I'm not teaching introductory news writing this semester, but I will be this summer and next fall. One of my rules for this class is that students who make factual errors in a story automatically receive an F (50 percent credit). I used to give an automatic zero, but I changed my policy a couple of years ago. Some students complain about the automatic F policy. Over the years, however, I've noticed that the good students learn a lot from their mistakes. I've had more than a few students who commented on this at evaluation time. The comments usually read something like this: I was angry when I got an F on my paper for misspelling a name, but I learned never to do that again!
Introductory news writing is a 200-level class at UNC, which means it's sophomore level. When I teach 300- and 400-level classes, I use a different grading policy. I take off one letter grade for each factual error. Maybe I should change this policy so all classes are equal. Any suggestions?
Speaking of mistakes, if you haven't seen Regret the Error yet, you have to check it out. I think my students would get a kick out of it. I do worry about showing students sites like these for the following reason: Students might think that if major news organizations make terrible mistakes, why should we get punished? After all, we are just students. I guess my answer is that if you get punished now, in school, where only a grade is at stake, you are less likely to make a big mistake later that might cost you your job.
2 comments:
I think that the grading policy is fine. In fact, it helped me to always make sure I got names spelled correctly. I've heard and seen them all for my name: Kobayoshi, Kobayaahi, Kobayusha, Koyashi, Kobeshi.
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