Mary C. Henry

We have one week of classes left at Miami before finals, and I find myself in a curious position this weekend. I don't have any pressing work for classes or research! I just came back from a conference last Monday, so research is sort of on hold until classes finish. I am caught up with grading for now- but that will change tomorrow because I have remote sensing labs coming in, then Wednesday I will get 92 physical geography papers, and Friday I'll get another 14 remote sensing term papers. I am giving one in-class exam (which my teaching assistant will grade) and I'll have 14 take-home exams for remote sensing to grade. I also have a lot of meetings and student defenses coming up in the next week, so I will be on campus more days that usual (which cuts into at-home grading time). I'm done with teaching prep, too. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, now, but there is a mountain of grading to get through first! This summer should be busy with research (I am go...

Well, I had really intended to update this more regularly, but that hasn't happened and now the semester is almost over. Next week is our last week of classes, then finals are the week after that. We are on a pretty late calendar this year with grades due on December 22nd! Between now and then, I will be spending a good amount of my time grading. Grading papers. Grading exams. Grading projects. I assign written assignments in all of my classes, because I think it is useful and valuable, but this time of the semester I often start second-guessing my wisdom about this when I have 80-some-odd papers, 16 research papers, 9 project reports, (and a partridge in a pear tree) to grade- not to mention hazard journals, labs, and exams. My friends on Facebook are used to me complaining about grading and often ask why my teaching assistant doesn't do it. Well, I only have a TA for one class and his/her job is to grade labs and exams. I have usually graded any papers myself. It's not th...

As I expected, things have been generally hectic so far this semester. Teaching every day means that I don't get a work-at-home-gather-my-thoughts day, so this usually falls to the weekend. I am not too behind on grading so far, but do have a virtual* pile of grading to do right now. Here are a few observations of how things have been going: The online quizzes seem to be working out pretty well for GEO 121. Students have from Monday morning until Friday night to go in and take the quiz. I've already had one slip-up where I forgot to post the quiz, so I gave the students an extra day to take it (even though I only posted it two hours late!). Then there was a Blackboard outage this morning, so I extended the time even longer. I'll be sure to get my quiz for next week posted today! I have still been dealing with technical problems in our lab, but I am optimistic that things will finally be settled in the next week or so. Our setup for logging into the computers was changed ove...

Almost every semester in every class, I determine grades partly based on “participation”. Usually, this is largely based on attendance, but students are also assessed on contributing to class and/or completing in-class assignments. For most students this amounts to “free points” and I often consider eliminating it from the grade completely. However, I like to know who is attending class and that can be tricky in large lecture courses (my GEO 121 course enrolls about 90 students). I also don’t like to feel like I am holding students captive. How many students will show up if it is left to their discretion? College students are legal adults, so if they want to skip class, they can deal with the consequences. It can often be disruptive to have uninterested students in class, since they talk to their friends and text during class (despite me asking them not to). In the fall, I am thinking of doing an experiment by not monitoring attendance in GEO 121. Stude...