Re: students grade themselves

[Sara Kimball <skimball@uts.cc.utexas.edu>]

I don't think this behavior is confined to students.  I've certainly been 
on committees where I've ended up being the one  who did the most work, 
or at least where I've had to prompt, nudge, nag, whatever to get 
colleagues to do their part in a timely manner.  When I've had students 
do collaborative projects, I've tried to alert them to this as a 
potential problem, and I've told them it's largely their responsibility 
to see that the work is distrbuted fairly and that things get done, just 
as it will be at work once they've graduated.  I try to reserve 
intervention only for dire situations, though I honor students' requests 
not to be put into groups with people they know from experience they 
can't work with, just as I'd expect either of my chairs to honor my 
wishes not to be put on committees with certain people.
	Maybe the problem with grading is that the rewards and penalties 
are too clear cut and too immediate to be an accurate reflection of 
"real life." 
Sara Kimball
UT Austin

On Thu, 4 Jan 1996, Lynne Belcher wrote:
> 
> I have also done as you suggested about collaborative writing, and I 
> have had students lie (exaggerate?) about their roles in that 
> collaborative process.  Oprah once did a show on cheating.  Many of the 
> students in the audience had no problem with cheating or lying when it 
> came to their school work.  I don't like to set up situations in class 
> that force students either to be painfully honest about their lack of 
> accomplishment or lie.
>