mckeeman@wivax.UUCP (01/03/84)
I recommend a separation of concerns. Grades attempt to linearize a multidimensional, nearly unmeasurable quantity. UC Santa Cruz did one thing right: it allowed the instructor all of the Power of English to give the grade, which permitted such things as "clearly understood the important concepts... "was unable to demonstrate knowledge in an exam situation... "an excellent lab technician, and colleague... and whatever else the instructor was able to write. Effect #1. Students do not come and argue about their grades. Effect #2. Students are willing to help each other. Effect #3. Reduced anxiety in giving grades (no invidious choices). Effect #4. (Somewhat) more work for the instructor. Effect #5. Some graduate schools will not admit gradeless students. And so on. The avoidance of a numerical or letter grade elevates the discussion of grading to levels where motivation, equity, ethics, and style show through. There is, incidentally, an enormous body of discussion/knowledge on this topic resident in the UCSC campus, in memos, minutes and memories. /s/ Bill McKeeman, Wang Institute
budd@arizona.UUCP (tim budd) (01/03/84)
It is difficult to convince students that they are not in competition
with one another. I always tell my classes that if they all deserve A's (ie,
they all learn what I think they should learn) they will all get A's. They
are not in competition with each other. Nevertheless, I have had troubles.
One semester I announced at the beginning of the class that grades would be
based on an average of three prelims and a final. When time came to hand out
grades, I agonized over several borderline cases - including some individuals
who had done generally well on all exams but one. So I recalculated grades
based on dropping the lowest prelim, and found a few (very few) grades shifted.
So then I decided the fairest thing would be to give each student the HIGHEST
of the two grades.
Well, it then turned out that some students got B's with lower overall
averages than students who got C's. One of the students stuck in the middle
(with a C) heard of this and came in to complain. His argument was that I
was not being true to my original word. My argument was that HE got the grade
he was going to get anyway, he was not in competition with this other student,
and overall (with the exception of one exam) I thought the other student was
better.
Based on this experience, my policy now is to NOT announce how grades
will be calculated - I want to reserve my right to weight different exams
differently or take extenuating circumstances into account. Nevertheless,
at any time any student can come to me and ask what their current overall
average is (ie, if I were handing out grades at that time what they would
get). This gives students the information they want without tying my
hands too tightly. I'm not sure I like this, but grades seem to be a large
evil anyway and this seems to be the lesser of many many evils.mwolf@yale-com.UUCP (Anne G. Wolf) (01/03/84)
Grades should be a means, not an end.
-------------------------------------
1. The Purpose of a Course
I think that a course should have only one goal, to arrange things
so that the students learn the material taught in the course. For those
who believe that the particular material in certain courses will become
out-of-date in the near future, I could change the purpose to giving
students practice in acquiring knowledge of a certain kind (on the
assumption that the experience of learning one thing now will assist a
student in learning something else in the future). However, I don't
think that this distinction is very important.
It is also not important whether the effort comes mostly from the
students or mostly from the person teaching the course. It is just
important that the information be transferred one way or another.
2. The Purpose of Grades
Grades help learning in two ways. The grades given during the
course give the students a way to tell the extent to which they have
been successful in learning the material. The final grade is an
incentive for students to do whatever is necessary to learn the
material, even when it is not fun.
I think it is a great shame if people constrain what they teach or
what they ask students to do because of grades. Grades should be a
means not an end. Grades should not impede learning. When they do,
they are being used in the wrong way.
3. How I Wish People Would Teach
3a. Making Students' Obligations Clear
Although I am an undergraduate, and I have yet to teach a course, I
strongly agree with people who say that a professor or instructor should
make clear at the beginning what the students' obligations are and how
success in meeting those obligations will be judged. Let me also
suggest that any assignment should always be attempted by a professor,
instructor, or TA, before being given to the students, so that
impossible or unexpectedly difficult assignments are avoided, and the
assignment does not have to be changed shortly before the due-date,
because of questions raised by the students who are trying to finish it.
(This last problem is the reason why most students don't start
assignments until the last minute.)
3b. How Much Work Should Students Do?
Another thing that I wish people teaching courses would consider
more often when decided what students are obligated to do is that most
students take 4 or 5 courses at once. Students must divide their time
between courses. Thus, if each of five courses has an assignment each
week which takes as little as eight hours to complete (and that is not a
large assignment by the standards of most courses I have taken) this
means that students already have the equivalent of a full-time job in
addition to the lectures, labs, and whatever part-time work they may
have to do to pay for their education. When considering whether an
assignment is too much to finish, find out how long it will take by
attempting it yourself (or getting someone else to attempt it), then
allow for the lack of expertise on the part of students, then multiply
by the average number of courses which students take. It is unrealistic
to assume that students will fail all of their other courses for the
sake of yours, and yet, many people teach as though their course were
the only one.
Think about it.
Mary-Anne Wolf (decvax!yale-comix!mwolf)spuhler@hplabs.UUCP (Tom Spuhler) (01/04/84)
Lance Norskog was correct in that UCSC( University of California, Santa
Cruz ) had no "grades", but that is not to say that there wasn't an
evaluation system. UCSC has NES ( Narrative Evaluation System ) which
means that, as Bill McKeeman described, that an English language
descriptive evaluation was given. These tended to be from a few lines
to a half page of text that 1) described the course content, 2) the
student's performance in that course. I found these much more useful
then a simple letter grade. ( I had both in college ).
There were the effects that Dr. McKeeman did describe however, a major
problem was that there was no Grade Point Average for graduate schools
and prospective employers to plug into their formulas, and reading all
those evaluations was too much work. Another problem was the sometimes
uneven quality of the evaluations; they went from a 1 line "average, good
excellent" type, to a half page of prose, describing in detail ones
performance. Dr. McKeeman, as I recall, wrote reasonable evaluations.
--
__
Tom Spuhler
UUCP: hplabs!spuhler
CSNET: spuhler@hp-labs
HPMAIL: tom spuhler/hp1900/01myunive@nsc.UUCP (Jay Zelitzky) (01/05/84)
........ Like Lance I attended UC Santa Cruz. I want to clear up one point Lance made. UCSC does indeed not have grades. They do have written evaluations of your performance in a class. You get an evaluation that is anywhere from a paragraph to several pages long of what you did in that class. Computer Science classes there are otherwise fairly similar to those elsewhere complete with exams and projects. There is a greater tendency of professors there to assign group projects. There is also a very strong group spirit there. Students in all classes tend to work together since there is very little competition. Students from Santa Cruz rarely have trouble finding jobs as most employers find evaluations much more valuable than grades in finding out the suitability of people to work there. For those who wonder how UC Santa Cruz can continue to exist in this society without grades. It has never given grades since it first opened in the early 60's. It is a school of 7000 students in the University of California system. It was a haven for me and remains a haven for people like me who value learning for its own sake. Jay Zelitzky hplabs!menlo70!nsc!myunive
bcn@mit-eddie.UUCP (Clifford Neuman) (01/07/84)
At MIT, a student's Freshman year is pass/fail. This is done in an
attempt to aid students in transitioning to an environment that is more
difficult than most of them are used to. I think it also tends to
reduce competition, even in future years when the students are on
grades. In place of grades, the students get evaluations in the middle,
and at the end of each term. The evaluation has two parts: the
student's own evaluation of his performance, and the instructor's.
Students are expected to evaluate their own performance, and submit the
evaluation to their instructor, who then makes an evaluation, usually
emphasizing the areas that the student brought up. It is also possible
for a student to find out how he would have done in a course if he did
receive grades. I made it a point to do so in order to have some idea
of how I would do in future years. (I wish they weren't pass/fail, as
that was my best year).
In one course I took (not pass/fail anymore) the grade was based on two
take home exams, and a paper. When the first exam was handed back, the
professor told the students that if they felt any grade was not
indicative of there understanding of the material that they should speak
to him, and that emphasis in grading could be shifted to the other
assignments.
In another course, exams presented a problem AND a step by step method
to solve the problem. This made it possible to give problems that were
much harder (well, they would have been if the method were not
included). Additionally, the exams were open book which took emphasis
off memorization. I found the exams to be very good and one would
actually learn a fair amount of material just by taking the exam. For
an exam like this, cramming the night before the test did not do much
good, and it was necessary to have kept up with the material as it was
presented.
Clifford Neuman
BCN@MIT-MC.ARPA
{decvax!genrad,ihnp4}!mit-eddie!bcn.UUCP