Can I just take a second to complain? Rant, if you will?
It is not acceptable for a professor to create a syllabus and then completely disregard it. Yes, changes are expected from time to time, but for your students to have NO IDEA what to expect or how to figure they’re grade because things have been changed so much? No.
It is not acceptable for you to say that something is Extra Credit and then, the last day of lecture, say “well, yeah, kind of extra credit, but really just to give us more points, so, well, it’ll all work out”. What?
You can not spend the entire semester of lectures trying to figure out how to turn on your computer and showing us YouTube videos with no sound (because you can’t work the speakers) and telling us about every single veteran you have ever counseled and NOT teaching us ANYTHING about the actual topic of the course, and then give us a study guide for the final that basically says “read the entire book and remember everything”. BAH!
You have not learned our names or passed around a sign in sheet, yet you intend to grade on attendance? You said the final is worth 50 points, but the points per question outline add up to almost 70 points!? You said those of us that turned in a draft research paper would receive 10 Extra Credit points, now you say it was worth UP TO 10 points? We all turned in a random, non syllabus, possibly extra credit, possibly required assignment 2 months ago and today it seemed a total surprise to you that those needed grading.
How is it professional, or academically acceptable for us to have no idea what our grades are or how to figure them?? Even if we graded the final exam in class I would have no idea what my grade in the class is! You refuse to use technology so I have to wait until my transcript is updated to see what my grade is, and even then I will have no idea what I did well on or what I did poorly on. And I will have learned what from this??? Nothing.
Thank you to my professors who know what the hell they’re doing, talk to us about changes, appologize for mistakes, and treat us like adults. To those of you who are so involved in your clinical practices that teaching has become a side job pain in your ass, please know that none of us will be hurt if you keep your day job.
In an attempt to end on a positive note…I love classes where the only grades are exams that are all weighted the same. I excel in that environment. I hear med-school is like that…yay for me! 
)
“A good teacher is a master of simplification and an enemy of simplism.”
~Louis A. Berman
Beth
Filed under: Education - Undergrad
