Wednesday, November 09, 2011

Lie To Me If You Have To

I have a very, very, very large stack of grading to do for my once-a-week seminar class. Today is the last day of class, in which 8/17 of the students will be giving presentations (9/17 went last time). Course grades are based on the presentation (25%), pre-presentation written work of a proposal and bibliography (25%), participation (25%), and group work (25%).

After today I have no opportunity to see the students as a group in person ever again. I have not graded the on-paper work (bibliographies).

I told the students that I'd post preliminary course grades by tomorrow (once I've evaluated today's crop of presentations).

It would be OK if I posted cumulative course grades on Blackboard without any indication of how the four components contributed to the grade if I emailed the students (1) telling them that anyone who wants to know more detail can come and talk to me and (2) giving general feedback on the work as a whole ("While overall the bibliographies were excellent, the most common mistake was…")? Right?

Please?

Plus this is a seminar course with a fairly generous extra-credit bribe worth up to a whole letter grade.