A Lot of Homework Isn’t Even Graded for Accuracy

by Justin Skycak on

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A lot of teachers just don’t even grade homework anymore.

I mean, I remember lots of students that I tutor. Basically, the story was they’d get their assignment, they’d start working on it.

And there’d be parts where they’re not really sure what to do, but they’d just write something down, just YOLO something, because they know it doesn’t actually matter.

They just gotta get some words on the page, even if it’s wrong.

And I’d be like, “But hold up, that’s not quite right. There’s some issues here that we probably should go over.”

And then I’d realize in the process of going over these issues with them, their problem is not just that they’re struggling with this material that was assigned.

They have knowledge gaps dating back weeks, months, years.

They don’t know how to do the component skills ‘cause those things were never graded for accuracy.

They just get in the habit of writing something down, however wrong it is. It doesn’t matter.

You just upload something that looks like you made an attempt, that you tried.

So that’s the game: just can you write something on the paper and upload it to Canvas? That is the bar. So low.

Not whether it’s correct or not, just did you upload it?

So now we kind of got this shit show where a lot of students are lacking foundational skills in large part because their assignments were never checked.

If you’re not checking whether those foundational skills are there, don’t be surprised when it turns out they’re not.

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