After the disastrous essays, the students needed to write a formal test in two hours' time. I am busy marking these papers now, and somehow the information dropped into the right buckets. That is, the students actually studied for the test from the early impressions I am getting. However, I am seeing a trend: a lot of the answers are the same.
Recently, students have begun to gravitate toward WhatsApp groups. Each subject or module has its own group. These groups are incredibly aggressive and militaristic. The students act as a hive mind and decide amongst themselves that they, for example, should get extensions on deadlines and that they deserve more marks. As a lecturer, I am very wary and scared of these groups. Long ago, I was part of them when I was a teacher's assistant, but I soon left them.
My emails got screenshotted and shared on these groups.
My classes are discussed extensively on these groups.
I will not be surprised if my classes are recorded and shared in these groups.
But what I know happens in these groups is that class notes and summary notes are sold. Rather than attend classes, the students buy "star student's" notes and study them. And that is why so many people who answer my tests now have similar answers: because I know they used students' summaries.
Why do I know this? Because the answers are not 100% correct, but almost there. The work somehow conforms to the articles from where they should have studied, and they are almost similar to the class notes. But I can see from the way they answered they had a similar source, and this source's information is not 100% the same as my own or the original source.
Is this a good thing? It means that the students are studying and paying money to pass the test, but why do they not attend the classes? It is funny how these class notes actually produce more problems. It produces problems such as compounding mistakes getting reproduced over and over again. Luckily for the students who used the particular student's class notes, she or he had the right ideas and information. As noted, the answer is somewhat correct. And after the essays, the students needed some hope to pass the module.
But now I am driven to whisky to rid myself of this module for the moment. My brain is again turned into mush and my other work is getting further behind. I still need to write a paper for a conference in July, my Ph.D. is a chapter and a half behind, and I have a peer review paper that will arrive any day that needs attention regarding edits I need to make. This does not include the articles I want to write. Life is about choices, you cannot do everything.
In any case, I hope you are well and that you are a little bit more productive than I am. All of the photographs used in this post are my own. The musings are also my own. Happy reading and stay safe!