Sphinx

I’ve just been evaluating the student contributions to the blog f0r my unit on Approaches to Ancient History. I introduced this a few years ago as a means of encouraging reflection on the issues raised in the unit, not least in recognition of the fact that not everyone feels comfortable about speaking up in a moderately large class – blog technology not only made the whole thing much easier to supervise than the former practice of everyone having to write a reflective journal, but it also created the possibility of ongoing discussion and debate. All students were expressly required to spend at least an hour a week on the blog, reading and commentating (with no serious expectation that they’d actually do this, but at least they ought to be engaging with it at least once a week); the contributions were not marked formally as a set proportion of the total marks for the unit, but high-quality, sustained engagement was rewarded with up to 5 extra marks on the total, and failure to engage was penalised with a reduction of up to 5 marks. Or at least that’s how it used to work…

Last year, the university introduced a new rule that forbids negative marking, and I received an order to cease and desist penalising students for non-contribution. Now, I don’t think that this actually constitutes “negative marking” in the sense intended – that is rather the practice of assessing a piece of work by taking a mark off for every mistake, rather than evaluating it according to the official marking criteria – but it was of course a waste of time trying to persuade anyone in authority of this; so, no penalties, just the possibility of reward for those who performed better than the average. The result was entirely predictable; in the absence of any sort of sanction, over a quarter of the students in the class contributed absolutely nothing, and another quarter participated in only one or two weeks out of the twelve. In theory, I could demand that credit for the unit be withheld from all those who failed to contribute at least once a week – but since that would mean denying credit to all except one student, I don’t think I’d get away with it. Even attempting to deny credit to the seven who did nothing at all – given that they did hand in their assessed work and turn up to at least some classes – isn’t likely to get anywhere. As for the students in the first-year unit with a similar blog, I simply scrapped the whole idea of rewarding anyone or even paying attention to what was happening as it became clear, after a couple of weeks and several reminders, that the number of students showing any sign at all of engaging with it could be counted on one hand.

I’m honestly not sure what the problem is; in any year this is effectively extra marks for old rope, let alone in a year when, after just a couple of weeks, it was obvious that the bar for ‘better than average performance’ would be set extremely low. I find it hard to believe that the problem is a lack of familiarity with interaction on the internet, even if the blog tool in our Online Learning Environment is somewhat clunky; this isn’t a problem of technology but of attitude. Students regularly insist that they want more opportunities for discussion – but, as with the seminar sessions we introduced this year in certain units, it’s clear that they like knowing that the opportunity is there but don’t necessarily see it as a priority to take advantage of them. Seminars are regarded as optional – missing one isn’t perceived to have any significance, unlike missing a lecture – and the same seems to be the case with online discussion; after all, what are they likely to learn from their fellow students, as opposed to the lecturer? The idea that they’re missing out on opportunities to develop key skills – or indeed the idea that they might indeed learn something from their fellows’ ideas – doesn’t compute, or at any rate isn’t enough of an incentive.

Which is why the possibility of a penalty is necessary; students, it is clear, don’t necessarily know what is good for them, or make the right decisions in allocating their time, and it’s our job as teachers to push them in the right direction. If everyone always gets prizes – or, to be more exact, no one is ever penalised for idleness – then the majority fail to learn or practice certain skills, and it’s just the students who are already engaged and articulate who get an extra reward for being engaged and articulate. Which is fine, but doesn’t really justify the time required to set up and moderate the online discussion, so I’ve just put in a request to remove this element of the unit in future. At the risk of seeming excessively jaded and cynical, I think I need to work out what sanctions I actually have at my disposal, if any, and design my teaching methods around those…