College Life
Hello everyone: It happens once in a blue moon. A student makes him or herself memorable to me in a positive way (hey, the negative stuff happens frequently, as you have seen on this blog). How do you want to leave a good impression? Write your instructor a thank you note. Now don’t take the backside-kissing method like Eddie Haskell would have done (think Leave...
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College Life
Hello everyone: Today’s blog is on extra credit. Some teachers give it, while others look askance at the very thought of it. I give it for some undergraduate course where I am allowed by my college to do so. It is never given in graduate school. When can you get it in my classes, I offer undergraduates the chance to improve their grades throughout the...
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College Life / Writing & Grammar
Hello everyone: Here I am, almost at the semester. My students at one college turned in papers on Wednesday that were, for the most part, pretty awful. It has taken me 45 minutes to plow through 6 of them, there are so many mistakes. Here’s my dilemma: do I post an announcement, inviting the students to re-write their papers, knowing that the ones who need...
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College Life
Hello everyone: I recently received an email from a student whose rough draft I had gone over. I gave him feedback using the rubric that I will be using to grade his final document. He argued with me. Now, please understand that it takes time for me to go through a student’s document a line at a time and give him suggestions on how to...
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College Life
Hello everyone: As you know, I teach at three different colleges. My students range from first year freshmen to graduate students and everything in between. No matter their year in college, they sometimes share a common problem: they don’t follow the directions. One thing about college, and about work life, it is important to give your boss what he or she is looking for. It’s...
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College Life
Hello everyone: Every once in a while, it is difficult or impossible to post an assignment to your online course. What are you to do? The first thing is to email the professor a copy of your assignment BEFORE the due date, even if it is just a few minutes before the due date. That way, the instructor will know that your assignment is ready...
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College Life
Hello everyone: I was contacted by a student recently; she had a question about an assignment. The challenge was that I teach multiple, different courses and she did not identify which course she was taking. She asked for insight into an upcoming assignment, but did not say which assignment she was talking about. Another student had a query about a discussion board assignment. She asked...
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College Life
Hello everyone: Life happens. Sometimes we have to work late, have a sick relative, or experience some other life emergency. As a college professor, I see it happen all the time. What happens when you simply haven’t planned ahead well enough? Like to old saying kind of goes, “Failure on your part to prepare does not constitute an emergency on my part.” I had a...
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College Life
Hello everyone: Today, I want to share with you some of my own personal pet peeves when it comes to students’ writing. First, they use huge margins and as much blank space as possible, so that your paper appears to be 20 pages when it is really only 5 pages. I mean, the instructor will never notice, right? He or she never really reads the...
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College Life
Hello everyone: Today’s blog covers the topic of how to complain. Right now, I have two online students (both female) who have different approaches to class. One of them, who has a very high GPA, asks respectfully when she has a question about an assignment. The other one, not so much. Student A (so-called because that is what her GPA is) sometimes finds the instructions...
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