Everyone should now have their participation marks. If you gave me your preferred email address when I passed the sheet around near the beginning of the course, I sent it there; if you did not, then I used you address as listed in York's directory.
To reiterate about the remaining park of your participation marks: the other half of the participation grade (it's 20% of your final mark, and what I've given you constitutes only half of that) will not be substantially different unless you substantially change your own participation. For example:
*If you're happy with your 6.5/10 and don't post any more frequently to the blog and don't come to chat about the class with me at my office hour, you can expect another 6.5 for the other half.
*If you've been posting to the blog regularly and suddenly stop, you can expect your mark to drop slightly. (ie. That 6.5 may have actually been a 5.5, which I increased to 6.5 because you've posted a few thoughtful things to the blog and you submitted two questions for the mock-exam.)
*Conversely, if you're unhappy with that 6.5 and start posting once or twice with really smart stuff every week or starting coming to talk to me during my office hour, you can reasonably expect your grade to increase.
I'm also considering putting together exercises specifically for our tutorial that would count toward the participation grade (which is an approach that the other tutorial leaders use), but won't do so unless it's something that the class is actually interested in.
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10 comments:
I would be happy to do some extra assignments to boost my participation mark. I'm up for it.
Me too! I agree with Melanie.
To be totally clear: any participation-mark assignments wouldn't count for bonus - they would replace part of the participation classroom and blog mark. So your mark could conceivably go down if you didn't hand the assignments in or did one incorrectly.
Understood. I'm still up for it. I'm sure others will as well...
Ouch, would I be the only person opposed to this idea? I'm really not crazy about the risk of my participation mark going down...
Having given the idea of participation-mark assignments some more thought, I have a question as well as a few ideas.
My question is, would these assignments be mandatory for the whole tutorial, or would they be optional for people that want to try and boost their mark?
Furthermore, I will post an argument as to why I don't think that having participation-mark assignments would be fair, rather than simply saying that I disagree with the idea. I think that participation marks should be allocated based on our oral ideas or our postings on the blog. Neil, like you said in tutorial, some people are better at voicing their opinions casually, rather than putting them into formal essay style. I just don't think that it would be fair if you base participation marks on written assignments. I'm sure that people that are awesome at written work can make up for their participation marks by getting perfect grades on our written assignments =)
I know that neil is being a good guy by giving us a chance boost up people's participation mark but I do believe that he already gives us enough opertunity to do so.
I don't agree with having to do extra assignments cause really I don't feel like doing even more work plus i'm guessing neil wouldn't want to do extra work than he has to either
bup i said my peace
Just so we are clear Neil has suggested to put together exercises specifically for our tutorial and has asked if anyone is interested (this was his idea). I propose that if people are interested they can do the assignment to potentially boost their grade and for those who do not wish to participate in doing any extra assignments they will not be penalized. Is this a fair resolution?
I think that Neil has given us enough opportunities to have a good participation mark: if someone doesn't feel comfortable talking in class, they can write on the blog and/or go see him during his office hours. I think he is being extremely fair. I think giving us more assignments will not only give us more work, it gives him more work (having to come up with the ideas for the assignment and then having to grade it). I vote to not have the extra assignments
Thanks for the feedback, everyone. Maybe this is something we can talk about at the beginning of tutorial on Wednesday?
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