[quote]Tex Ag wrote:
^ Students at the university I teach at are required to take a certain number of writing intensive classes for graduation. My class way exceeds the requirements of being a writing intensive class; I structure it the way I do so that students get proficient at communicating others and their ideas. I really wish students were required to write more. Considering my explanation above, grading writing is very time intensive, time often more ‘productive’ doing something else.
Edited for clarity[/quote]
Perhaps the solution to this would be shorter assignments. You can tell how well a student writes within the span of a couple sentences. Why assign 20 page reports that you don’t have time to grade?
@ Tex AG, well I just wrote another long post, but it didn’t seem to make it up here, and I’m too tired (stupid graveyard shifts) to write it all again, anyways, thanks for your response. What you said is what I found. I’m assuming you are extremely dissapointed in the state of things.
Has anyone read The Dumbest Generation? It’s been a while for me, and while it didn’t touch on these exact issues the author did bring up some pretty good points (while others were a bit far fetched).
[quote]Tex Ag wrote:
^ Students at the university I teach at are required to take a certain number of writing intensive classes for graduation. My class way exceeds the requirements of being a writing intensive class; I structure it the way I do so that students get proficient at communicating others and their ideas. I really wish students were required to write more. Considering my explanation above, grading writing is very time intensive, time often more ‘productive’ doing something else.
Edited for clarity[/quote]
Perhaps the solution to this would be shorter assignments. You can tell how well a student writes within the span of a couple sentences. Why assign 20 page reports that you don’t have time to grade?[/quote]
No 20 page reports, they are assigned short writing assignments each week (the hardest part is writing it as short as I want, which means longer to grade) and two papers of.whatever length they need to be.
[quote]forkknifespoon wrote:
@ Tex AG, well I just wrote another long post, but it didn’t seem to make it up here, and I’m too tired (stupid graveyard shifts) to write it all again, anyways, thanks for your response. What you said is what I found. I’m assuming you are extremely dissapointed in the state of things.
Has anyone read The Dumbest Generation? It’s been a while for me, and while it didn’t touch on these exact issues the author did bring up some pretty good points (while others were a bit far fetched).[/quote]
I think the more students understand college and their roles and.responsibilities the more they can get out of it. One responsibility I have not touched on directly is expecting more from the professor (asking good questions in class, etc.). Professors often would prefer to get into a good discussion than just give a lecture. At the same time it might change the culture of passive learning by students the more they see their peers active in class.
I have not read the book. In some ways this generation knows less but equally important in ways they know more. My only concern is a hesitation to think because of the stress of rote memorizing for tests and using the internet to find answers rather than figuring them out on their own. But generally my students arequite intellectually interesting once they realize I want to know that they are thinking about the material and not just repeating it.