Monday, August 7, 2017

"Prof lets students choose own grades for 'stress reduction'"

Via Drudge:  According to online course syllabi for two of Dr. Richard Watson’s fall business courses, he has introduced the policy because “emotional reactions to stressful situations can have profound consequences for all involved.”

As such, if students feel “unduly stressed by a grade for any assessable material or the overall course,” they can “email the instructor indicating what grade [they] think is appropriate, and it will be so changed” with “no explanation” being required.

“If in a group meeting, you feel stressed by your group’s dynamics, you should leave the meeting immediately and need offer no explanation to the group members,” the policy adds, saying such students can “discontinue all further group work” with their remaining grade being “based totally on non-group work.”

Similarly, when it comes to “tests and exams” for Watson’s “Data Management” and “Energy Informatics” courses, all will be “open book and open notes” and “designed to assess low level mastery of the course material.”

(Link to more)

7 comments:

Synova said...

I actually need to get "no group work" written for an official accommodation for my youngest (I think I can get his high school IEP to go that far) for community college because of serious anxiety issues.

The Professional Educators have recently decided that everyone has to do group work, even when wholly inappropriate, and instructors are measured by how they follow these dictates from on high. They've got to show how they applied each of the various metrics.

The last attempt at taking classes ended in a total melt-down and dropping which I just find infuriating. My kid was doing *good*. The meds are *good*. The moods are *stable*. The crappy pre-req was completed with lots of cajoling and promises from Mom that IT GETS BETTER. That once past the awful classes you need before you can take the classes you want, that you get input into your projects and that a class on media in web design would *certainly* involve the ability to choose your own content so long as you demonstrated the ability to do and include the functionality the instructor requires for each assignment.

The first assignment/project went well.

The second was a group assignment. There may have been some ability to talk the kid into sticking it out except that suddenly all control is gone. All your suggestions are ignored. No one knows how to do what you know how to do. No one is willing to collaborate on-line through Drive or whatnot, and they want you meet "in person" for the fun college experience when you live out of town and depend on others for transportation. But still... it could have worked if the group project could be gotten past.

Except that every other project was a group project. It would never be over. There would never be the chance or ability to work very hard and present your own projects and to really shine.

Plus, now Mom is a liar.

Yes, I'm still mad.

It wouldn't surprise me AT ALL if this professor is sticking it to the Powers trying to control and force constant group work on his students. Really, it would surprise me not at all.

If I could find the dumb-ass who decided that students have to learn "collaboration" over any sort of subject knowledge or skill acquisition, I'd tie them to a chair and make them be my "partner" while I screwed their career over.


bagoh20 said...

The customer's always right.

bagoh20 said...

I think they should also get to choose their tuition price. Paying for shit stresses me out.

edutcher said...

Old stuff.

They tried this back in the 60s and it worked so well then, they're acting like it's brandy new now.

AllenS said...

Damn, I could have been a straight A+ student!

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

I want to choose my pay raises.

AllenS said...

Good point, Lem. I could have been a very rich person! Plus, the smarty-pants thing. Win-win.