One down

...the first of the three finals I give is over.

This one is given as a take-home exam because it's in my computation-intensive class. I make up four different versions (well, the essay questions are the same; I feel I must do that for fairness' sake).

One student never handed his in. He still COULD but as there's a precipitous drop of points once the deadline is passed (and for every hour thereafter), it's getting to the point where it might not be worth it to him. (And not worth it to me to grade).

I am kind of put out because the three amigos I had in that class (sat in the back, chatted, ignored me, didn't always hand in homework, were sometimes disrespectful of other students) showed some evidence (but not provable evidence) of copying on the exams (as in: they got the same things wrong in the essay questions). Whatever. It works out in the end. They did badly on the test.

I will say on a happier note that two separate people thanked me in person for the class, said they learned a lot and enjoyed it. (They both earned As. I don't think they said they enjoyed the class BECAUSE they earned As; they probably earned As because they put in the effort and they cared about it, so they learned the stuff. One of the guys also aced the final, which is kind of rare.)

I also got a Christmas card thanking me from a student who, though not an A student, did work hard in the class and I could appreciate her hard work.

So, three people out of 19 thanked me and thought the class was worthwhile. That's a new record. I'm not going to worry about the copycats because of that. (I kind of say to myself, when I suspect a person of cheating but can't "prove" it well enough to justify flunking them: "Well, it's THEIR soul." No, I don't think their cheating will consign them to one of the rings of Hell [even one of the upper, less-nasty ones], but I do tend to think that that kind of thing can come back to haunt a person - as in, they don't have the chops when it comes to doing the thing on the job, or they get caught out some time in the future.).

I will say that because of my lowering some of the cutoffs a bit (something I had agreed to do after looking at the pre-final exam grade distribution), some people may have done a bit better than they strictly deserved. (Well, the girl who tried hard and got a C would have just barely missed getting the C under the old cutoffs, so I guess I can feel good about that). Then again - some of the "problem" people will get Ds instead of Fs, which will keep them from having to take the class again, but won't unnecessarily pad their GPA.

Very bimodal distribution in the class - almost no Bs, almost no Cs. A good number of As (and As who came about it honestly: the cutoff changes didn't really benefit them), a lot of Ds and an F or two. But that's how it always is with the class: if you pay attention, do the work, and pay attention to the questions on the exam, you can generally pass. If you work hard and come in to talk to me when you don't understand something (which all of the A students did), you can often pull an A. It's the people who only read half the exam question and then go answering something I DIDN'T ask who wind up with Ds or Fs. Or the people who don't do homework. Or the people who find their back-row convo SO MUCH MORE INTERESTING than what's actually going on in the class.

So, whatever. What goes around comes around. The people who earned As should feel good; this is not an easy class or easy material although I try to make it as understandable as possible. The person who earned a C thanks to the new cutoffs will probably be happy - she was in last week asking me what she had to make on the final to "pass" (meaning, get a C. D is technically passing but most of our more concerned students do not consider it so). Normally I hate that question - because it's a question a "slacker" tends to ask, someone who hasn't tried all semester. But this is someone who tried, and just had some problems (not entirely caused by class material; she's an RA and there's been some bad drama in the dorm she's had to deal with). We figured it out, and I was happy (when I graded her exam) to see that she JUST made it, with the new cutoffs.

Yes, it makes professors happy when students get As, or when they manage to pull off a grade they didn't think they could. Regardless of what some students believe about us.