Student Government Senate officials will consider a resolution addressing controversy about Moodle and student participation on Wednesday.Resolution No. 5 — authored by Senators Aaron Caffarel and Meghan Spell — requests Moodle access or participation not affect any graded participation in courses.”Professors are telling students that Moodle is a graded part of the course in participation evaluated in two ways,” said SG Director of Academics Jonathan Walker. “Generally how often you log on to Moodle … and more particularly it is possible to see which students have accessed various features or items on a Moodle page.” Walker said the problem is some students have complained professors use this information to determine some of their class participation grade. Caffarel, University Center for Freshman Year senator, said students are already penalized for not accessing Moodle and students who don’t use Moodle on a regular basis are going to be punished by not learning as much for the test.
“Students who choose not to take advantage of the features available to them … are going to penalized by not learning as much,” Walker said. “They are going to be penalized in various ways that will show up on the test. It is redundant and irresponsible … for professors to take it upon themselves to determine which students are not being the best they can be.” Walker said this method of determining a student’s participation is not ideal because a student can do the assigned activities without accessing Moodle by obtaining a reading from another student who printed it on their account.”We are not cyborgs,” Julia Terese, creative writing sophomore, said. “Moodle use doesn’t necessarily judge your intellectual investment in a class. Participation should be for class discussion.”Saundra McGuire, assistant vice chancellor for learning and teaching, said she does not know of any instructors who use this method in grading, but she said she can understand the reasoning behind it.”I think the motivation on the part of the faculty is getting students the information needed in order to do well in the class,” McGuire said. “So if assigning some points to accessing the Moodle site is a way to do that, then that’s what I think teachers would opt for.”–Contact Xerxes Wilson at [email protected]