If You Decided You Wanted to Do the Extra Credit for the Practice Essay – and Understand How Profs and Bosses Will Interpret Your Work

If you want to read and hear why the instructor grades as she does (and why it is in your interests), click here.

If you want to read and hear how this grading applies to this class, click here.

If you want, hear what’s written below:

What Everyone Must Have to Begin

  1. You need Blackboard open to this link for the instructions so you can see them as you work.

 

  1. You need either to be able to see the rubric I sent you or a print of it (recommended).

 

  1. Your required textbook - The American Passages by Ayers. (Details on the ISBN etc. are in the syllabus.)

 

  1. To create a print copy and to do the fileyou will email to me, you need a digital copy of:
    a. The question/topic Blackboard asked you
    b. The answer you entered in Blackboard

 

If you don’t know how to do this, here are the basic steps: click on Quizzes & Exams, click on your submitted Practice Essay, and follow the prompts to choose to see what you submitted (usually clicking on OK in the right corner). Then copy and paste the question and your answer into a file.

 

Ideally you need a word processor that will let you:

·         Strike through (Strike through looks like this.)

·         Underline (Underline looks like this.)


If you don’t have one, I can tell you how to use an awkward one in Blackboard. If you need more help getting the file, just ask.

 

 

  1. Based on prior experience with students, you need to make a print copy to work on so you are accurate if you need to.

o    Strike through (Strike through looks like this.)

o     Underline (Underline looks like this.)

  1. Based on prior experience with students, you need to lay your work out the way I lay your work out when I grade.

 

Put your book and what you wrote side by side so you can compare them easily. I have found touching the words on each one very helpful in making myself observe carefully. If you are left handed, you may want to reverse the pattern;

·         With the textbook on the left

·         What you wrote on the right.

 

The source turned to the exact page you were using or should have been using for the content

 

t

 

The topic displayed in Blackboard

 

What you wrote for your Practice Essay

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  1. Some of you used the wrong pages of the textbook for the facts for time period of the question you were supposed to answer. I’ve copied those pages

 

 

Figuring Out What You Need to Do

This shows a page I showed by students in face-to-face classes so they knew what to do with the copies of their Practice Essays. Now your essay may have color highlights in green for an “A” or “B” or “C” Paper and also have some things marked the “D” Paper and “F” Paper columns. Underlining (by hand here but digitally in your rubric) tells you the specifics for your paper. For the definitions of terms used (such as cherry-pick, click on Essay Topics and to the 2nd item—the definitions.

 

If I underlined any of the words circled in

·         blue for a “D” Paper Criteria or an “F” Paper Criteria on your rubric, then you compare side by side

What (and How) You Will Submit to Me When You Are Done (Sooner the Better)

1.     Now that you have figured out what you did, you can do your strike through and your underlining in a word processing program that you know how to use.

2.     When you are done, you click on my email when I sent you the rubric, click Reply, and copy and paste what was in your file into the Blackboard message.

3.     I will then get back to you and tell you

·         EITHER that we must talk more because I fear you misunderstand something that will make you unnecessarily unsafe (and lets talk ASAP)

·         OR that I think you are safe as is and I will enter the 10 points

 

 

Copyright C. J. Bibus, Ed.D. 2003-2013

 

WCJC Department:

History – Dr. Bibus

Contact Information:

281.239.1577 or bibusc@wcjc.edu

Last Updated:

2013

WCJC Home:

http://www.wcjc.edu/