I talk a lot of smack about the teaching staff at ITT, so much so that some people may be reading this blog and thinking that I am bending the truth. I also firmly believe in giving people another chance, if only to watch them fail miserably again.
Let's have a test!
The Idea:
Will one of the self proclaimed best teachers at ITT accurately grade writing assignments worth 55% of my total grade?
The Setup:
I am taking environmental issues and we have a choice of writing assignment for our grades. We can either answer all the questions at the end of each chapter, or write a summary report of the chapter in our own words.
I tried one of each and handed them both in a few weeks ago.
Behind the Scenes:
Here is where it gets fun as I dabble a bit in psychology.
Paper 1
For the first paper I chose to do all the questions, but there is a catch. I purposely didn't write the questions with the answers, thus forcing the teacher to have the questions handy himself in order to grade my answers. Just for added spice I also completely ignored a few of the questions and made up a totally random answer, and I copy pasted one of them as the answer for another question.
Paper 2
For the second paper I did a chapter summary in my own words. This actually proved to be more time consuming since I had to go through more of the chapter to get the gist of the sections. I turned in a summary that was about 500 words, and liberally sprinkled with filler. The question being will the teacher actually take the time to read through all of these summary paragraphs for multiple students and notice my filler?
The Result:
Paper 1 got me an 85%
Paper 2 got me a 60%
At a glance it would seem that I got "caught" half assing the second paper, and I suppose on some level that's true. But here is the kicker! I got a 60% on the second paper purely based on it being too short. The only feedback on the page simply states that it's impossible to give a good summary using the amount of space I did. So he didn't even read it, he just gave me some generic low grade based on the length of the paper, even though I had to learn more of the chapter to write the summary.
As further proof, look at the first paper. You know... the one that has copy/pasted answers for multiple questions and made up responses that don't match the questions. It is extremely obvious this teacher is not "grading" anything. He is casually skimming papers looking for glaring errors, and handing out generic grades based on the appearance of completeness. Per his note, I got an 85% on the paper because I didn't write the questions with the answers.
Some examples:
Question 7 - Compare and contrast anthropocentrism, biocentrism, and and ecocentrism.
Answer - The preservation ethic has less to do with change, and more to do with wanting to keep things closer to what they have been.
Question 9 - Describe Aldo Leopold's land ethic. How did Leopold define the "community" to which ethical standards should be applied.
Answer - A land ethic is a code of ethics used when you are going to make changes to the land. Tree huggers love land ethics.
Just reading it again now makes me laugh. A land ethic is a code of ethics about land... That's worth an 85%! lolz.
How are students supposed to learn anything with that kind of laziness in the teaching staff? If the teachers don't even pretend to care about the work, how can you expect students to care about it?
Not only that, but ITT has been taken to court before for exactly this same issue. Schools have been accused of artificially increasing student grades with this method because it gives them larger government checks to have students with good grades.
Let's have a test!
The Idea:
Will one of the self proclaimed best teachers at ITT accurately grade writing assignments worth 55% of my total grade?
The Setup:
I am taking environmental issues and we have a choice of writing assignment for our grades. We can either answer all the questions at the end of each chapter, or write a summary report of the chapter in our own words.
I tried one of each and handed them both in a few weeks ago.
Behind the Scenes:
Here is where it gets fun as I dabble a bit in psychology.
Paper 1
For the first paper I chose to do all the questions, but there is a catch. I purposely didn't write the questions with the answers, thus forcing the teacher to have the questions handy himself in order to grade my answers. Just for added spice I also completely ignored a few of the questions and made up a totally random answer, and I copy pasted one of them as the answer for another question.
Paper 2
For the second paper I did a chapter summary in my own words. This actually proved to be more time consuming since I had to go through more of the chapter to get the gist of the sections. I turned in a summary that was about 500 words, and liberally sprinkled with filler. The question being will the teacher actually take the time to read through all of these summary paragraphs for multiple students and notice my filler?
The Result:
Paper 1 got me an 85%
Paper 2 got me a 60%
At a glance it would seem that I got "caught" half assing the second paper, and I suppose on some level that's true. But here is the kicker! I got a 60% on the second paper purely based on it being too short. The only feedback on the page simply states that it's impossible to give a good summary using the amount of space I did. So he didn't even read it, he just gave me some generic low grade based on the length of the paper, even though I had to learn more of the chapter to write the summary.
As further proof, look at the first paper. You know... the one that has copy/pasted answers for multiple questions and made up responses that don't match the questions. It is extremely obvious this teacher is not "grading" anything. He is casually skimming papers looking for glaring errors, and handing out generic grades based on the appearance of completeness. Per his note, I got an 85% on the paper because I didn't write the questions with the answers.
Some examples:
Question 7 - Compare and contrast anthropocentrism, biocentrism, and and ecocentrism.
Answer - The preservation ethic has less to do with change, and more to do with wanting to keep things closer to what they have been.
Question 9 - Describe Aldo Leopold's land ethic. How did Leopold define the "community" to which ethical standards should be applied.
Answer - A land ethic is a code of ethics used when you are going to make changes to the land. Tree huggers love land ethics.
Just reading it again now makes me laugh. A land ethic is a code of ethics about land... That's worth an 85%! lolz.
How are students supposed to learn anything with that kind of laziness in the teaching staff? If the teachers don't even pretend to care about the work, how can you expect students to care about it?
Not only that, but ITT has been taken to court before for exactly this same issue. Schools have been accused of artificially increasing student grades with this method because it gives them larger government checks to have students with good grades.
