Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Snow!

Monday, February 11, 2008

Marking Essays

I spent a good portion of this past weekend marking the final paper for a course I'm teaching. I don't know what happened between the previous paper and this last paper, but the quality of the writing deteriorated considerably. I failed three of the papers. They were really bad. I think part of the problem was that the questions were very vague. However, the students were instructed to answer the questions in reference to the entire course. Some students chose to discuss things that were never covered, and way off topic. Students were supposed to demonstrate in this paper that they had accomplished the main goals of the course, which consisted of gaining an understanding of world prehistory. One student wrote about two very historical events. Another student claimed that the archaeological record began about 5,000 years ago, even though we studied sites that were over 10,000 years old. One of the other main objective of the course was to learn how to use appropriate online resources. One sudent referenced the MySpace profile of Alexander the Great. Another student referenced the film 300.

My brain hurts.