I don't see how someone can give a student a "C" for meeting all of the requirements. To me, if you do everything that you were supposed to, you should get an "A". If that professor wants more than his guidelines in order to get a perfect score, he should raise the difficulty of his guidelines, not penalize his students for doing what he asked them to do.
I agree with Ben. I think it's just wrong for the normal grade to be a C. Even if it's to teach the students a lesson, it's not fair to the students who are hopefully at least doing the required work. If doing the required work and doing it correctly landed me a C, I would be PISSED. Yeah, so I agree with Ben.
I also tend to agree with Ben. I think this problem is rooted deeply, and the grading system needs a major re-vamp in general. So much of one's grade depends on the teacher. Letter grades bother me, I'll be okay though...
This is a great discussion. I agree and disagree. I agree with everyone that if you meet the requirements of the assignment/class, you should not get a C. Although a C, technically, means that you've done an "average" job, I think that if you do the work and you do the work well, you should get at least a B, if not higher. Where I disagree is that if you do everything that you were suppose to do, you should get an A. In my mind, an A is only giving to work of exceptional quality. A student can work really hard on the letter writing exercise and still get a B, if the way the letter is writing does not go above and beyond the guidelines. Does that make sense? Many of you did stellar work on this last project and the grades were all As and Bs!
I also agree with Jake. There does need to be a complete revamping of the system, but I don't see that happening anytime soon. Why do you think we have this structure? Why do we keep it if it doesn't work? Is there anyway in our classroom (WR121K), we could do grades differently and still be able to meet the school requirements? Also, would you prefer number grades as outlined in that student essay we read awhile back and did the sample descriptive outline of? So, is getting a "B" better or getting an 87?
I think the real problem is that different teachers have a different understanding of what the letter grades mean. To one teacher, an "A" is only given out if you go way above and beyond the required work. To some, it is given out if all of the requirements have been completed and completed well. Like Jake said, a huge part of your grade depends on what your instructor feels that grade means. I agree with re-structuring the grading system, and assigning specific definitions for each letter grade.
I agree with Kat. Certainly, an 87% is better than a "B." I mean...look, I don't even know what the hell a "B" is! Any answer you give will be different than another person -- It's not a quantifiable amount.
I can't think of a way to do Research Writing grades better, but still fitting the requirements.
I'm not even sure if we need to have grades at all. I'm paying to go to school so that I can learn. I can do that without a GPA. Sure tests are important, but they should be important to ME that I do well for other reasons than satisfying a grade. Having no grades would induce a near-stress free environment, and probably eliminate cheating. If I don't study and do well on a test it just means I'm wasting my money and should try harder. I don't need a letter dancing in front of me. There would still have to be some sort of standard so that one could earn a degree. But maybe the actual piece of paper is not important either as long as you've learned enough. Obviously all of these shifts would be major and effect many things. I'm not sure it would work, but I have seen strong arguments advocating a no grade system of some sort.
In response to Joel's comment- no. I don't know much about the grading in Japan or Germany. But I know that the school system there- not even the higher education system, I'm talking elementary school- is so much harder and more thorough than America. I feel like sometimes we forget that it's rare, in comparison to the rest of the world's customs to have a summer vacation, or weekends even. With that being said, I feel like American students, myself completely included, often take our educational customs for granted. So, in response to this article, the high standard for grading may seem a little steep for us, if applied to colleges in other countries, students wouldn't question working harder to achieve better grades, or even transcending their professors' expectations for grading.
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10 comments:
I don't see how someone can give a student a "C" for meeting all of the requirements. To me, if you do everything that you were supposed to, you should get an "A". If that professor wants more than his guidelines in order to get a perfect score, he should raise the difficulty of his guidelines, not penalize his students for doing what he asked them to do.
I agree with Ben.
I think it's just wrong for the normal grade to be a C. Even if it's to teach the students a lesson, it's not fair to the students who are hopefully at least doing the required work. If doing the required work and doing it correctly landed me a C, I would be PISSED.
Yeah, so I agree with Ben.
I also tend to agree with Ben.
I think this problem is rooted deeply, and the grading system needs a major re-vamp in general. So much of one's grade depends on the teacher. Letter grades bother me, I'll be okay though...
This is a great discussion. I agree and disagree. I agree with everyone that if you meet the requirements of the assignment/class, you should not get a C. Although a C, technically, means that you've done an "average" job, I think that if you do the work and you do the work well, you should get at least a B, if not higher. Where I disagree is that if you do everything that you were suppose to do, you should get an A. In my mind, an A is only giving to work of exceptional quality. A student can work really hard on the letter writing exercise and still get a B, if the way the letter is writing does not go above and beyond the guidelines. Does that make sense? Many of you did stellar work on this last project and the grades were all As and Bs!
I also agree with Jake. There does need to be a complete revamping of the system, but I don't see that happening anytime soon. Why do you think we have this structure? Why do we keep it if it doesn't work? Is there anyway in our classroom (WR121K), we could do grades differently and still be able to meet the school requirements? Also, would you prefer number grades as outlined in that student essay we read awhile back and did the sample descriptive outline of? So, is getting a "B" better or getting an 87?
Kat
I think the real problem is that different teachers have a different understanding of what the letter grades mean. To one teacher, an "A" is only given out if you go way above and beyond the required work. To some, it is given out if all of the requirements have been completed and completed well. Like Jake said, a huge part of your grade depends on what your instructor feels that grade means. I agree with re-structuring the grading system, and assigning specific definitions for each letter grade.
Does anyone know how the grading system works in other countries like Japan or Germany or sumtin??
I agree with Kat.
Certainly, an 87% is better than a "B." I mean...look, I don't even know what the hell a "B" is! Any answer you give will be different than another person -- It's not a quantifiable amount.
I can't think of a way to do Research Writing grades better, but still fitting the requirements.
I'm not even sure if we need to have grades at all. I'm paying to go to school so that I can learn. I can do that without a GPA. Sure tests are important, but they should be important to ME that I do well for other reasons than satisfying a grade. Having no grades would induce a near-stress free environment, and probably eliminate cheating. If I don't study and do well on a test it just means I'm wasting my money and should try harder. I don't need a letter dancing in front of me. There would still have to be some sort of standard so that one could earn a degree. But maybe the actual piece of paper is not important either as long as you've learned enough. Obviously all of these shifts would be major and effect many things. I'm not sure it would work, but I have seen strong arguments advocating a no grade system of some sort.
In response to Joel's comment- no. I don't know much about the grading in Japan or Germany. But I know that the school system there- not even the higher education system, I'm talking elementary school- is so much harder and more thorough than America. I feel like sometimes we forget that it's rare, in comparison to the rest of the world's customs to have a summer vacation, or weekends even.
With that being said, I feel like American students, myself completely included, often take our educational customs for granted. So, in response to this article, the high standard for grading may seem a little steep for us, if applied to colleges in other countries, students wouldn't question working harder to achieve better grades, or even transcending their professors' expectations for grading.
Any comments/concerns about standardized testing?
Yeah. I fail at it.
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