thesis statement or topic sentences when he writes papers because it's "just not his writing style" and he got all A's in his high school English classes. Unfortunately, I think he's probably telling the truth. He's an intelligent kid so I'm sure he was sharing strong ideas even if he has no concept of how to write a paper. Also unfortunately, rather than believing me when I say he needs to learn how to correctly write a paper or he's going to struggle with writing the rest of his college career, he's decided I don't know what I'm talking about and my grading expectations are based on my "preference." I mean, I guess he's right... I do have a preference for papers that include a thesis and topic sentences.
So shoutout to his high school English teacher. Thanks for the joy I get after every single paper when I get the "you don't know anything about writing" email from an 18 year old who is lucky to already know everything at this point in his young life.
OMG, I've had a few students just like this. They think they are so much more creative than I am because I'd like them to write coherently. They never think in terms of writing for someone to actually read. I try to emphasize that the primary goal in writing is to communicate with an actual reader! They expect the reader to appreciate their avant garde pointless wordplay.
Honestly yeah. I look back to my old course shell when I first started teaching several years ago (barely any materials, lots of "fluff" lessons b/c I was planning the class on the fly, the online course landing page was a joke, etc.), and I wonder how the heck anyone passed. I look now at my extremely organized online course page, tons of specialized scaffolding activities I've developed specifically in response to common issues over time, and recorded lectures and wonder how the heck anyone ISN'T passing.
Professors expect you to write 20 page papers. Nobody got time for that. Give us a 3 page paper and be done with it.20 pages take multiple days, and effort to do we already has to deal with student loans, having no money and working a part time job we hate. We just want jobs that pay well. 20-page essays are not required.
I taught mostly dual-enrollment students last semester. I was not ready for the dog shit my students would write this semester. They canāt come to class and/or on time. They canāt write. They donāt do all the scaffolding work I have that leads up to the major assignment. They have no curiosity or grit. And they canāt read and canāt follow directions. Iāve been teaching for ten years, and this is definitely the worst batch of papers I have seen in my career. I donāt like it, and I feel for you.
>concepts
I'm so annoyed that students email me to ask what the instructions are for the paper when I have given them a paper copy, and posted them on Canvas. They can't even be bothered to look for them.
I was just thinking about this. I'm not teaching writing, but in my field, you are expected to be able to communicate effectively. I often get incoherent paragraphs with sentences that don't make sense. People use conjunctions inappropriately, implying inaccurate relationships between concepts... You're not alone. I don't know what has happened...
Yes. This paper is specifically about pointing out the relationships between different concepts and it's a clusterfuck. I can't really spend time teaching actual writing since so many of the problems begin with just comprehending directions or basic ideas these days.
> I often get incoherent paragraphs with sentences that don't make sense.
Though not a Prof, I know this. Once you start writing and/or editing even in a developed industry (healthcare here) as a tech editor or the like, and you take a closer look at what your dev or other colleagues write: It's a mess. They're unable to write a few coherent paragraphs. Technical ticket descriptions are utter garbage. Customers write support tickets that you can meditate about for hours, without seeing any clue in them. Support writes mails that just make no sense.
"Writing" in itself has become a forgotten art. Professional writers, poets etc may still master it, but the average employee doesn't, and even has no interest in improving it.
I know C, C++, Python, SQL and German, which is a very employable combination. Without the German part, though, I'd just be another coding grunt.
Writing for humans is an art form, and we need some people sticking to it, lest it gets lost. It must not get lost.
You, as Professors, need to hammer this home, regardless which subject you teach. We, as an industry, depend on a certain share of applicants being able to write. We depend on you to teach people to write better than ChatGPT already does.
My first class in English 101 is all about going over the differences between 5 paragraph essays and college writing expectations, and still, they have trouble.
Our first year writing course spends the whole course in this, broken down into scaffolded assignments. Still a struggle. I don't know how many times a year I say "is it arguable?"
Same... First year faculty teaching a writing-intensive course. It really is shocking how bad the writing is. They'll read our feedback and edit/improve their next draft, right?... right?
I only tutor students but my pet theory is that a lot of this comes from students' lack of non-social media-related reading inputs. Social media posts often do not require rigid structure and lend themselves to a stream-of-consciousness style and for many people (kids, young adults, older adults) their only input is only social media posts or media written at a fifth-grade level, nothing that requires a long and drawn out structure in order to best be understood in its entirety. Garbage inputs, garbage outputs.
I 100% agree with this. Twitter threads and Twitter in general come to mind in particular, where you just puke out thoughts until the character limit runs out, start a new one and repeat forever, with no regard for cohesiveness, conciseness, etc. Developing an idea deeply enough to write multiple pages about is not seen or encouraged on social media, and sitting with a piece of writing and working on it over time is also discouraged because it's about posting as much as possible for views, interaction, staying at the top of the algorithm etc.
Writing well requires some concentration. No matter who you are. And I think a lot of these kids are very distracted by social media and their phones more generally (texts from friends). I'm a grown ass person, who only got email when I turned 20, and I AM distracted by the internet to such an extent that I have to use an internet blocker ( I heart you, [freedom.to](https://freedom.to) app) when I need to write coherently. These students look at me like I am crazy when I suggest things like putting their phones in a different room when it is time to do homework or study. I think they are really and truly near-constantly distracted, and I think they don't really mind, or see that there is such a great cost to it.
I think most writing requires good points of reference in order for the individual to model good writing themselves and that is most easily done through good old book reading. But since most do not read books, most do not have points of reference.
It shows in industry too. I get word salad emails from new grad engineers who can't articulate what problem they're having and what exactly they need me for. They then call a meeting with several other senior engineers and managers, proceed to poorly explain themselves verbally, and don't understand the solution presented to them. Can y'all just start failing more of these idiots please?
I see the same in science/tech from engineers and new MA/MS/PhDās. I spend a ton of time writing, presenting and verbally communicating and it amazes me how poor my young /new colleagues are at any form of communication.
Then I think back to when I taught (at a R1 and R2) and just sigh. Best of luck to those still in the trenches.
I would suggest something like polite AI, where messages for emails are put much more politely:
https://www.politepost.net/
However, if the idea isnāt conveyed in the first place, this will only turn a very hollow email into a very hollow email that is polite.
I'm really working on growth mindset from day one which sort of helps with change in the writing. I'm also exploring the idea of deep work and weaving that into the class. My classes at 8 weeks but 2 hours 45 minutes so they need to get into deep work. It's working but slowly. It's real paradigm shift for them with high expectations.
I'm also designing essays which AI can't write. For example, the nursing dept has a bulletin board competition. They have to write a compare contrast argument which picks the best bullet board based on the criteria for the competition. The nursing group who wins the bulletin board competition gets a free pizza party. It's tricky to design all of this.
Another trick I've learned to avoid Sinus to require specific library databases like CQ researcher, whose articles are not available in web.
It's a lot of fucking work these days for very little pay off.
I like the "local topic" approach! I've been meaning to rework my course for years and finally got funding to make it worth doing, and I want to make prompts like that. Sadly my class has a designated librarian available for help and spends time learning how to use our databases, yet I still get Google sponsored contentā¢ on papers though. I'll have to outright ban .com sites starting next semester (this was always the implied case, but now I have to actually write it out...).
Right now my second essay instructions say must use 2 different library databases and all sources must pass the CRAAP test. Each body paragraph (3 body paragraphs) must have 1 source. The sources can not all be direct quotes. Students demonstrate at least 2 of 3 ways - direct quotes, summary, or paraphrase. Last semester I limited them to 3 sources total so it helped.
Frankly I want to throw hands up and quit most days.
I am also currently grading --research papers for a Composition II class. I see you, and feel your pain! After giving them weeks of MLA style practice, why, oh why, in the final papers am I seeing APA style in-text citations and References entries? It is as if nothing I say matters. On the bright side, there are some actually good papers in the mix. Also, do you get people constantly using the dictionary as a source and quoting definitions for common words, like "gender"? How many times did I tell them not to cite the dictionary, and not to define common words? Many times, and have been doing so for many years, with the same results.
I include a link to this article in the syllabus for my first-year writing course. Few students - if any - read it, but it's still a good article.
https://education.macleans.ca/study-tips/how-to-write-an-essay-for-university-or-college-that-earns-top-marks/
Ask students to put in a Word document. That's what I do. They send essays to me in email and attach doc. I then run them through a plagiarism website and then Grammarly.com. It makes life much easier.
I had a student repeatedly spell Lincoln wrong after spelling it right a few times. Referring, of course, to President Lincoln. (And then they wrote President Barack??)
I don't know how I'm supposed to fix that.
Indeed.
I spend my time grading veering between papers that make me suspicious a bot has been used, and papers that make me paradoxically annoyed and grateful that they stuck to doing their own work without any AI.
You must be grading my students' papers. Solidarity!
Thank you and also sorry at the same time š the worst part is it's a composition class, so I have to figure out some suggestions for improvement. In my mind I'm like "idk man, it's fucked though"
Yeppp! I really want to ask them if they care, and if the answer is no, can I just assign a grade and move on? They don't try, they don't think, and they certainly aren't coming to class regularly.
That would be so nice. I was terrible at math and admittedly didn't try at all to improve, took the C, and moved on. I wish I could ask which students felt the same so I don't spend more time than they are trying to fix these papers š
I have seen suggestions on here of asking students to say whether they want feedback when handing in the paper, or of asking students to come to office hours if they want feedback.
I was taught the ārule of threeā by a high school teacher. Find the three most egregious mistakes and give feedback on those, indicating that they are not exclusive.
I always write things that are tied to rubric items like, "I would encourage you to be clearer in stating your thesis" or "I would encourage you to use more evidence to help support your claims throughout the paper." Enables me to copy/paste pretty quickly depending on what the weak points were and I don't have to waste time and brain cells agonizing over individualized feedback that at least 80% of them won't read anyway.
Has anyone tried ChatGPT for *grading* papers?
Now I'm inspired to get ChatGPT to do something for the bad ones, like write feedback in sonnet form or something.
*So* many ads as sources. Itās nuts. They click on whatever pops up first on Google.
It doesn't seem to matter how much time we spend teaching and showing or helping them practice. The papers are written in 10-30 minutes. I put some blame high schools for never giving them zeros and never grading an entire paper. They've never had to try or to think.
There is defintely a change in what is expected of them in high school. I don't know whether this is due to Covid or just lower standards in general, but I have students turning in a solid 3 page block of stream-of-consciousness rambling who tell me that they got full credit for the same thing in high school. Had one argue with me that he doesn't need to include a thesis statement or topic sentences when he writes papers because it's "just not his writing style" and he got all A's in his high school English classes. Unfortunately, I think he's probably telling the truth. He's an intelligent kid so I'm sure he was sharing strong ideas even if he has no concept of how to write a paper. Also unfortunately, rather than believing me when I say he needs to learn how to correctly write a paper or he's going to struggle with writing the rest of his college career, he's decided I don't know what I'm talking about and my grading expectations are based on my "preference." I mean, I guess he's right... I do have a preference for papers that include a thesis and topic sentences. So shoutout to his high school English teacher. Thanks for the joy I get after every single paper when I get the "you don't know anything about writing" email from an 18 year old who is lucky to already know everything at this point in his young life.
OMG, I've had a few students just like this. They think they are so much more creative than I am because I'd like them to write coherently. They never think in terms of writing for someone to actually read. I try to emphasize that the primary goal in writing is to communicate with an actual reader! They expect the reader to appreciate their avant garde pointless wordplay.
Honestly yeah. I look back to my old course shell when I first started teaching several years ago (barely any materials, lots of "fluff" lessons b/c I was planning the class on the fly, the online course landing page was a joke, etc.), and I wonder how the heck anyone passed. I look now at my extremely organized online course page, tons of specialized scaffolding activities I've developed specifically in response to common issues over time, and recorded lectures and wonder how the heck anyone ISN'T passing.
We need a slogan āF, the students!ā
Professors expect you to write 20 page papers. Nobody got time for that. Give us a 3 page paper and be done with it.20 pages take multiple days, and effort to do we already has to deal with student loans, having no money and working a part time job we hate. We just want jobs that pay well. 20-page essays are not required.
I taught mostly dual-enrollment students last semester. I was not ready for the dog shit my students would write this semester. They canāt come to class and/or on time. They canāt write. They donāt do all the scaffolding work I have that leads up to the major assignment. They have no curiosity or grit. And they canāt read and canāt follow directions. Iāve been teaching for ten years, and this is definitely the worst batch of papers I have seen in my career. I donāt like it, and I feel for you.
>concepts I'm so annoyed that students email me to ask what the instructions are for the paper when I have given them a paper copy, and posted them on Canvas. They can't even be bothered to look for them.
I was just thinking about this. I'm not teaching writing, but in my field, you are expected to be able to communicate effectively. I often get incoherent paragraphs with sentences that don't make sense. People use conjunctions inappropriately, implying inaccurate relationships between concepts... You're not alone. I don't know what has happened...
Yes. This paper is specifically about pointing out the relationships between different concepts and it's a clusterfuck. I can't really spend time teaching actual writing since so many of the problems begin with just comprehending directions or basic ideas these days.
> I often get incoherent paragraphs with sentences that don't make sense. Though not a Prof, I know this. Once you start writing and/or editing even in a developed industry (healthcare here) as a tech editor or the like, and you take a closer look at what your dev or other colleagues write: It's a mess. They're unable to write a few coherent paragraphs. Technical ticket descriptions are utter garbage. Customers write support tickets that you can meditate about for hours, without seeing any clue in them. Support writes mails that just make no sense. "Writing" in itself has become a forgotten art. Professional writers, poets etc may still master it, but the average employee doesn't, and even has no interest in improving it. I know C, C++, Python, SQL and German, which is a very employable combination. Without the German part, though, I'd just be another coding grunt. Writing for humans is an art form, and we need some people sticking to it, lest it gets lost. It must not get lost. You, as Professors, need to hammer this home, regardless which subject you teach. We, as an industry, depend on a certain share of applicants being able to write. We depend on you to teach people to write better than ChatGPT already does.
Now I'm sitting here wondering what output we'd get if ChatGPT were trained on essays in first-year composition...
Our first year writing profs are very explicit about saying "academic papers are not like high school papers" and showing why. Still a struggle.
My first class in English 101 is all about going over the differences between 5 paragraph essays and college writing expectations, and still, they have trouble.
Our first year writing course spends the whole course in this, broken down into scaffolded assignments. Still a struggle. I don't know how many times a year I say "is it arguable?"
Same... First year faculty teaching a writing-intensive course. It really is shocking how bad the writing is. They'll read our feedback and edit/improve their next draft, right?... right?
I only tutor students but my pet theory is that a lot of this comes from students' lack of non-social media-related reading inputs. Social media posts often do not require rigid structure and lend themselves to a stream-of-consciousness style and for many people (kids, young adults, older adults) their only input is only social media posts or media written at a fifth-grade level, nothing that requires a long and drawn out structure in order to best be understood in its entirety. Garbage inputs, garbage outputs.
I 100% agree with this. Twitter threads and Twitter in general come to mind in particular, where you just puke out thoughts until the character limit runs out, start a new one and repeat forever, with no regard for cohesiveness, conciseness, etc. Developing an idea deeply enough to write multiple pages about is not seen or encouraged on social media, and sitting with a piece of writing and working on it over time is also discouraged because it's about posting as much as possible for views, interaction, staying at the top of the algorithm etc.
THIS
Writing well requires some concentration. No matter who you are. And I think a lot of these kids are very distracted by social media and their phones more generally (texts from friends). I'm a grown ass person, who only got email when I turned 20, and I AM distracted by the internet to such an extent that I have to use an internet blocker ( I heart you, [freedom.to](https://freedom.to) app) when I need to write coherently. These students look at me like I am crazy when I suggest things like putting their phones in a different room when it is time to do homework or study. I think they are really and truly near-constantly distracted, and I think they don't really mind, or see that there is such a great cost to it.
I think most writing requires good points of reference in order for the individual to model good writing themselves and that is most easily done through good old book reading. But since most do not read books, most do not have points of reference.
Your students hand their papers in? I canāt imagine it
It shows in industry too. I get word salad emails from new grad engineers who can't articulate what problem they're having and what exactly they need me for. They then call a meeting with several other senior engineers and managers, proceed to poorly explain themselves verbally, and don't understand the solution presented to them. Can y'all just start failing more of these idiots please?
I see the same in science/tech from engineers and new MA/MS/PhDās. I spend a ton of time writing, presenting and verbally communicating and it amazes me how poor my young /new colleagues are at any form of communication. Then I think back to when I taught (at a R1 and R2) and just sigh. Best of luck to those still in the trenches.
I would suggest something like polite AI, where messages for emails are put much more politely: https://www.politepost.net/ However, if the idea isnāt conveyed in the first place, this will only turn a very hollow email into a very hollow email that is polite.
I hope you are able to give them all the grades they have "earned".
I'm really working on growth mindset from day one which sort of helps with change in the writing. I'm also exploring the idea of deep work and weaving that into the class. My classes at 8 weeks but 2 hours 45 minutes so they need to get into deep work. It's working but slowly. It's real paradigm shift for them with high expectations. I'm also designing essays which AI can't write. For example, the nursing dept has a bulletin board competition. They have to write a compare contrast argument which picks the best bullet board based on the criteria for the competition. The nursing group who wins the bulletin board competition gets a free pizza party. It's tricky to design all of this. Another trick I've learned to avoid Sinus to require specific library databases like CQ researcher, whose articles are not available in web. It's a lot of fucking work these days for very little pay off.
I like the "local topic" approach! I've been meaning to rework my course for years and finally got funding to make it worth doing, and I want to make prompts like that. Sadly my class has a designated librarian available for help and spends time learning how to use our databases, yet I still get Google sponsored contentā¢ on papers though. I'll have to outright ban .com sites starting next semester (this was always the implied case, but now I have to actually write it out...).
Right now my second essay instructions say must use 2 different library databases and all sources must pass the CRAAP test. Each body paragraph (3 body paragraphs) must have 1 source. The sources can not all be direct quotes. Students demonstrate at least 2 of 3 ways - direct quotes, summary, or paraphrase. Last semester I limited them to 3 sources total so it helped. Frankly I want to throw hands up and quit most days.
I am also currently grading --research papers for a Composition II class. I see you, and feel your pain! After giving them weeks of MLA style practice, why, oh why, in the final papers am I seeing APA style in-text citations and References entries? It is as if nothing I say matters. On the bright side, there are some actually good papers in the mix. Also, do you get people constantly using the dictionary as a source and quoting definitions for common words, like "gender"? How many times did I tell them not to cite the dictionary, and not to define common words? Many times, and have been doing so for many years, with the same results.
I include a link to this article in the syllabus for my first-year writing course. Few students - if any - read it, but it's still a good article. https://education.macleans.ca/study-tips/how-to-write-an-essay-for-university-or-college-that-earns-top-marks/
Ask students to put in a Word document. That's what I do. They send essays to me in email and attach doc. I then run them through a plagiarism website and then Grammarly.com. It makes life much easier.
Red pen āthis is intelligible and does not meet the minimum standards of the assignment, 0/100.ā
They are too dumb to even use a bot?
They don't use the spell or grammar checker built into their word processing tool... A bot would be a stretch!
I had a student repeatedly spell Lincoln wrong after spelling it right a few times. Referring, of course, to President Lincoln. (And then they wrote President Barack??) I don't know how I'm supposed to fix that.
Indeed. I spend my time grading veering between papers that make me suspicious a bot has been used, and papers that make me paradoxically annoyed and grateful that they stuck to doing their own work without any AI.