Would you/ how would you respond to this email?

[GameOldBirdz]

Students received their marks on Friday.

They had to do two pieces of work.

Student emailed to say he was "baffled" (his words) by the marks as he'd received a lower mark for the piece of work which was "by far the higher quality piece of work" (his words again)

There's no question in the email so nothing to directly respond to IYSWIM.

Would you respond to this email? If so, what the fuck would you say without using the words "jumped up little tosser"?

I'm leaning towards just not bothering to respond as ultimately I don't give a fuck if he's "baffled"

Yeah, that would be such a nightmare.

Honestly it works fine, we had no requests in 15-16 at all. Most are cleared up when students meet with staff. Marks can go down.

So students who fail do not automatically ask for a remark? Nor the ones that are high 2:1s within a hair's breath of a first? I am flabbergasted!

Our students ask for remarks even though there is a blanket no-remarking policy, and they're all regularly told there is a no-remarking policy! (As Booboostwo, they can appeal the marking process, but not a mark itself).

Well sometimes they ask in the heat of the moment but to actually follow through with it is rare. I know, I was surprised too initially

That's interesting.

Oh god, I can't believe how huge this thread has got.

Thanks for all your contributions.

Yes, some of you are completely right, the email got under my skin and I got even more pissed off because I'd allowed it to get under my skin. And on a Sunday morning of all times!

What pissed me off was not only the tone (the student saying he's "baffled" with no actual question or details) but, more so, his statement that one piece of work was higher quality than the other (it clearly wasn't because otherwise I'd have marked it higher and he gives no evidence of why he thinks this is the case).

To clarify, he'd had extensive feedback annotated on to the pieces of work and a lengthy summary with key positive points and key points for improvement.

I care deeply about most of my students, I put lots of time into marking and giving supportive feedback, I'm approachable and friendly. I expect the same level of respect and courtesy back from students but it's not often forthcoming.

Anyhow, email sent yesterday basically restating his feedback.

Fucking hell. There's a reason that when many of us get a chair we try to do as little teaching as possible

I love teaching - I had a chair which increasingly made me disconnected from teaching, so I moved jobs to a chair where I could reconnect with teaching. I've taught for 30 years in 3 countries in around 7 universities - I still love seeing that moment when a student gets it in front of you - or when they start really engaging with each other's ideas in a seminar discussion. It's lovely!

But I despair at the passive but demanding behaviour of some students. My following comments are about some, not all, students. They have a lot too much power in the system nowadays - power that they often don't think about exercising responsibly. If they engaged with us, thought through some of the demands, listened to why we do things the way we do, it might be better. In my discipline, we do very well as teachers - and we have a good collective body of wisdom about best practice.

What would be great about the current "customer" model is if students would take their responsibilities seriously, and think about/reflect on their education, rather than the kind of child-like demands. I wish they would think about their agency, but the school system infanyilises them while appearing to empower them - it's a faux kind of empowerment, though, because it's driven by marks & grades, rather than self-development. I do wish we could go back to the German notion of Bildung in HE: von Humboldt's ideas about HE being a period of self-cultivation when you try to become the best you can be, by exposure to, and engagement with, the most challenging ideas in your discipline. Mind expanding ...

Nimble I'm not as senior as you are but I completely agree with you.

I love teaching. I'm being pushed for promotion ATM with one of the benefits being presented as me eventually being able to move away from the classroom. That's not something I see as a benefit. I love teaching polite, articulate, engaged, well-read students who are up for a discussion, who challenge my beliefs and who have an appetite for self-growth.

Unfortunately, these students are in the minority and increasingly students are only interested in how to get the best grades. Every year I argue that those students who read independently, argue, think, discuss and challenge are those who will get the best grades but it doesn't seem to get through.

Those students who are rude, entitled, make demands, question expertise etc. can really ruin the teaching experience and, I agree, have far too much power.

To be honest I was baffled by some of the marks I got as a postgrad. I never said so- what was the point?- but even after sitting down with the assignments, feedback and mark schemes I still felt very confused as to why one piece of work was marked at 82 and another at 57. That's such a huge difference and I genuinely didn't see 25 marks difference in quality between the two. They'd been marked by different people, but each mark had been ratified by a second marker so there can't have been issues with either marker's assessment. What may seem obvious to an experienced lecturer is not always going to be obvious to a student.

But why wouldn't you ask about it, all?

Asking for help understanding feedback, when you have gone and looked at the mark schemes, is worlds away from what the student in the OP did.

alltouchedout I don't mind at all when students ask me to go through their marks with them to clarify things. You're absolutely right that marking comes easy with experience but can be confusing for students.

When students send a polite email with specific questions and ask for a meeting, I have no problem with that. I will make time in my diary, read through their work beforehand and meet with them. Most of my colleagues would.

I don't know why I didn't ask- I suppose I just thought well, they know what they're doing! I was a mature student when I dd my MA and far from that making me ome of the annoying, arrogant ones (and there were plenty on my course), I found that I was a lot more reasonable about the fact that there would be times that I would do well and times I would not- and also more willing to accept that my lecturers knew their job. I didn't mean my post to sound as if I was backing your student up, by the way- just wanted to add in that it can be really hard when you're not a lecturer to understand why marks can vary so much.

alltouchedout I completely understand, I didn't read it that way at all. I completely appreciate that it's sometimes hard to make sense of marks which is why I don't mind at all when students come for clarification. It's the way that most students do it which grates.

Oh, I follow you all.

I think that's true for all of us - not knowing why one thing does well and another doesn't. On my facebook, a professor in my discipline recently started a comment thread about bewildering rejections for papers - how sometimes someone rips to shreds a paper you thought was fine, and other times you're fairly sure something less good has been rewarded.

I found it reassuring that so many people still had these experiences.

About the Professor corrected by a PG. I am thinking early 1960s when Plate Tectonics was finally accepted. But that toppled some very established research. Other scientific Revolutions that happened in a similar way.

well - that's an interesting thread to discover at the WE!

Not so much for the academic rant - that's why most of us come on this thread - but more so for the "outside views".

I still struggle with the concept of parents as stakeholders in the DC's uni experience. But I had the luxury of studying thanks to gov grants and minimal to no cost to my parents...