Alien Pedagogy

Our school’s IT guru reports that her students often check their online grades for my class during her computer programming class.

The only thing that I’ve done to earn whatever level of student awareness is steady timing in feedback.

I tell students when I plan to mark their assignments, mark them during that time, and immediately post the scores.

Today a teacher asked me about my policy of allowing students to redo of their assignments. She’d heard about it from students.

I’d like to believe that the students presented a polite and educated argument on how this policy invites them to treat their assignments as learning opportunities. Perhaps they stood up, cleared their throat, and said something like “In ENG, our assignments don’t end with an F, but might begin there.”

With some reservation, I’d even accept it if they used an educational cliche like “learning’s a journey.”

I’d like to believe this because I spend more time in my classroom than in the faculty room. I can’t help thinking that amongst my colleagues, my reputation as an educator is largely created by what students say about my class.

I’ve mentioned my use of a scoring guide that pushes students into mastery learning. It’s a challenging assessment, but because I allow students to redo their work as many times as it takes, the average score for essays has improved dramatically. I’m much more satisfied with the essays I’ve received from this year compared to the essays I received last year.

The next steps:

• Train students to study for tests that assess their writing skills rather than their memorization skills.
• Now that students have a basic understanding of structures that allow them to express their thoughts, it’s time to help them think more deeply.

The first round of parent-teacher interviews was tonight. No parent complained when I said that students would not be docked marks for late assignments.

So far, perhaps five students have yet to hand in assignments from the first term.

I’ve figured out how to post grades online using Moodle. The program’s clumsy, but online publication of grades is a must for me.

For pedagogical reasons as well as because I hate when students lie to me, I do not dock marks for late assignments. Posting grades online has largely eliminated the need for me to “hound” students for late assignments. Unfortunately, they now hound me for advice on how to improve their scores.

A few of my colleagues have hesitated to use Moodle. Some of these excuses strike me as weak:

• I don’t let students see their grades.
• It’s too much work.
• I can print the grades using the computer program that I’m currently using.

Other excuses are pretty good:

• There are better online programs.
• Moodle’s restart is a crash waiting to happen. Back up!

For the time being, I’m enjoying this online extension of the classroom.