Today my students are bringing three copies of their first drafts to class for a first round of peer feedback and feedback from me. I just received an email from one student who wrote that his/her printer was out of paper and could I print the draft for him/her?

So individually this isn’t a big deal. But what the heck – I’m not supposed to be a secretary for students, or their mother or something. Imagine when they all expect me to print out their papers for them?

Fortunately I remembered before replying that students can print stuff out here at the University. So I told him/her that he/she could do that.

Was I mean? What would you do?

8 thoughts on “how much should a teacher do?

  1. torill

    Of course not! Unless they want to start running errands for you. Next time try this: “Sure, but can you go and look up this book for me? I need two paragraphs with title, topic and the main references, to see if it’s worth looking into for next year. Should take you about 20 minutes. Just email the paragraphs and I’ll hand you the copies when you get here. I need this today and I don’t have time to run over to the library, as I am printing out student papers.”

  2. Knut

    Mean? Quite not. Just imagine when your student have to 1) get the information on how to transfer money to PayPrint, 2) transfer the paper so it can be accessed on her/his domain on the UiB-network, 3) Goes to UB to print it out, and 4) discover that the printers also have the possibility to scan articles from the journals, encyclopedias etc and send it as .pdf to your mailbox. Which is great, if one want to use articles from printed journals or encyclopedias in future assignments.

    p.s. You should consider asking a student to run some errands for you. If the student has academically ambitions, it would be a great opportunity to learn a couple of things about handling information, finding references, copying articles from journals, cleaning up your EndNote-library etc 🙂

  3. Scullyoslo

    I take it you’re not using Fronter or It’s learning for class assignments? As a teacher in videregÂende skole where all the students have a laptop, all assignments in my classes are to be turned in digitally. For big projects, I tell them to hand in a hardcopy as well. Mostly to make my job easier, as grading papers is still easer to do using the traditional print media.

    More often than not, there will always be some assignments I must print out myself…

  4. Jill

    I love the ideas of asking students to run errands 😉

    Scullyoslo, no, we’re not using LMSes (apart from the Student Portal which is the UiB standard, but mostly just for storing files) – we’re mostly using blogs. For giving people feedback, though I really find paper is best – they’re reading each other’s drafts and commenting them and I’m sure they’ll find that easier to do on paper than on screen…

  5. Leif Harboe

    I thought this was something they stopped asking when they finished upper sec. school. Well, I do such things more often than not. But most of the time I don’t get paper at all. Have been doing assesment on screen for a few years now.

  6. Arvid

    As a teacher in geography in upper secondary school, an LMS (It’s Learning)gives
    me the opportunity to communicate with students I don’t have
    the time to communicate with in a class with 29 persons
    that I meet only once a week.
    Therefore, for giving students feedback, an LMS is a wonderful tool.
    It’s far superiour to paper.

    When it comes to reading and sharing fellow students’ drafts,
    a wiki is probably better than a blog.

    By the way, Jill said: “theyíre reading each otherís drafts and commenting them and Iím sure theyíll find that easier to do on paper than on screenÖ”
    Why is it easier to do it on paper than on screen?

  7. torill

    Because they are sitting in the same room, reading through the papers, taking notes and talking about it? In that scenario paper is still superiour. Not to mention that not all students have or carry with them laptops all the time.

  8. Scott

    I wouldn’t even answer the email.

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