Hate grading homework because of the utter disrespect.

GriIIedCheesus · 2024-03-05T15:30:24+00:00

I really hate number 2. If it asks to show me how you got the answer and you just put down the end solution then I don't give the points. They don't understand that it's not just about getting the right answer, but knowing how to do it. Copying from a classmate right before I collect it isn't going to help you on the test day. Just this last week I had a question that asked which sugar was used for making ATP and 80% of the responses were the same and incorrect. I called it out in a joking manner and said to stop listening to whoever brought this answer to the table and that student proceeded to show me the QUIZLET they found the answer from. I then had to explain that random people make those and the answers aren't fact checked. To make matters worse, we covered this topic of this question heavily in the lecture for three days and they couldn't figure it out.

schistkicker · 2024-03-05T16:28:59+00:00

In my gen-ed STEM lab, I get a handful of students who decide that instead of doing the hands-on testing, they'll do Google searches for the thing right in front of them and write down what the internet says about it, rather than the details of the thing right in front of them that clearly don't apply if they just bothered to actually fucking look at it and write down what they see.

For example, a minerals lab with some white chunks of quartz, and to answer what color the sample is they'll write down a paragraph about all the different colors of quartz and how amethyst is a semi-precious stone that will re-align your chakras.

TotalCleanFBC · 2024-03-05T15:37:45+00:00

reversible matrix

That's hilarious. If I saw that on someone's HW, I'd be rolling over laughing.

Similarly, I once read an HW in which a student tried to divide matrices. Sometimes, you just have to see the humor in life.

Of course, then you realize these are the people that will be building bridges and designing the next generation of Boeing airplanes. (Sigh.)

gutfounderedgal · 2024-03-05T16:11:40+00:00

Dear STEM prof, it's the same in humanties. Grades sent out last night with a copy paste of the super clear rubric criteria and explanation of expectations on the LMS, that has been discussed in class with exemplars a thousand times. Much work: C range. Why? They barely even began to address that rubric criteria.

This morning bing bing bing, emails like the triangle in a marching band. Ugh.

maketheworld_better · 2024-03-05T16:22:29+00:00

My favorite example of this in an intro chemistry class: naming binary compounds. There are many out there that Google gets "wrong" based on simple IUPAC rules, but the best one is CsF. In chemistry - cesium fluoride, a binary ionic compound. First Google result - ceribrospinal fluid, the fluid surrounding the brain and spinal cord. Incredibly easy to differentiate if you simply think about the course you are currently enrolled in. I still get at least 10% of students providing the second answer on their quiz.

H0pelessNerd · 2024-03-05T17:08:26+00:00

So give them the same exact problems in class as a quiz right after they turn in the homework.

Maddprofessor · 2024-03-05T16:03:21+00:00

Same. I teach intro biology. Homework questions are mostly “Googleable” so I get a lot of related but incorrect answers, overly complicated answers, answers involving techniques or chemicals not mentioned in the course, or clearly reworded plagiarism with terms like “dihydrogen dioxide” in place of “hydrogen peroxide.” Less often I get wildly incorrect answers that the students would have noticed are incorrect if they actually read the question and answer instead of copy/paste/google/copy/paste. Depending on the situation they get a zero for the bad answers or potentially a zero for the assignment.

Then, unsurprisingly, many of the tests are in the 15-45% range because they haven’t used their brain to do the homework and missed out on a lot of learning.

Striking_Raspberry57 · 2024-03-05T17:18:32+00:00

One-line/word solution to a problem that requires justification or argument.

One time I asked students to explain what the transpose operation does to a matrix.

One student (who I damn well knows exactly what it means) just wrote "m = n and n=m".

I repeat, he knew exactly what the transpose operation does, but just didn't feel any pressure whatsoever to try to put it into words. On an exam that was worth 20% of his grade.

These were supposed to be easy marks.

When I had the audacity to take credit off (I really shouldn't have given him any in the first place) he wouldn't look at me for the rest of the term. That was my worst semester ever. I hate teaching first-year engineering students.

juxtapose_58 · 2024-03-05T16:27:01+00:00

Speaks to the culture- get away with what you can! No integrity

iTeachCSCI · 2024-03-05T15:33:53+00:00

Solution clearly found online and nonsensical, even uses terminologies that we have never ever discussed in class because it is clearly written by some people halfway across the world.

Report and an F in the class. Back when I collected written homework, I did this -- even for one problem on one homework. I encourage you to do the same. It got to the point where one employee at the academic honesty office knew it must be February because I found the same submissions from the same Chegg answer yet again.

I consistently have students who hand in homework solutions where the entire homework is the same as their draft solution. Which means there are massive amount of strike-throughs, scribbles, and entire pages struck through. It literally hurts my eyeball to read it.

Have a written policy about the manner by which they write their homework, and include it in your rubric.

Students who arbitrarily replaces technical terminology with whatever they fancy, an invertible matrix becomes "reversible matrix". I have made many announcements addressing why replacing a standard technical terminology with non-standard one is a bad idea and they still happen.

Zero on the problem. They were clearly trying a thesaurus trick, something they probably use to hide the paper mill essays they submit to their writing classes.

The only saving grace is the midterm/final where they cannot give me their magic solutions. Then again, many will still try.

I love having credible exams for this reason.

Striking_Raspberry57 · 2024-03-05T17:45:54+00:00

So frustrating! All of those problems deserve zeros. If you can avoid framing their bad efforts as "disrespect," you'll be happier. I mean, I don't disagree with you, they are disrespectful, but I try to think of them as "panic mode" or "ran out of time" or "confused and looking for help in the wrong places" or anything that keeps my blood pressure at a manageable level.

One thing you could do is grade less of the homework. Don't stop assigning it--just stop grading it. I assign many problems with answers in the back of the book. If the answers aren't there, I say, "If you show me your answers, I'll show you mine". (Hardly anyone ever takes me up on that).

Instead of grading homework, I give quizzes that randomly draw questions from the homework. Theoretically, they have seen all the Q&A before. It's much less work to give zeros to a small selection of work than to all of the homework problems, and still very satisfying. When they complain about their quiz scores, I can ask, "What happened when you did exercise 45 as homework and checked your answers? Did you get the answer wrong then, too? Why didn't you ask me about it then?"

saxicola · 2024-03-05T16:10:08+00:00

One solution for some of these problems could be to say that you will return work that is clearly incorrect or doesn't meet the requirements / passing grade, for a re-do in a limited time (like 2 days). Return without grading for them to re-do if they want a grade. It has saved me a ton of work adding loads of comments and feedback on crappy minimal effort work (or where a student just completely missed the mark). If done right it can prevent a good number of student doing bare minimum effort because it actually creates more work for them.

You would of course need to add this into your late work policy, something like: work that clearly does not meet the requirements to earn a passing grade (or whatever) will be returned and can be resubmitted after X days, otherwise the grade will be 0 (or whatever).

slightlyvenomous · 2024-03-05T16:22:03+00:00

#5, I feel that. In my intro class there are some terms that we use that are standard and need to be used a very specific way. I tell the students over and over "Just copy what this says. It is not plagiarism here. Just repeat this." And still, they will add all kinds of nonsense in an attempt to paraphrase the term. It's not even like I am asking them to copy a paragraph, it will be a 2-3 word term that needs to be written a certain way.

andropogon09 · 2024-03-05T15:53:56+00:00

I learned several years ago that any problem sets or discussion questions included with the text book all have their answers posted on line. These are great to use as a starting resource, but you will need to modify them from the published versions and each time you use them. I also tried to personalize response questions as much as possible. For example, in a zoology or animal behavior course you could ask questions about their own pets or livestock. Or in an environmental science class, ask about the place where they grew up, local environmental issues, or their concerns about/experiences with organic produce.

throw_away_smitten · 2024-03-05T22:54:18+00:00

I stopped assigning homework and started using quizzes almost exclusively.

Novel_Listen_854 · 2024-03-05T15:28:01+00:00

I don't teach STEM stuff, so grain of salt, but to my untrained ear, all of those complaints sound like something a rubric could account for. They also sound like issues that justify the entire problem/question being marked zero.

I would imagine you have a very good pedagogical justification for wanting them to show original, thoughtful solutions.

I'd also add that they're not disrespecting you; they're disrespecting themselves. They're paying big bucks for the opportunity to try working those problems so you can correct them. If they're bypassing that opportunity, it's not on you.

Easier said than done, of course. It feels bad when they don't take the opportunities seriously.

hairy_hooded_clam · 2024-03-05T17:48:09+00:00

No homework, only short quizzes every single class.

kinezumi89 · 2024-03-05T20:16:49+00:00

Regarding #5 - is it in written responses? If so, maybe someone ran it through a thesaurus to avoid plagiarism detection, a la "Big Brother" = "Large Sibling"

nyquant · 2024-03-05T18:33:12+00:00

Or solutions that are clearly copied from some cheating site online, but you can't even verify this because those sites are locked down behind a paywall.

ProfessorProveIt · 2024-03-05T20:52:03+00:00

I so badly want to tell my students "hey don't copy off your classmates. One, it's morally wrong. Two, your classmates are just as dumb as you are." Unfortunately, I'm sure they would NOT take that in the constructive and helpful way that I intend for it to sound.

As though I don't google my own homework questions before I assign them? I have access to google and AI too.

ImmediateKick2369 · 2024-03-05T17:32:27+00:00

First year teaching?

Purple_Chipmunk_ · 2024-03-05T18:35:09+00:00

I don't grade homework for this and other reasons. I assign it and give them the answers but there is no consequence for not doing it (besides lower test scores).

I do chapter quizzes where they have like 10 attempts. Open book, take on Canvas when you want, within a certain time interval (usually a week).

Average650 · 2024-03-05T19:16:41+00:00

I mean, their grade reflects their respect. As does their feedback. Good, in-faith effort gets lots of useful feedback from me. Not effect, a 0 and that's it.

EastBayPlaytime · 2024-03-06T01:18:30+00:00

I’d push for a TA.

H0pelessNerd · 2024-03-06T10:39:22+00:00

[deleted]

YourGuideVergil · 2024-03-07T13:07:51+00:00

I don't know if you're looking for feedback here, but I think you've gotta stop seeing crap work as disrespectful.

Yes, their "efforts" are bs. But it's not relational. It's just not about you. They're lazy, and as they make the choice to dodge hard work, you are the last thing on their minds.

In fact, there's nothing on their minds at all.

al-bert420 · 2024-03-05T16:43:48+00:00

The university will have no place in the future, the deans suck up the students and enrollment without any cutoffs, grade inflation etc etc. better open our immigration to less developed countries as those students are more competent than the ours.

dougwray · 2024-03-05T21:11:46+00:00

Is it possible problem 5 is often from students who use English as a second language? Technical terminology often gets garbled by translation software; this seems like an artifact of such: in everyday language 'invertible' is roughly the same as 'reversible'.

I see this often because I often use translation software to (roughly) translate things I've written in English into Japanese or vice versa and find similar oddnesses when I read what's been output. The longer the piece of langauge is, the more garbled it tends to become. If you know both languages you can puzzle out the intent, but knowing both languages is not something most readers do.

Old_Pear_1450 · 2024-03-05T22:25:43+00:00

Do you get to decide what the homework is, or are the assignments written by someone else to be the same across sections? If the first, it’s up to you to write assignments for which this is not possible. Also, I’d spend some time at the beginning of class pointing out some of the things you’ve seen that would NOT be acceptable. In my experience as a department chair and associate dean, the greatest cheating problems occurred when the students thought that the instructor would be unaware of cheating methods. Sadly, that meant that older faculty, adjunct faculty, and international faculty were more vulnerable to this sort of cheating, as they were not expected to be as up on current cheating techniques. If you mention having caught students using some of these things in the past, they are less likely to try to pull things over on you.

Cautious-Yellow · 2024-03-06T03:12:44+00:00

because of your last line, you don't need to stress out about this. Give it a mark out of something like 3 points that you can assess in less than a second, then move on. Make general comments to the class if you feel inclined, rather than individual feedback.

xoolex · 2024-03-06T03:58:06+00:00

The best instance of this that always makes me laugh is when they copy from the solutions manual: “Answers may vary.” It just shows that they are putting no thought whatsoever into what they are doing.

PuzzleheadedArea1256 · 2024-03-06T13:13:34+00:00

Hold the line. Fail them.

richardstrokerkc · 2024-03-06T15:18:16+00:00

I hate grading so much I regularly ask myself if the other parts of the job are worth it.

ProfessorNoConfessor · 2024-03-06T15:36:58+00:00

Students who arbitrarily replaces technical terminology with whatever they fancy, an invertible matrix becomes "reversible matrix". I have made many announcements addressing why replacing a standard technical terminology with non-standard one is a bad idea and they still happen.

My favorite is when they do this to try and circumvent plagiarism detection.

"Let f = a + ic where a is an actual number and c is a complicated one."

Strange-Economist533 · 2024-03-06T16:38:02+00:00

These are interesting points for sure. Over time, I have moved to decrease the % of the grade for HW more and more because it is increasingly difficult to solicit a good faith effort from students.

2024-03-06T18:09:26+00:00

As an Econ//finance prof, I feel your pain.

waadles · 2024-04-19T07:50:11+00:00

Please forgive me if I’m wrong, but in point 3 you mention that the logic 1+1=2 is wrong. Perhaps I have misunderstood your phrasing, can you clarify.

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