Since for many people my assessment of the convincingness of the midyear learning reflection determined the midterm mark, it may be worth explaining again how I do that assessment. All the reflections are available on the Moodle site, and you can easily read a range of them to see some of the context. If your mark disappointed you, it may help to read my explanation, below, of the process I go through to make my assessment. I begin by assuming that every reflection is a potential A, and look for evidence to support that. In this case, I rarely found it.

You need to be aware, as you go through the process, that in this course "failing" (doing worse than you hoped) is not a final verdict; it's an opportunity to learn. The midterm mark is an indication of what you've learned -- and been able to document -- so far; it's not half (or some other percentage) of a final mark. If you missed completing lots of tasks in the first term, those consequences remain -- but by engaging in the second term's work it's quite possible to have enough learning to report in April to write a learning reflection that will earn a mark you're happy with.

So, slightly streamlined, here's how to read your own learning reflection and compare it with others.

First, I go through and strike out passages which are not relevant to the learning identified in the general statement about the aims of the course in the course introduction. Specifically:

• I cross out all evaluations of the course or my teaching, good or bad: there will be a place for that, in the course evaluation process, but if you're assessing your learning it's not relevant;
• I cross out general expressions of enthusiasm about how much the writer has learned or how hard she's worked;
• I cross out general statements of things the writer thinks or now knows about language, research, theatre, reading fiction and journalism, etc., which don't refer to how those ideas developed through experiences in the course;
• I cross out general statements of change of attitude or skill without specifics ("I am now a much better critical thinker");
• I cross out summaries of what the writer or the class has done unless they are specifically tied to learning;

• the learning is tied to a particular, concrete experience -- of reading something, writing something, talking with someone, finding something online.
• the learning is clearly definable ("I learned that I should trust my own responses when reading; if I think something is crazy, it probably is, but since the text is reliable, perhaps the madness is purposeful") and attributed to an experience
• evidence is offered that the learning has changed the writer's behavior -- for instance, evidence (a quote is good) of what was said earlier contrasted with what the writer would say now (again, quoting is effective)
  
• there's a kind or method or result of learning that is a surprise to me, and which I think is relevant to what this course is attempting to help people achieve

• the nature and range of varieties of writing and how it relates to readers (and vice versa)
  
• how an idea or understanding learned in one context was extended into another
• deepening your own abilities, about things like writing for different audiences and engaging in structured discussions
• methods and strategies of learning and working toward understanding (asking useful questions, for example), tied to particular experiences

Finally, I reread the printouts looking for any possible excuse to raise a mark. I look, this time, for indications that the writer could have produced evidence of learning, though she didn't in fact do it. I consider that I probably didn't make myself clear enough about how the reflection should at least take into account my suggestions about constructing a synthesis. I raise some of the marks. At this point I reread the reflections of the people who have been mentioned more than a couple of times by others as having contributed to their learning (this term, there were extremely few such references); if there is some doubt about a final evaluation of a reflection, I give that person the higher possibility.

All this allows me to make the following range of judgments:

• I don't see evidence here that would allow me to make any alteration in a mark generated by sheer participation; thus, a minimum mark would not be changed
• I see evidence here of learning that is, according to the definition in the university calendar, of C level; if so, a mark lower than C, or the absence of any mark, generated by sheer participation, would be raised to C
• I see evidence of learning that matches the calendar descriptions of work meriting a B or an A, and the same thing would apply; a minimum mark that was lower than that would give way to the higher mark.