Whats the point of official critique, when its copy-paste? lol.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtFundamentals/comments/11ssg8f/whats_the_point_of_official_critique_when_its/
2023-03-16 12:16
kufel33
Hey, we are trying to help you fund this wonderful course by monthly payments - one of the profits of subscription was - as i Heard - constructive, official critique.
But whats the point of it when your teaching assistant Rob just copy paste wall of text in every single homework that is posted?
Thats not critique.
We can read that before posting homework, not even a single word is changed. Answers are same in ALL of the homeworks.
Other teaching assistant have their own copy paste.
Uncomfortable
2023-03-16 13:17
This is something we're extremely upfront about, as explained here in the Lesson 0 video that explains how official critique works: https://youtu.be/nBjTGvpd-q8?t=463 . The link is time-stamped to the specific section where I explain how it works.
Drawabox is able to function because students tend to make the same kinds of mistakes. They fall into set categories, and there isn't a ton of variance involved. This allows our TAs to create their own libraries of prewritten chunks of text that they can then piece together based on their analysis of a student's work. Meaning, the information they're given is specific to the tendencies and issues they themselves exhibit.
Even in the screenshots you showed, they aren't identical - the first and third call out the alignment of the funnels with the minor axis, the second addresses the student's tendency to hesitate, resulting in a wobbly line, and the fourth suggests that the student widens the degree of their ellipses as they move towards the ends of the funnel.
And of course these are limited crops of longer critiques, so there are likely other differences and variations. Really the only part that is consistently identical is the introductory paragraph.
We do everything we can to keep the price of one-on-one student specific feedback as low as we can - including paying our TAs quite a bit more than our students pay to receive that same feedback. Meaning, we take a loss by offering critiques, and so using prewritten text where able, we streamline the process and bring those costs down. TAs still do have to write explanations and answers to questions on the spot while writing their critiques, but the prewritten stuff helps save a lot of time (allowing them to allocate their time where it's needed most) while continuing to give students exactly what they need.
If you'd prefer that the teaching assistants labour over every word, typing it all out a little differently each time, and that they receive a sub-minimum hourly wage for their skilled labour, then you may want to patronize a different resource. Here however we encourage TAs to maximize their efficiency as long as the student gets the advice and information they need to progress meaningfully.
[deleted]
2023-03-16 14:45
[deleted]
kufel33
2023-03-16 15:09
You are 100% correct, i have totall missed the part where Uncomfortable openly said about critique being somewhat prewritten.