Professor Virginia Sapiro (Women's Studies 640)
This course was about leadership. An important part of leadership is taking responsibility for your own actions, holding yourself accountable, and being able to evaluate yourself in a serious, principled way. All students in WS640 should use this form to do self-evaluation that will be fed into their final grade. Please answer the four sets of questions that appear below.
Here is the grade distribution as it appears in the syllabus:
Response papers: 15%
In-class work: 20%
Major Project: 65%
Development stages (consultation, proposal, progress report): 20%.
Comments and responses to colleagues: 5%.
Final presentation: 10%.
Final paper: 30%
- Where do you want the 10% to go?
The final presentation is no longer required, so I am giving you the choice of where to put that 10% of the grade. If you have done a presentation, you can keep that as 10% of your grade. Or you can move that 10% to any other part of the course. You can move it as two 5% pieces (say, 5% more to response papers and 5% more to the development stages of your project) or one 10% piece (have your final paper count 10% more). For people who did a video or poster or something else instead of a paper, those things count as the paper.
- Please evaluate your response papers: (Circle the letter that represents your honest evaluation of your response papers, taking account of the comments I made in response to your responses, then explain why you picked the grade you did):
A: I did my response papers after doing all of the reading, thinking carefully about the issues, and choosing the subject of my response papers thoughtfully. My papers represented learning (that is, they were not just things I could have easily said without doing the reading), and they grappled with important questions or ideas. If someone else read them, that person would be likely to learn something interesting or important from them.
AB: My response papers came pretty close to the mark described above; perhaps one of them was not really up to that standard, but it was pretty good as well.
B: My response papers were based on doing all or most of the reading and they were completely relevant to the issues raised in the readings. They represented learning, but they generally were framed around basically describing the readings without engaging in much critical analysis or they asked fairly simple, standard, or rhetorical questions. Or maybe I had one really great response paper, but the others were pretty standard.
BC: I did quite a lot of the reading and conscientiously wrote my response papers. They were good, as described in the “B” category, but perhaps one was pretty perfunctory. Or at least one of them I just found something to write on, and didn’t really do the readings more extensively for that week. I’m not sure anyone would learn much from them, but they responded to the assignment.
C: I did my response papers, but mostly by doing minimal reading and just finding something to say. Or, they were pretty minimal, mostly brief description or just finding a question to ask without attempting to answer my question (as in, “I noticed the author never talked about X”). Or I did a couple of ok ones and skipped the other. It is unlikely that anyone would learn much from my response papers.
D: I only did one, with no legitimate excuse. Or none of them were really any good; they don’t represent any learning; or, I basically looked at one of the readings pretty briefly and came up with something to hand in just to hand it in. I could have done the response papers without doing the reading.
F: I didn’t even manage that.
Why did you choose the grade you did for your response papers?
- Please evaluate your in-class work, emphasizing your contribution to the class through discussion or other forms of activity and leadership. (Note that the syllabus indicated you were required to participate in a contributory way, not just through silent work.) Use the cards you filled out to help you. Use the rubric you have been using all semester to summarize your grade for the semester:
A: Outstanding Contributor: Contributions in class reflect exceptional preparation. Ideas offered are almost always substantive, provide one or more major insights as well as direction for the class. Challenges are well substantiated and persuasively presented. If I were not a member of the class, the quality of discussion would have been diminished markedly. There may have been one class when I didn’t participate at all, but all of the rest of the time, this paragraph describes my contributions.
AB: The paragraph above describes how I was most of the time.
B: Good Contributor: Contributions in class reflect thorough preparation. Ideas offered are usually substantive, provide good insights and sometimes direction for the class. Challenges are well-substantiated and often persuasive. If I were not a member of the class, the quality of discussion would often have been diminished.
BC: Somewhere in between B and C.
C: Adequate Contributor: Contributions in class reflect satisfactory preparation. Ideas offered are sometimes substantive, provide generally useful insights but seldom offer a new direction for the discussion. Most of my interventions were pretty basic questions (or perhaps I almost always asked pretty much the same question regardless of what was going on) that were worth asking, but didn’t add a lot. If I were not a member of the class, the quality of discussion would be diminished somewhat sometimes.
F: Unsatisfactory Contributor: Contributions in class reflect inadequate preparation. Ideas offered are seldom substantive, provide few if any insights and never a constructive direction for the class. Integrative comments and effective challenges are absent. If this person were not a member of the class, valuable air-time would be saved.
For those who were usually Non-Participants: For all of you, if you were not a member of the class, the quality of discussion would not have been changed. But consider these differences:
If you were usually a non-participant and you hadn’t done much preparation for classes, observed what was going on mostly passively, took few or no notes, often found your mind wandering, and didn’t get much out of it OR you missed three or more classes without a legitimate excuse, the best you can give yourself for this component of the course is a D.
If you were usually a non-participant but you were well-prepared for the classes, were mentally very active in the course, thought a lot about what was going on, took notes regularly, thought about questions you would have liked to ask if you were braver, the best you can give yourself for this component of the course is a BC. Judge what to give yourself on how active you were mentally, how prepared, your note-taking, etc.
Please grade yourself and explain your grade:
- Evaluate yourself on the developmental stages of your project. You can give yourself an A if you have really treated this like a major course project for the semester. For example, if you have been working on it since before spring break in a serious way and have put in a lot of effort and have done a lot of good research or other appropriate work, this is work you can be proud of. At the other end of the scale (failing to engage in the developmental stages) would be those who haven’t really seriously settled into a topic yet or otherwise don’t have much idea what you are doing and will be doing the vast majority of the work for your project between now and when it is due. If you haven’t made serious inroads into the work for your paper yet you should not give yourself more than a D for the developmental stages, even if you had the required consult and handed in the required reports.
Evaluate the developmental stages of your project and explain your evaluation: