Earlier this month I sent an email with both an egregious spelling error and a punctuation error in the subject line. I noticed the error about one minute after sending, but still too late to retrieve. Here it is.
So I had to decide what to do. Should I resend and correct my spelling error, or let it go and hear my own bells of shame?
I
choose to let that spelling/typo error just go without a re-do. I felt like I would be clogging your email, and that you probably figured out sesmster meant semester. I really wanted to resend, but it didn’t feel right. I hoped my reputation wouldn’t suffer that much.
Earlier that week I
also sent out an email with the wrong attachment, and because of a special schedule, the wrong times. Again the decision- should I resend and correct times and attachment, or let it go and hear my own bells of shame? I did re-do this one. It was a MAP test email and had information
I did not want to be lost in the errors. I couldn’t risk it.
That same week, I was re-grading a bunch of student work done in a collaboration with Gaeby and Miranda on the Little Big History Project. I try my hardest to give students the opportunity to re-do without grade consequences, and I am always surprised more students don’t take me up on the re-do. Plenty do but by no means all. This has puzzled me, because do you remember I said I really wanted to send a correction out right away. All things being equal, I will re-do. The juxtaposition of my experience with re-doing choices and students’ choices made me wonder if they do a cost/benefit analysis, too. And what do they see as cost vs benefit?
The grade matters, even in a nontraditional graded course like TMS. If the grade will change, the benefit of the grade outweighs the costs in time and study for some students. I wonder if one of the costs – facing the embarrassment of the error – is too great for some. I really hope they don’t hear the bells of shame because I emphasize making mistakes as part of learning, but I am afraid some do. I wonder if some students just hope that their equivalent of my sesmster error will somehow suddenly make sense to me. So are they hoping for a no-cost solution? That hope is not very realistic,
because once I grade, I don’t look back without the redo. It is a shame grades cant be conversations, but I guess conversations have a time cost, too. I can state a lot of reasons for my errors. Multitasking, sugar overload, terrible typing skills, a get-‘er-done stance, over-reliance on spellcheck…
but I don’t claim carelessness. I have felt some students are careless, but I also recognize everyone has limited time, and just have to put somethings on low priority.
Sometimes I feel they re-do because they know they can do better work. That is the cost/benefit analysis I want my redo offer to validate. I feel so happy they are recognizing a chance to either learn or demonstrate learning. I
want students to be able to present their best work, but I also want them to have agency in their learning. Teaching is complicated.
Joan,
I encourage re-doing major assignments, but I do not make it easy. Students must meet with me first to go over the assignment to make sure they know what is amiss. If I do not do this some will try a re-do without even looking at my comments. After our meeting, students have a total of five school days to turn in the re-do. They get a 10% grade reduction on the re-do because I consider it as being late assignment.
Not too many students take advantage of this option. The ones that do usually show a great improvement. This makes the extra work worthwhile for me.
The first excuse for poor work is usually assignment overload; too many assignments in too many classes. Then there are sports that took time away from school work. Most of the student excuses are not legitimate because the real problem is that they put off everything until the last minute. Many of these last minutes turn into a perfect storm of last minutes. Time management skills are not practiced by many of our students. They live on a treadmill of due dates.
Hey Mitch. I just realized something. I too require they come see me as part of the redo. I think of that as fairly easy, but I haven't considered the time commitment of that. But, like you, I consider meeting with me so necessary to clear up confusion and expectations.
Especially as it relates to content, the "re-do" relates to demonstrating mastery of the content or skills that we want them to learn/master. I've never thought that should be placed upon a specific timeline, though we create these because we have to provide feedback, and grades, within specific timelines….but if they learn something, and can demonstrate that….well, that's the goal. As for mistakes and procrastination, that is something that we all fight, no matter our age 🙂
Philosophically, I believe in the re-do. Realistically, I don't have time or energy (if I'm being honest) for a re-do on everything. What ends up happening is that I'll offer revisions to the entire group when I can; usually though, I offer revisions to those who ask on an individual basis. I know of many teachers who require students to meet with them for a revision, and it's true, many students pass on this. We're all busy and lack time and energy. What I have been thinking about is what I call the back-to-back assignment. I'm copywriting this, so no one can steal my idea in case I want to present on it one day. Anyway, the back-to-back is when you essentially give the same assignment consecutively. This way, the students have the opportunity to "re-do" the assignment and so does the teacher while the ideas are still fresh.
Joan I SO appreciate all of the work that went into the re-dos I do think it really mattered that they had that opportunity to question themselves as to whether they could have done better.
This is really interesting. I offer test redemption but that is about it for re-dos for my class. As a science department, for the most part, we all decided last year to do test redemption. Once they get their scores back they have up until 1 week to re-take the test. In order for them to take advantage of this, they have to have no missing assignments in the grade book. Last semester, very few people took advantage of that. I don't think it's laziness but rather they just don't have time to study for a test again. I also think some of the girls just don't care in regular biology.
I do not allow re-dos for homework assignments or projects. The only exception last semester was on a project when two girls totally failed it. They had a rubric that guided them through what I expected to see and they did not follow it at all. I allowed them to do it again but I took off points for it being "late".