(no subject)

[threemeninaboat]

Hey elusis and any other educator out there:

I'm on hour 9 of a 4 page paper (I'm @ 3.5!).

How long do you expect a 4 page "contrast and compare these two research papers" to take a "normal" senior kid?

Comments

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

infinite, because "normal" senior kids can neither read nor write.

[manintheboat.livejournal.com]

... you have to be able to read and write to get into Regis in the first place...
Maybe not the Traditional Program (although since they only take 200 kids a year, I'd suspect so), but the School of Professional Studies (adults!) yes.

[notquitezeus.livejournal.com]

for what it's worth, for a 6-10 page paper for general purpose consumption (not a tech paper), it would take me about half an hour to an hour to outline a cogent thesis + argument, and anywhere from 2-4 hours to flesh out enough to qualify as a first draft. editing would usually take another 2-4 hours to get to a final draft.

on the other hand, short papers required disproportionately large amounts of effort because they'd start out at 6-10 pages and through painful process get pared down to the absolute bare minimum. then i'd discover that i'd have to get rid of another page or two. this would easily tack on another 4-6 hours of editing effort. so for a 4 page paper, i'd say you're doing rather well.

on the flip side, i can grind out a draft of a tech paper pretty darn quickly (3 odd hours), but that's largely because i hit the math hard and let the equations do my talking. of course, that time goes way up if any pictures / diagrams are required.

[algol.livejournal.com]

It depends on how familiar the topic is and what are the points of contrast/comparison. For myself, if I was doing the paper and it wasn't a chemistry topic or laboratory report, I would give myself around 9 hours to complete it with editing.
As for my students, first years the estimate is 4 hours for a laboratory report and 8-9 hours for a senior laboratory report.

[elusis.livejournal.com]

For me, it would depend on how long and complex the research papers were.

[zleetle.livejournal.com]

about 20 minutes for most of my students because they wouldn't read anything but the title of either paper and would just make crap up based on that.

for someone who actually attempted the assignment, anywhere from 2-3 hours to half a day, depending on all the things mentioned above.