Why Students (Rarely) Ask Me For Extra Credit

Over the weekend, I put the final touches on my course syllabi. I have three this semester: Introduction to Film, Introduction to Film DL (distance learning), and Critical Approaches to Cinema. One part of syllabus-creating that I actually look forward to is figuring out which films my students will watch should they choose to participate in my extra credit assignments.

Every film student — whether in my lecture-based class of 130 or in my Film Noir class of 13 — has the opportunity to earn at least 24 bonus points during the semester if they watch a designated feature-length film. For example, here’s the assignment for this semester’s Intro to Film students:

Extra Credit Opportunities

For anyone who wants to screen in their entirety the following films, extra-credit opportunities will be available at the end of each exam (up to 24 points total). Specifically, students will answer questions about a specific scene or scenes from the assigned film as well as 1-2 questions about the film’s significance to the course content.

NOTE: Students must answer ALL extra-credit questions appropriately to receive credit, which means that they MUST screen the ENTIRE movie; reading a summary of the film will NOT work here.

Exam 1: The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974): sound/sound design
Exam 2: Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli, 1944): genre
Exam 3: Thelma and Louise (Ridley Scott, 1991): gender and film

Each of these films is on a two-hour reserve in the Multimedia section of the UT library (3^rd floor). Reserve info: http://www.utoledo.edu/library/find/reserves.html. Finally, all students have the opportunity to earn bonus points. Please do not approach the instructor at the end of the semester for additional extra-credit opportunities.

Finally, all students have the opportunity to earn bonus points. Please do not approach the instructor at the end of the semester for additional extra-credit opportunities.

Easy enough, right? Watch, take notes, answer questions, earn bonus points. Sadly, out of 120 students, about 10 usually participate. I mean really, who wouldn’t want to watch Thelma and Louise on their own time? What fodder for contemplating onscreen representations of gender! But I digress… Here’s a sample set of questions on Chaplin’s The Gold Rush from my Cinema History class.

You’ll notice that the first couple of questions ask students to discuss the setting, plot, and characters — just general information about the scene depicted. Sometimes students who have read only a summary of the film can halfway answer these questions (incidentally, their favorite go-to site is filmsite.org). The answers aren’t solid, but they’re hard to mark incorrectly.

However, when it comes time for students to respond to the final two questions — which require them to apply to the film what we have learned in class about the style of Chaplin (and Keaton), they often have trouble and cannot not answer. At this point, it is quite clear that the student has not screened the film in its entirety (and has probably not digested the in-class lecture/discussion on American silent comedy). And if they cannot answer all of the questions with some amount of detail and solid examples, they will not, as the directions indicate, receive full credit.

But again, the students know this going in, just as they know that these are the only bonus opportunities that they will get. As a result, at the end of the semester, my Inbox remains clear of emails whose subject lines plead “What Can I Do to Earn Extra Credit?” It is, however, still filled with several that ask “Hey, Grades Posted Yet?” Yeah, I’ve yet to discover a way to avoid those…

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