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November 22, 2005

Blog-conversation about grading

Here's a little appetizer for your thanksgiving turkey.

Chad Orzel, another physics professor who blogs, responded to a missive in the higher-ed blogosphere about grading and quizzes some time back. It was a terribly thoughtful post on a difficult topic, or so I thought.

A Japanese translator who keeps his own blog saw that post, and responded with a pretty cutting post on hoop-jumping, claiming that if he had known when he was an undergrad what he knows now, he would have been much more relaxed about his grades than he is. To wit:

What strikes me as wrong about this entire way of thinking is the assumption that students need to be punished for not working. It also assumes that the teachers are in control, even though the only leverage they have over their students is that of the grade.

A much more rational construct would be to view the professors as sort of highly-trained or educated waiters. Their job is to serve up the students a healthy dose of knowledge. In return, the students, their parents, or the state pays the professors a very nice wage. In other words, the profs serve the students, not the other way around.

The students are the consumers of knowledge, and the profs are service providers. This is, objectively, the reality of the situation. Why have things gotten so turned around that students have to kow-tow to their servants?

Grades.

When they are in school most students have not yet become wise enough to learn that grades don’t matter at all. After all, I had a stellar grade point average but my life would have been not one whit worse had I received a D- in every single class. I wonder if the profs realize this and live in fear that one day they won’t be able to scare their students into obedience any longer with the power of a single letter.

What’s most offensive about this state of affairs is that it assumes the students don’t really want to learn, but have to be bullied into it. If I knew then what I knew now, my response to professors would be something like this:

“I am here because I wish to learn. You have the knowledge I want, and I am paying you a very handsome salary to impart that to me. I will do most of the homework and attend most of the classes because I want to master the material, but I reserve the right to follow the assignments only so far I think it benefits me, or so far as it does not interfere with things I judge more important. My future, my learning. Now hop to it and teach.”


Orzel sees this post and takes a tad bit of offense, and gives an example from his own experience to justify his take:
The flawed assumption here is that college students are actually capable of correctly determining the point at which the assignments cease to be of benefit to them. For the most part, they can't.

How do I know this? Because I've played this game from the student side. At various points in my college and grad school careers, I've attempted to take classes while "follow[ing] the assignments only so far... as it does not interfere with things I judge more important." And every single time it blew up in my face. In some cases, I managed to get things turned around and learned stuff, and in some other cases, I got a second crack at the same material, but to this day, I have only the sketchiest understanding of solid state physics, largely because I judged other things more important than doing the homework when I took it in graduate school...

I assign the homework because the only way to really learn the material is by doing problems. I grade some of the homework because that provides incentive for students to actually do it-- without at least some credit being attached to the homework, a dizzying array of activities start to be judged more important than completing the assignments, and the students don't end up learning the material.


I found points I could appreciate in both. I'm not going to betray too much of where I think the goodness in either post (or in both posts) lie - but, since I know that a massive fraction of the people who come across this blog are students, I would like to hear what you think about our little grading racket. Do you appreciate why we do this grading deal? What grading feels legitimate, and what grading to you feel like is hoop-jumping?

Posted by Chuck at November 22, 2005 03:54 PM

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Comments

Personally I think that this statement: "After all, I had a stellar grade point average but my life would have been not one whit worse had I received a D- in every single class." might work for him but is not universally true. Lots of employers look at GPA as one of the top criteria to get an entry-level job...

Other than that, when I was in school, I felt that the only things that should be graded were tests and projects (and I guess that means labs too for science classes). Personally, I didn't need my homework graded. If I needed to study outside of class then I would. But if I understood a concept in class it would have been a waste of my time to prove to myself even more than I understood that same concept (plus if the teacher is only grading papers that are perfect that helps no one). But I understand not all students would work this way so I can understand the point in grading homework in certain courses. I'm just glad to be through with it all. :)

Posted by: Nancy at November 23, 2005 12:19 AM

i believe that grading homework is pointless- your grade on the quiz/test will reveal whether you learned the material and if you aren't responsible enough to do the work in order to achieve the grade you want, then you shouldn't be in college in the first place- my AP calc teacher my senior year of high school didn't grade homework ever even though it was assigned every single day her speech the first day of class went something like this "the homework is for you to know where to go for extra practice- i highly recommend doing at least one problem from each section assigned just to make sure you actually know/understand what you think you know/understand"

the point is that i did more homework voluntarily in that class- math of all things- and did it more thoroughly, than assigned homework even in classes that i liked

also, participation grades bother me more because of a personality issue and because it is so subjective

Posted by: celestia at November 23, 2005 08:23 PM

Yeah, I agree that participation grades are crap. If I have something meaningful to say, I'll say it. I had a finance teacher who required everyone to participate in every class and it was the biggest waste of time. People would raise their hands just to restate exactly what the teacher said, just to get participation points. And wouldn't ya know, thats the class that cost me my summa cum laude. grrr.

Posted by: Nancy at November 24, 2005 10:19 AM

I agree with Celestia on the participation grades. I am not one to speak in class, and I don't want to have to be graded on how much I talk. I should be graded on what I learn.

Now, homework doesn't bother me too much. Of course, I am in chemistry and physics, two courses that grade the homework. I figure that I need the practice, and if I'm going to do it, then I might as well get some points for it.

What bothers me about grading is that it's all based on tests. I don't test well in math courses (or physics, which to me is basically another math course). I don't do well with multiple choice either, but there's really no point in complaining b/c neither are not going to go away.

Oh, well.

Posted by: Heather at November 25, 2005 07:33 PM