Posted by alexandra_k on September 27, 2014, at 18:05:47
In reply to Re: tick tock, posted by alexandra_k on September 27, 2014, at 16:44:37
it is just little things... little things that drive me nuts.
like with our biology drawings.
we had a model in the front of our lab manual, so first lab i used it as a template. and then i lost marks for my drawings because of various things that they wanted us to do that were different from the template / different from the commentary on the template at the start of the manual. e.g., to put the phylum and class on the drawings and not just include genus and species. to put the magnification in a certain place rather than including it in the title.
apparently our drawings are better now... probably because of the grading feedback which told us (incrementally over several labs) what it was that they wanted from us. i am not sure how much there is a standardized 'and this is how it is supposed to be formatted' like there is for APA format... I hope to god the situation isn't that every biology class wants you to do them a bit differently - and that students ability to divine? the template the demonstrators have in mind from the actual class... despite the lab manual... is how grades are determined in labs.
which is better than throwing them down the stairs?
i guess some kids would have been good at getting the demonstrators to tell them what to do in the lab... i guess that is it. giggle and flirt and smile and you might get helpful bits out of them.
i think we got the big rat last week because we got the sh*tt**st fish specimens the week before... and (apparently) because our drawings improved a lot over the course of the semester. my gripe is: my drawings would have been of precisely that quality all along if only the template and instructions in the lab manual were an accurate portrayal of what it was that they f*ck*ng well wanted from us.
this kind of thing... is the kind of thing that drives me nuts... and tech was full of it. in this instance... i could try and say something about how the lab manual doesn't match what seems to be expected of us and how students would probably do better in labs if they updated the lab manual accordingly... and it would result in countless emails going through cycles and cycles of mostly bad reasons why nothing should be done... things like how nobody even reads their lab manual anyway etc etc etc...
the 'real reason' seems to be... so they feel that they taught us something. over the course of the semester... look at how our biology drawings improved! my gripe is that: they were only so bad in the first place because they weren't clear in their expectations of us.
i think that that happens a lot... students don't know what is expected of them. more than half the problem is that the teachers they tend to get are the teachers who either don't know what is expected of them either or teachers who have qualms about it such that they think their job is to make things harder than things need to be or teachers who are so dumb that they don't f*ck*ng well get it.
:(
poster:alexandra_k
thread:1058481
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20140828/msgs/1071548.html