OK...so how does one accomplish the various worthwhile ends at the undergraduate college level? Let's suppose one has about 700 students for the semester. One class was around 250, two others around 175 each and the fourth one was 100 or so.
Thank some divine power or other I had a grader.
Remember their names? Maybe some can get that done - I'm not one of them.
Reduce them to objects? Heck, they became mere aggregations of login IDs. A collection of ones and zeros.
Infantalize? Well, some were very smart, capable young people. A lot were sorta average, not particularly capable, but they did what they needed to do. In essence, they were gray men and women. But then there were those who did, in truth and in fact, engage in behavior that was best characterized as infantile.
And then we come to the papers. Now, let's think about this - 700 students, 4 papers, 500 words each. That aggregates to 1.4 million words - not counting the final project. Did my grader read that? Ha! Would I (
could I) have read that much? No...neither could nor would.
The project was 1,000 words. So that's 700,000 more words.
Total words for the semester? 2.1 million.
So...read each paper, consider the ideas, make helpful comments, individualize the grading...
My grading procedure, when my grader was overwhelmed, got down to 10 seconds per paper. I would download in batches of 10, open them in word, do a word count, skim the paper for red underlines and to make sure nobody had written "gotcha!" 500 times, then assign a grade, generally 100 if they met the requirements.
I won't say I'm particularly proud of that. But...given the numbers...I didn't see any viable alternative.
And then there's the programming class. Again, some students were very, very smart. Others? (please insert the expletive of choice here.)
I taught the material. Encouraged them to use the free 6 day-per-week tutoring sessions. Gave assignments that connected to tasks on the test. Gave a practice test in class, and discussed each item in detail.
Did I mention that the practice test was exactly the same as the real one, except that the variable names needed to be changed? And the results? A few made 100%. I used a
square root curve. Numerous students got well below 50. Several - who were getting full coverage for tuition, fees, and books, plus a stipend - turned in papers with nothing on them. And by nothing, I mean not so much as a tic-tac-toe game. Nothing. Nada. Zip.
And yet these
worthy scholars deserve to be viewed as something more than infantile objects?
All I can say is, I admire the patience of those who can avoid such reactions.