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United States24600 Posts
You are teaching a class (high school, college, whatever). You give five graded homework assignments and assign each one a score. What grading system will you use? What do you do if a student doesn't complete the assignment on time? What about if he/she never turns it in? How will that count.
Depending on what level you are teaching the course at and where you are located geographically, you might be influenced to answer in a very different way. Most high schools in the USA (where I attended/worked) grade students out of 100% within each individual course. For example, I might have had a 93% average in physics. I think most schools ultimately convert your average over to a gpa out of 4.0 or something similar which goes on college applications.
This is a perfectly valid system. However, what range of grades corresponds to an A? At my high school, 95-100 was an A+, 90-94.4 was an A, 85-89.4 was a B+, etc. Each of those bins is equivalent to approximately 5 percentage points. But after D (65-69.4) what happens? F covers all grades from 0-64.4 (varies slightly depending on school). So if you don't hand in an assignment and are assigned a 0% which is 65 points below passing, then you will need to get a 70% (passing by 5 points) on the next 13 assignments in order to compensate, or 75% on the next 6-7 assignments... or you could say that you'd have to get 100% on the next two assignments in order to compensate and get a passing average. If we also consider the ability of a 0% to have an emotional effect on students (due to its severe weighting), then this could become a recipe for disaster (failure in the course, etc).
Is this unfair? The system has worked well for hundreds of years... or has it? In colleges, the 4.0 scale is much more forgiving about failing grades. Suppose your student got an 95 on one assignment, an 80 on two of them, a 65 on one of them, and a 0 (didn't hand it in) on the last assignment. Using my high school's old grading system, that would work out to (95+80+80+65+0)/5 or 64%. This students has failed. However, using a college-style grading system, the student scored approximately a 2.2 which is a low-mid C.
Educational researchers are beginning to evaluate this system and are arriving at one unanimous conclusion: punishing students for incomplete or unsubmitted work with a disproportionately low grade is demonstrated to have detrimental effects on student motivation, performance, and learning overall. Not only is there a mathematical unfairness in 0% being 65 points away from passing (more than half of the total 100 point scale), but it causes students to shut down, do less work, and learn less effectively.
Returning to the original question, what would you do? How exactly would you grade the assignments? My school is currently discussing this issue and thinking of new ways to grade.
Relevant reading material for those who are interested:
"Alternatives" by Thomas R Guskey, Curriculum & Instruction, October 2004.
and
"The Case Against Zero" by Douglas B. Reeves, Phi Delta Kappan, Dec 2004 v86 i4 p324
P.S. One alternative is to maintain the same traditional system but use 55% (for example) as the lowest grade you can get on an assignment.
 
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YES, I hate forgetting stuff and getting an automatic 0.
It's such a blow to morale.
Regarding this matter, I'd reduce the maximum grade possible rather than not accepting any late homework.
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At the university I attended (St. Andrews, in Scotland), if you were late you would just get -2 off your final score (off a non-linear grading scale of 0-20 where 5 is fail and 11 is an honours-eligible grade), and if you were late a week after the due date you'd get a 0. Which was fair, IMO, as it even gave people the added option of being able to work at it for another week if they felt they could offset the -2 penalty.
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One of my stats professors had an interesting system which was pretty nice. First, we had about 10 hmwk assignments, and the lowest 2 were dropped (maybe too much?). There were 2 tests, and 1 final. Of course, if you messed up a test badly, then of course your grade gets screwed. However, since the goal of the class is that you understand the material in the end, he just wrote a really good final and made it so if your final was higher than a test grade, it would replace that test grade (could replace both test grades if they were both lower).
Basically you always had a chance to get an A, up until the last day.
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I always thought it was about preparing kids for the real world. In the real world, if you don't meet a deadline, you're fucked. School is more about learning life skills and learning how to learn rather than actually learning specific knowledge. When you get a job, you're going to have to (re)learn everything over again.
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micronesia, hate to burst your bubble but it seems like your post has a gigantic flaw. You never say what the "college grading system" is. How are they different? How is the HS equivalent a 64% and the college equivalent a 2.2? Because in fact college classes oftentimes use the same A-F scale as high school - they just calculate points different because in college you'll have different weighted assignments / papers rather than a flat scale. Although in high school (most AP classes) grade really similarly to college...
So I think your question has some inherrent flaws in it.
Furthermore, giving someone a 55% for not even doing an assignment is rewarding the student not doing work. That 55% is is undeserved because it's 55% more than the actual work he put in, why should he get the same grade that someone who actually did the assignment but sucked get?
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United States24600 Posts
On November 04 2009 03:58 Anihc wrote:
I always thought it was about preparing kids for the real world. In the real world, if you don't meet a deadline, you're fucked. School is more about learning life skills and learning how to learn rather than actually learning specific knowledge. When you get a job, you're going to have to (re)learn everything over again.
This begs the question: does giving 0's (on a 100 point scale) to students who don't complete an assignment on time effectively help to prepare them for the real world? Is there evidence of this?
On November 04 2009 04:00 Xeris wrote:
micronesia, hate to burst your bubble but it seems like your post has a gigantic flaw. You never say what the "college grading system" is. How are they different? How is the HS equivalent a 64% and the college equivalent a 2.2? Because in fact college classes oftentimes use the same A-F scale as high school - they just calculate points different because in college you'll have different weighted assignments / papers rather than a flat scale. Although in high school (most AP classes) grade really similarly to college...
So I think your question has some inherrent flaws in it.
Furthermore, giving someone a 55% for not even doing an assignment is rewarding the student not doing work. That 55% is is undeserved because it's 55% more than the actual work he put in, why should he get the same grade that someone who actually did the assignment but sucked get?
I think you should reread the OP and your post and then we can discuss after we've both had more time to think about it.
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On November 04 2009 04:00 Xeris wrote:
micronesia, hate to burst your bubble but it seems like your post has a gigantic flaw. You never say what the "college grading system" is. How are they different? How is the HS equivalent a 64% and the college equivalent a 2.2? Because in fact college classes oftentimes use the same A-F scale as high school - they just calculate points different because in college you'll have different weighted assignments / papers rather than a flat scale. Although in high school (most AP classes) grade really similarly to college...
Yeah, my uni uses the same grading scale as was used in the higher level courses at my high school; 90/80/70/60. A 64% is a 1 here.
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And ya there's the work ethic component. Sure you could have a smart kid who doesn't need to do the homework to get an A in the class, so your system would reward him for being lazy basically. That's not how life works though. If he's in a work situation and misses his deadline there's nothing he can do, he'll get fired, etc. Your proposed system basically rewards coasting, which is a bad lesson to teach to high schoolers.
Also, college classes aren't really run like high school classes. For example, in humanities classes, you'll have maybe 1-2 midterms and 1 final. The final will be like 60% of the grade, and the midterms each 20%. So if you get a 0 on one of them, literally the highest grade you can get is an 80% if you ACE everything else... that's actually much harsher than anything in high school.
In typical high school classes - you have homework, tests, a midterm, and a final, and usually some extra credit. Students aren't punished nearly as much for totally missing stuff (unless it's a lot).
The only thing (as I mentioned before) is AP classes. For example my typical AP class would have some HW (aprox 10% of the grade) attendance + participation (aprox 10% of the grade), 2-3 unit tests (40% of the grade) and a final (40% of the grade)... In this situation missing a particular assignment isn't too bad, but that 10% is essentially a freebie as long as you do all the work - however if you miss a unit test/midterm or whatever, your chances of getting an A are drastically lowered (same as college).
So again, I'm not sure where you teach, but at least in California, AP classes and such are fairly similar to college in that respect, and college is fucking brutal if you get 0's on stuff.
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On November 04 2009 04:00 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2009 03:58 Anihc wrote:
I always thought it was about preparing kids for the real world. In the real world, if you don't meet a deadline, you're fucked. School is more about learning life skills and learning how to learn rather than actually learning specific knowledge. When you get a job, you're going to have to (re)learn everything over again. This begs the question: does giving 0's (on a 100 point scale) to students who don't complete an assignment on time effectively help to prepare them for the real world? Is there evidence of this? Show nested quote +On November 04 2009 04:00 Xeris wrote:
micronesia, hate to burst your bubble but it seems like your post has a gigantic flaw. You never say what the "college grading system" is. How are they different? How is the HS equivalent a 64% and the college equivalent a 2.2? Because in fact college classes oftentimes use the same A-F scale as high school - they just calculate points different because in college you'll have different weighted assignments / papers rather than a flat scale. Although in high school (most AP classes) grade really similarly to college...
So I think your question has some inherrent flaws in it.
Furthermore, giving someone a 55% for not even doing an assignment is rewarding the student not doing work. That 55% is is undeserved because it's 55% more than the actual work he put in, why should he get the same grade that someone who actually did the assignment but sucked get? I think you should reread the OP and your post and then we can discuss after we've both had more time to think about it.
I'll think about it some more... got a staff meeting but I'll be back. Read my second post.
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A lot of teachers let you drop whatever your lowest grade on homework or a test was. That helps a lot with this "0" problem- if you just forgot about one HW or test, then it's ok. But as long as you don't completely forget about an assignment or test, it's usually easy to get at least SOME points on it. I mean, if it's a multiple choice test with ABCD answers, you could completely guess and get 25% no effort at all.
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Well in the UK we don't have a GPA. In Scotland we require a certain number of A/B passes at Higher to get into most good university's (the highest requirement is Medicine with 4A's and a B I think, and the average is 4B's. Universities don't vary a huge amount in their required grades.)
Although I can't remember the exact ways the GPA works, I remember an American friend of mine explaining that it's quite easy to be screwed by it, like if a class all does really well you can do well, but not as well as the other 80% of the class you can end up with a C.
I don't really know, but here theres very little punishment for late submission of work as almost none of it contributes anything to your final grade. In 5th year of Secondary you make a pholio for most subjects which is compiled at the end of the year, and in 6th year you generally have 1-2 big pieces of course work due in at the end of the year, so forgetting them doesn't ever really happen. At uni again, very few graded pieces of work except for a few essays each term, which are pretty hard to forget about, which contribute a moderate amount to your final grade.
The system we do use for people that hand in work late seems to work though, you just lose a mark from your overall score for it every day until you hand it in.
UK does, imo, have one of the worst education systems in Europe though, so maybe the lack of a competitive atmosphere is causing problems.
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I get grading an exam with a 0 if you didn't present it. I mean, exams are very important, yet if I didn't know anything I wouldn't waste my time (or anybody else's) and just deliver a blank exam.
And well, your assignment example doesn't make much sense to me.
I have no idea on how classes are in the USA, but here, most of the teachers have a grading system for every exam (every 1.5-2 months, 2-3 exams on each semester)
And they would count assistance (or sometimes participation in class), assignments and then the actual exam, with a 20-20-60 respective percentage distribution or similar.
Doing that really makes grading assignments a little pointless. The difference between a 100 and an 80 in a scale of 20 is nil. So you just "sign" whichever are good enough and the student just racks up signatures. When the assignments go over ten, then missing a signature (or having a 0 if you wanna see it that way) is no big deal.
Now I guess I'm just talking random here. But I think that classes need to be 33-33-33 (or 30-30-40) in my opinion. Which allows for grading assignments better and then participation in class also counts, and the grade isn't seen as something that you can achieve at the very last moment (with the exam) even if you were a complete slacker for the rest of the course. And neither does it seem like it might be completely lost in a couple hours regardless of your work in the rest of the semester because you get irrevocably nervous at exams. And your 0's and stuff still don't seem like too much of a big deal because of the scale.
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In this university I used to attend, you would have 6 homeworks(I think) to turn in per semester, and the worst of those 6 would get ignored, and the average would get calculated for 5 of the best.
I liked that system.
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On November 04 2009 04:49 Piy wrote:
Although I can't remember the exact ways the GPA works, I remember an American friend of mine explaining that it's quite easy to be screwed by it, like if a class all does really well you can do well, but not as well as the other 80% of the class you can end up with a C.
That's curved grading which is separate from the GPA system, and I have never heard of someone getting screwed by curved grading. :|
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I definitely see the issue here, however doesn't having some sort of standard late-work policy solve all of this? By this I mean a typical '-20% per day late' or similar system?
If a student 'forgets' to do something, despite the fact that everyone does this from time to time, I still think he/she should be penalized for a lack of organization, and I believe that this system does that just fine without being unfair.
I would think that if a student doesn't turn in the assignment after FIVE days, he/she fully deserves that 0% and the demoralization/gpa that comes along with it, and chances are is a student that doesn't really care about their grade anyway.
I also once had an instructor that gave each student a 61% (Barely passing by our scale) simply for turning in any completed assignment with effort apparent. His grading was harsher than most, but it seemed to work out well, and the only students who failed were the ones who deserved it. Students who turned these in late lost 20% each day and didn't get the automatic 61%.
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I think grades give the false motivation for kids to learn.
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ah definately its how much u retain of what you learn not the grade itself that is important and how well u can apply the knowledge.
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I agree with this. Pretty much every class I didn't do well in was because I had a teacher who really pissed me off and discouraged me from applying myself.
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On November 04 2009 05:36 Athos wrote:
I agree with this. Pretty much every class I didn't do well in was because I had a teacher who really pissed me off and discouraged me from applying myself.
Hmm I wonder if that's why in the Chem class I graded, I spent most of my time giving failing grades (there was a curve though so they un-failed so to speak). Although, that seems rather improbable given the professor. Sometimes I wonder if people just don't really care until they see the failing grade (because the grades did go up somewhat over time).
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I always scored each hw with however many points I wanted - usually 2, 1 or 0 (check +, check or zero) to make grading easier. Then the total points were normalized so max score would add up to the percentage of the course I had specified in the syllabus - ex: 15% of course grade (never did more than 20 total hw points - as a student I always hated hw). Then I made the tests add up to the rest (ex: 40 points mid-term and 45 points final).
As far as other policies, I also offered extra credit weekly - they had the option of writing a paragraph on a topic of their choosing that was relevant to what I was covering (total maybe 15-20% - but nobody ever got full extra-credit). There was a word limit - 250 words or I would not read it (no, I never actually counted them). No late assignments were graded - this was college and people should be responsible enough at that age.
When all scores were added up, if needed, there was a total course curve.
PS - A few more class management comments... The "demoralizing" effect you worry about is only an issue when students perceive your actions as breaking the original "deal", as unfair or arbitrary. If you clearly state from day 1 that late means late, its never an issue. In fact, I strongly recommend that on day 1 you go out and make the course sound a bit tougher and stricter than you plan it to be. It is always possible to ease off later on (and the students will be happy!), but very hard to do the opposite. Finally, explain that the course rules are there for everyone, and relaxing them for one student is unfair to the rest of the group, so they shouldn't expect that. Again, you may choose to relax them anyway later on, but the baseline should not be that.
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On November 04 2009 04:05 Xeris wrote:
And ya there's the work ethic component. Sure you could have a smart kid who doesn't need to do the homework to get an A in the class, so your system would reward him for being lazy basically. That's not how life works though. If he's in a work situation and misses his deadline there's nothing he can do, he'll get fired, etc. Your proposed system basically rewards coasting, which is a bad lesson to teach to high schoolers.
I disagree with this. When I was in HS I didnt do many assignments because I saw no educational value in them. I gained nothing by completing them except for a grade that I didnt care about. In the real world you only need to do what is necessary to complete the job. Not a bunch of extra filler material that is designed for the soul purpose of eating up your time.
If I am going to gain something from an assignment, I will do it. Which is exactly what happened when I was university. In HS I probably did 30% of my assignments and in University it was more like 98%.
I did what work I needed to do in order to understand the material and ace the exams. And that is exactly how it works in the real world. If you need to know how to use a certain computer program to do your job your boss isnt going to make you take the training course for that program if you already know how to use it, but in high school they would force you to do it anyways. The HS system is totally broken in my opinion. It is a fucking joke. It is designed so any idiot can pass which makes it extremely boring and unrewarding for those people that are intelligent.
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On November 04 2009 03:58 Anihc wrote:
I always thought it was about preparing kids for the real world. In the real world, if you don't meet a deadline, you're fucked.
In the real world, everyone misses deadlines constantly. A few industries are exceptions, but not the rule.
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Kau
Canada3500 Posts
In the school world, you screw up a calculation about bridge construction on an exam and lose a few marks.
In the real world, you screw up a calculation for bridge construction and people lose their lives.
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On November 04 2009 05:53 Mastermind wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2009 04:05 Xeris wrote:
And ya there's the work ethic component. Sure you could have a smart kid who doesn't need to do the homework to get an A in the class, so your system would reward him for being lazy basically. That's not how life works though. If he's in a work situation and misses his deadline there's nothing he can do, he'll get fired, etc. Your proposed system basically rewards coasting, which is a bad lesson to teach to high schoolers.
I disagree with this. When I was in HS I didnt do many assignments because I saw no educational value in them. I gained nothing by completing them except for a grade that I didnt care about. In the real world you only need to do what is necessary to complete the job. Not a bunch of extra filler material that is designed for the soul purpose of eating up your time. If I am going to gain something from an assignment, I will do it. Which is exactly what happened when I was university. In HS I probably did 30% of my assignments and in University it was more like 98%. I did what work I needed to do in order to understand the material and ace the exams. And that is exactly how it works in the real world. If you need to know how to use a certain computer program to do your job your boss isnt going to make you take the training course for that program if you already know how to use it, but in high school they would force you to do it anyways. The HS system is totally broken in my opinion. It is a fucking joke. It is designed so any idiot can pass which makes it extremely boring and unrewarding for those people that are intelligent.
The point of the assignments isn't actually learning something. In very few college majors (aside maybe from engineering and hard sciences) you don't learn actual job skills. As a Poli Sci major - I've learned absolutely nothing in my classes that is making my job (researching at a Think Tank) easier. The point of school assignments is to teach you work ethic, responsibility, etc.
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On November 04 2009 05:36 Athos wrote:
I agree with this. Pretty much every class I didn't do well in was because I had a teacher who really pissed me off and discouraged me from applying myself.
That's a huge cop-out. "Ya I could be a straight A student but it's my teacher's fault I got a bad grade". Bullshit.
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On November 04 2009 06:08 Xeris wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2009 05:36 Athos wrote:
I agree with this. Pretty much every class I didn't do well in was because I had a teacher who really pissed me off and discouraged me from applying myself. That's a huge cop-out. "Ya I could be a straight A student but it's my teacher's fault I got a bad grade". Bullshit.
You're both mixing two separate issues: how a class is taught vs. how its graded. If a teacher does a poor job at getting you interested and teaching, your performance will fall. However, this has nothing to do with how the course is graded: could be 1-10, A-F, with 2 exams or 5, with or without hw, etc. etc. As long as you have a fantastic teacher that is just administrative stuff.
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On November 04 2009 06:13 citi.zen wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2009 06:08 Xeris wrote:On November 04 2009 05:36 Athos wrote:
I agree with this. Pretty much every class I didn't do well in was because I had a teacher who really pissed me off and discouraged me from applying myself. That's a huge cop-out. "Ya I could be a straight A student but it's my teacher's fault I got a bad grade". Bullshit. You're both mixing two separate issues: how a class is taught vs. how its graded. If a teacher does a poor job at getting you interested and teaching, your performance will fall. However, this has nothing to do with how the course is graded: could be 1-10, A-F, with 2 exams or 5, with or without hw, etc. etc. As long as you have a fantastic teacher that is just administrative stuff.
No, what he's doing is basically projecting blame on his teachers for poor performances. Maybe it's true from time to time, but at some point you need to take responsibility for your own actions and you can't continually blame other people for your shortcomings.
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On November 04 2009 05:57 ShadowDrgn wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2009 03:58 Anihc wrote:
I always thought it was about preparing kids for the real world. In the real world, if you don't meet a deadline, you're fucked. In the real world, everyone misses deadlines constantly. A few industries are exceptions, but not the rule.
Have fun explaining that to your boss when he firmly plants his foot up your ass and fires you.
If a student straight up doesn't do an assignment, how can you possibly expect them to receive anything other than a zero? It's demoralizing? How about the kid who busted his ass, got a 95% and sees that kid pull a 65 because the teacher felt bad that he didn't do a single thing? It will just continue to breed laziness.
With a few exceptions, there should always be a late policy that allows a student to make up work but heavily penalizes them. Shit happens, it's college, not a real job etc... but it's still not fair to prop up the lazy kids and let the smart, hard working ones bust their ass. Each day late cuts a quarter off the grade is more than adequate. The lazy students are reprimanded but have an opportunity to rectify the situation, and the other ones are rewarded with good grades for a job done well.
I can't even fathom how educated people thing rewarding laziness is going to make it go away.
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If you miss the deadline by less than 24 hours - 20% off, more than 24 hours - 0.
The rest of the system is fine. If you don't turn it in at all - you get a 0, end of discussion.
By the time you get to university you shouldn't be emotionally affected by some arbitrary numbers some grad student assigns you for homework and if you are - you're there for the wrong reasons.
Maybe it will cause some people to shut down or fail the course, but that's just life, you can withdraw from the course with a W or take it again later with another professor.
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I'm a kid in college. When I miss an assignment (or I'm unaware I owe one) then I'm basically done with that class for the day. Whether I like it or not, my brain shuts down and until I feel I'm in control again I don't participate or learn anywhere near as effectively.
I completely agree with the OP so far.
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Very true, a zero is a death blow. My chem teacher would give out zero's on labs if your results weren't correct so even though my test average was a 98, 2 or 3 lab zeros brought me down to an 89.7 and she didn't round :/. What I think is even worse though is teachers who do hw on a check/check minus (50)/ zero scale because their no wiggle room. If you skip one problem theres no where to go but to failing. Also bad, being able to opt into weighted courses for everything except gym/health and then still being expected to treat it as a real class
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On November 04 2009 06:24 Hawk wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2009 05:57 ShadowDrgn wrote:On November 04 2009 03:58 Anihc wrote:
I always thought it was about preparing kids for the real world. In the real world, if you don't meet a deadline, you're fucked. In the real world, everyone misses deadlines constantly. A few industries are exceptions, but not the rule. Have fun explaining that to your boss when he firmly plants his foot up your ass and fires you. If a student straight up doesn't do an assignment, how can you possibly expect them to receive anything other than a zero? It's demoralizing? How about the kid who busted his ass, got a 95% and sees that kid pull a 65 because the teacher felt bad that he didn't do a single thing? It will just continue to breed laziness. With a few exceptions, there should always be a late policy that allows a student to make up work but heavily penalizes them. Shit happens, it's college, not a real job etc... but it's still not fair to prop up the lazy kids and let the smart, hard working ones bust their ass. Each day late cuts a quarter off the grade is more than adequate. The lazy students are reprimanded but have an opportunity to rectify the situation, and the other ones are rewarded with good grades for a job done well. I can't even fathom how educated people thing rewarding laziness is going to make it go away.
No-one is asking anyone to just give someone 65% because the teacher in question felt bad.
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On November 04 2009 03:52 BanZu wrote:
YES, I hate forgetting stuff and getting an automatic 0.
It's such a blow to morale.
Regarding this matter, I'd reduce the maximum grade possible rather than not accepting any late homework.
I'd wear this on a T-shirt if it existed
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On November 04 2009 06:47 KurtistheTurtle wrote:
I'm a kid in college.
There's your problem. Until you wake up and realize you gotta find a way to make up for that zero and step up, you're wasting your parents (or your) money. You're not gonna graduate being immature...
Micro, there's a huge difference between high school and college and even middle school and high school, both in curriculum and maturity. For argument's sake, it should probably only consider college.
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On November 04 2009 06:57 timmeh wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2009 06:24 Hawk wrote:On November 04 2009 05:57 ShadowDrgn wrote:On November 04 2009 03:58 Anihc wrote:
I always thought it was about preparing kids for the real world. In the real world, if you don't meet a deadline, you're fucked. In the real world, everyone misses deadlines constantly. A few industries are exceptions, but not the rule. Have fun explaining that to your boss when he firmly plants his foot up your ass and fires you. If a student straight up doesn't do an assignment, how can you possibly expect them to receive anything other than a zero? It's demoralizing? How about the kid who busted his ass, got a 95% and sees that kid pull a 65 because the teacher felt bad that he didn't do a single thing? It will just continue to breed laziness. With a few exceptions, there should always be a late policy that allows a student to make up work but heavily penalizes them. Shit happens, it's college, not a real job etc... but it's still not fair to prop up the lazy kids and let the smart, hard working ones bust their ass. Each day late cuts a quarter off the grade is more than adequate. The lazy students are reprimanded but have an opportunity to rectify the situation, and the other ones are rewarded with good grades for a job done well. I can't even fathom how educated people thing rewarding laziness is going to make it go away. No-one is asking anyone to just give someone 65% because the teacher in question felt bad.
He's saying students should get something other than a zero for putting in zero effort. That's rewarding doing nothing.
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the fundamental problem isn't with the grading system but the teaching curriculum and philosophy. small assignments distributed over a long period of time that add up to a final grade are incredibly demoralizing for me and i really see it as a way of encouraging mediocre consistency.
one of the classes i am currently taking uses an approach i really like. no assignments aside from 3 projects. lectures outline important parts of the book giving you foundation to build on with reading. you receive no help with projects whatsoever so you actually have to work and think to get the project done, you can't just get stuck and go crawling to professor. this method enables the course to provide the necessary information in lectures and encourages critical thinking without the tediousness of menial assignments.
many courses are far to reliant on the idea of assigning a grade and not focused enough on actual learning.
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not turning in shit fucked me so hard. Mostly because i was disorganized and in general i am very scatterbrained. lost probably at least 1000 points on assignments forn ot turning them in during high school. doing a lot better in college now that i dont have to turn in hw and shit, just take test whee.
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By the time you get to college, the little assignments don't matter anyway. Most of my chemistry classes assign homework, but it is not even collected - and when it is, its only 10% of the grade.
Nobody is going to forget an important assignment like a research project or term paper, that would just be idiotic. If someone does, they probably shouldn't be in the class in the first place.
Regardless, unless you are going to a graduate or professional school, I don't think that your university GPA matters too much.
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On November 04 2009 07:06 Hawk wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2009 06:57 timmeh wrote:On November 04 2009 06:24 Hawk wrote:On November 04 2009 05:57 ShadowDrgn wrote:On November 04 2009 03:58 Anihc wrote:
I always thought it was about preparing kids for the real world. In the real world, if you don't meet a deadline, you're fucked. In the real world, everyone misses deadlines constantly. A few industries are exceptions, but not the rule. Have fun explaining that to your boss when he firmly plants his foot up your ass and fires you. If a student straight up doesn't do an assignment, how can you possibly expect them to receive anything other than a zero? It's demoralizing? How about the kid who busted his ass, got a 95% and sees that kid pull a 65 because the teacher felt bad that he didn't do a single thing? It will just continue to breed laziness. With a few exceptions, there should always be a late policy that allows a student to make up work but heavily penalizes them. Shit happens, it's college, not a real job etc... but it's still not fair to prop up the lazy kids and let the smart, hard working ones bust their ass. Each day late cuts a quarter off the grade is more than adequate. The lazy students are reprimanded but have an opportunity to rectify the situation, and the other ones are rewarded with good grades for a job done well. I can't even fathom how educated people thing rewarding laziness is going to make it go away. No-one is asking anyone to just give someone 65% because the teacher in question felt bad. He's saying students should get something other than a zero for putting in zero effort. That's rewarding doing nothing.
He is suggesting a system where a single missed/failed assignment will not instantly result in the inability to compete for a pass in your subject. The person with 95% who busted his ass to get it won't care whether some lazy-ass got 65% or not. He busted his ass, he knows how to work the material. Someone who managed to wiggle himself through with 65% is no competition for him. I understand this is somewhat arbitrary, because what about someone else who didn't screw up (bad performance or no work at all) and only got 65%?
I guess you have to draw the line somewhere. I think the policy of being able to drop the worst of the total number of assignments is good. Everyone screws up once in a while. Having a cut throat policy is wasted resources and wasted potential.
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Kau
Canada3500 Posts
On November 04 2009 07:14 mahnini wrote:
the fundamental problem isn't with the grading system but the teaching curriculum and philosophy. small assignments distributed over a long period of time that add up to a final grade are incredibly demoralizing for me and i really see it as a way of encouraging mediocre consistency.
one of the classes i am currently taking uses an approach i really like. no assignments aside from 3 projects. lectures outline important parts of the book giving you foundation to build on with reading. you receive no help with projects whatsoever so you actually have to work and think to get the project done, you can't just get stuck and go crawling to professor. this method enables the course to provide the necessary information in lectures and encourages critical thinking without the tediousness of menial assignments.
many courses are far to reliant on the idea of assigning a grade and not focused enough on actual learning.
I had a class like that! Did about class average on the projects and got like 35% on the midterm and whatever on the final and came out with a B!
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On November 04 2009 06:23 Xeris wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2009 06:13 citi.zen wrote:On November 04 2009 06:08 Xeris wrote:On November 04 2009 05:36 Athos wrote:
I agree with this. Pretty much every class I didn't do well in was because I had a teacher who really pissed me off and discouraged me from applying myself. That's a huge cop-out. "Ya I could be a straight A student but it's my teacher's fault I got a bad grade". Bullshit. You're both mixing two separate issues: how a class is taught vs. how its graded. If a teacher does a poor job at getting you interested and teaching, your performance will fall. However, this has nothing to do with how the course is graded: could be 1-10, A-F, with 2 exams or 5, with or without hw, etc. etc. As long as you have a fantastic teacher that is just administrative stuff. No, what he's doing is basically projecting blame on his teachers for poor performances. Maybe it's true from time to time, but at some point you need to take responsibility for your own actions and you can't continually blame other people for your shortcomings.
you can't take the blame off the teachers. this is a flaw i find that many people just seem to accept. the teachers are the dictators of the course curriculum, everything you will be learning and that you will consider relevant to the subject / course will be controlled by the teacher. i've had classes that included the worst most impractical information and i just completely tune out because it is not relevant for me. on the other hand i've had courses that were essential to understanding my desired field and i have an easy time listening.
you cant put all the blame on teachers - true - but you can't put all the blame on students either.
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i guess what i'm trying to say is you shouldn't be tested on whether or not you can complete the assignments, rather, whether you understand the concepts presented in the assignments. i guess that doesn't really make sense when you take into account the current system but a class is for learning and mistakes should be allowed to be made. where you should be tested for understanding are the tests. grading a students learning process seems counter productive when at the end of the class one C student is far more capable than another. though, i supposed that can never be really solved, it can at least be minimalized.
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i hear some teachers like failing kids for shits and giggles
damn you mrs james damn you
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On November 04 2009 07:24 timmeh wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2009 07:06 Hawk wrote:On November 04 2009 06:57 timmeh wrote:On November 04 2009 06:24 Hawk wrote:On November 04 2009 05:57 ShadowDrgn wrote:On November 04 2009 03:58 Anihc wrote:
I always thought it was about preparing kids for the real world. In the real world, if you don't meet a deadline, you're fucked. In the real world, everyone misses deadlines constantly. A few industries are exceptions, but not the rule. Have fun explaining that to your boss when he firmly plants his foot up your ass and fires you. If a student straight up doesn't do an assignment, how can you possibly expect them to receive anything other than a zero? It's demoralizing? How about the kid who busted his ass, got a 95% and sees that kid pull a 65 because the teacher felt bad that he didn't do a single thing? It will just continue to breed laziness. With a few exceptions, there should always be a late policy that allows a student to make up work but heavily penalizes them. Shit happens, it's college, not a real job etc... but it's still not fair to prop up the lazy kids and let the smart, hard working ones bust their ass. Each day late cuts a quarter off the grade is more than adequate. The lazy students are reprimanded but have an opportunity to rectify the situation, and the other ones are rewarded with good grades for a job done well. I can't even fathom how educated people thing rewarding laziness is going to make it go away. No-one is asking anyone to just give someone 65% because the teacher in question felt bad. He's saying students should get something other than a zero for putting in zero effort. That's rewarding doing nothing. The person with 95% who busted his ass to get it won't care whether some lazy-ass got 65% or not.
Are you kidding me??
If you slave away on an important paper for several hours to get an A and some douchebag doesn't even hand it in and gets what amounts to 2/3 of your grade for zero effort, that is pure bullshit.
What the hell happened to self responsibility? As much as I may have hated meaningless assignments, if there's four of them in the semester and they count for 25% each, you do them. If you can't be bothered to at least attempt to do them all, you don't deserve to be in school. It's not as if the teacher lets your guess how much each assignment is worth.
College educations are going to become worthless if every lazy idiot is allowed to get one because of super PC concepts like this.
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On November 04 2009 07:41 Hawk wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2009 07:24 timmeh wrote:On November 04 2009 07:06 Hawk wrote:On November 04 2009 06:57 timmeh wrote:On November 04 2009 06:24 Hawk wrote:On November 04 2009 05:57 ShadowDrgn wrote:On November 04 2009 03:58 Anihc wrote:
I always thought it was about preparing kids for the real world. In the real world, if you don't meet a deadline, you're fucked. In the real world, everyone misses deadlines constantly. A few industries are exceptions, but not the rule. Have fun explaining that to your boss when he firmly plants his foot up your ass and fires you. If a student straight up doesn't do an assignment, how can you possibly expect them to receive anything other than a zero? It's demoralizing? How about the kid who busted his ass, got a 95% and sees that kid pull a 65 because the teacher felt bad that he didn't do a single thing? It will just continue to breed laziness. With a few exceptions, there should always be a late policy that allows a student to make up work but heavily penalizes them. Shit happens, it's college, not a real job etc... but it's still not fair to prop up the lazy kids and let the smart, hard working ones bust their ass. Each day late cuts a quarter off the grade is more than adequate. The lazy students are reprimanded but have an opportunity to rectify the situation, and the other ones are rewarded with good grades for a job done well. I can't even fathom how educated people thing rewarding laziness is going to make it go away. No-one is asking anyone to just give someone 65% because the teacher in question felt bad. He's saying students should get something other than a zero for putting in zero effort. That's rewarding doing nothing. The person with 95% who busted his ass to get it won't care whether some lazy-ass got 65% or not. Are you kidding me?? If you slave away on an important paper for several hours to get an A and some douchebag doesn't even hand it in and gets what amounts to 2/3 of your grade for zero effort, that is pure bullshit. What the hell happened to self responsibility? As much as I may have hated meaningless assignments, if there's four of them in the semester and they count for 25% each, you do them. If you can't be bothered to at least attempt to do them all, you don't deserve to be in school. It's not as if the teacher lets your guess how much each assignment is worth. College educations are going to become worthless if every lazy idiot is allowed to get one because of super PC concepts like this.
It seems I've expressed myself inaccurately.
I was rather talking about the entire score you will get for your term/semester, not a singular assignment. I do support the idea that you get punished with a 0% for for failing to produce a hand-in. However, I do not support the idea that having not handed in an (1, maybe 2 depending on the total number) assignment whatsoever (for whatever reason) has to mean that it drops your mark across the whole term by X percentage.
And yes, I never really cared about other people's scores when I myself did really well.
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On November 04 2009 07:52 timmeh wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2009 07:41 Hawk wrote:On November 04 2009 07:24 timmeh wrote:On November 04 2009 07:06 Hawk wrote:On November 04 2009 06:57 timmeh wrote:On November 04 2009 06:24 Hawk wrote:On November 04 2009 05:57 ShadowDrgn wrote:On November 04 2009 03:58 Anihc wrote:
I always thought it was about preparing kids for the real world. In the real world, if you don't meet a deadline, you're fucked. In the real world, everyone misses deadlines constantly. A few industries are exceptions, but not the rule. Have fun explaining that to your boss when he firmly plants his foot up your ass and fires you. If a student straight up doesn't do an assignment, how can you possibly expect them to receive anything other than a zero? It's demoralizing? How about the kid who busted his ass, got a 95% and sees that kid pull a 65 because the teacher felt bad that he didn't do a single thing? It will just continue to breed laziness. With a few exceptions, there should always be a late policy that allows a student to make up work but heavily penalizes them. Shit happens, it's college, not a real job etc... but it's still not fair to prop up the lazy kids and let the smart, hard working ones bust their ass. Each day late cuts a quarter off the grade is more than adequate. The lazy students are reprimanded but have an opportunity to rectify the situation, and the other ones are rewarded with good grades for a job done well. I can't even fathom how educated people thing rewarding laziness is going to make it go away. No-one is asking anyone to just give someone 65% because the teacher in question felt bad. He's saying students should get something other than a zero for putting in zero effort. That's rewarding doing nothing. The person with 95% who busted his ass to get it won't care whether some lazy-ass got 65% or not. Are you kidding me?? If you slave away on an important paper for several hours to get an A and some douchebag doesn't even hand it in and gets what amounts to 2/3 of your grade for zero effort, that is pure bullshit. What the hell happened to self responsibility? As much as I may have hated meaningless assignments, if there's four of them in the semester and they count for 25% each, you do them. If you can't be bothered to at least attempt to do them all, you don't deserve to be in school. It's not as if the teacher lets your guess how much each assignment is worth. College educations are going to become worthless if every lazy idiot is allowed to get one because of super PC concepts like this. It seems I've expressed myself inaccurately. I was rather talking about the entire score you will get for your term/semester, not a singular assignment. I do support the idea that you get punished with a 0% for for failing to produce a hand-in. However, I do not support the idea that having not handed in an (1, maybe 2 depending on the total number) assignment whatsoever (for whatever reason) has to mean that it drops your mark across the whole term by X percentage. And yes, I never really cared about other people's scores when I myself did really well.
Same, as long as the class doesn't turn out in the end to be a secret free A class, who cares.
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At my high school, 94-100 was an A and 90-94 was a B+. Yes, a 93.9 was a B+. Glad that's been over for a long time now.
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On November 04 2009 07:52 timmeh wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2009 07:41 Hawk wrote:On November 04 2009 07:24 timmeh wrote:On November 04 2009 07:06 Hawk wrote:On November 04 2009 06:57 timmeh wrote:On November 04 2009 06:24 Hawk wrote:On November 04 2009 05:57 ShadowDrgn wrote:On November 04 2009 03:58 Anihc wrote:
I always thought it was about preparing kids for the real world. In the real world, if you don't meet a deadline, you're fucked. In the real world, everyone misses deadlines constantly. A few industries are exceptions, but not the rule. Have fun explaining that to your boss when he firmly plants his foot up your ass and fires you. If a student straight up doesn't do an assignment, how can you possibly expect them to receive anything other than a zero? It's demoralizing? How about the kid who busted his ass, got a 95% and sees that kid pull a 65 because the teacher felt bad that he didn't do a single thing? It will just continue to breed laziness. With a few exceptions, there should always be a late policy that allows a student to make up work but heavily penalizes them. Shit happens, it's college, not a real job etc... but it's still not fair to prop up the lazy kids and let the smart, hard working ones bust their ass. Each day late cuts a quarter off the grade is more than adequate. The lazy students are reprimanded but have an opportunity to rectify the situation, and the other ones are rewarded with good grades for a job done well. I can't even fathom how educated people thing rewarding laziness is going to make it go away. No-one is asking anyone to just give someone 65% because the teacher in question felt bad. He's saying students should get something other than a zero for putting in zero effort. That's rewarding doing nothing. The person with 95% who busted his ass to get it won't care whether some lazy-ass got 65% or not. Are you kidding me?? If you slave away on an important paper for several hours to get an A and some douchebag doesn't even hand it in and gets what amounts to 2/3 of your grade for zero effort, that is pure bullshit. What the hell happened to self responsibility? As much as I may have hated meaningless assignments, if there's four of them in the semester and they count for 25% each, you do them. If you can't be bothered to at least attempt to do them all, you don't deserve to be in school. It's not as if the teacher lets your guess how much each assignment is worth. College educations are going to become worthless if every lazy idiot is allowed to get one because of super PC concepts like this. It seems I've expressed myself inaccurately. I was rather talking about the entire score you will get for your term/semester, not a singular assignment. I do support the idea that you get punished with a 0% for for failing to produce a hand-in. However, I do not support the idea that having not handed in an (1, maybe 2 depending on the total number) assignment whatsoever (for whatever reason) has to mean that it drops your mark across the whole term by X percentage. And yes, I never really cared about other people's scores when I myself did really well.
If you have four 10 page papers for your semester as your only graded assignments and you only turn in three, how exactly do you propose to grade that student? Just pretend it never happened?
http://www.every1graduates.org/PDFs/BeyondTheIndicators.pdf
micro, is that the second one you source? what page is the no zero thing on because it's a pretty lengthy article.
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United States24600 Posts
On November 04 2009 09:20 Hawk wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2009 07:52 timmeh wrote:On November 04 2009 07:41 Hawk wrote:On November 04 2009 07:24 timmeh wrote:On November 04 2009 07:06 Hawk wrote:On November 04 2009 06:57 timmeh wrote:On November 04 2009 06:24 Hawk wrote:On November 04 2009 05:57 ShadowDrgn wrote:On November 04 2009 03:58 Anihc wrote:
I always thought it was about preparing kids for the real world. In the real world, if you don't meet a deadline, you're fucked. In the real world, everyone misses deadlines constantly. A few industries are exceptions, but not the rule. Have fun explaining that to your boss when he firmly plants his foot up your ass and fires you. If a student straight up doesn't do an assignment, how can you possibly expect them to receive anything other than a zero? It's demoralizing? How about the kid who busted his ass, got a 95% and sees that kid pull a 65 because the teacher felt bad that he didn't do a single thing? It will just continue to breed laziness. With a few exceptions, there should always be a late policy that allows a student to make up work but heavily penalizes them. Shit happens, it's college, not a real job etc... but it's still not fair to prop up the lazy kids and let the smart, hard working ones bust their ass. Each day late cuts a quarter off the grade is more than adequate. The lazy students are reprimanded but have an opportunity to rectify the situation, and the other ones are rewarded with good grades for a job done well. I can't even fathom how educated people thing rewarding laziness is going to make it go away. No-one is asking anyone to just give someone 65% because the teacher in question felt bad. He's saying students should get something other than a zero for putting in zero effort. That's rewarding doing nothing. The person with 95% who busted his ass to get it won't care whether some lazy-ass got 65% or not. Are you kidding me?? If you slave away on an important paper for several hours to get an A and some douchebag doesn't even hand it in and gets what amounts to 2/3 of your grade for zero effort, that is pure bullshit. What the hell happened to self responsibility? As much as I may have hated meaningless assignments, if there's four of them in the semester and they count for 25% each, you do them. If you can't be bothered to at least attempt to do them all, you don't deserve to be in school. It's not as if the teacher lets your guess how much each assignment is worth. College educations are going to become worthless if every lazy idiot is allowed to get one because of super PC concepts like this. It seems I've expressed myself inaccurately. I was rather talking about the entire score you will get for your term/semester, not a singular assignment. I do support the idea that you get punished with a 0% for for failing to produce a hand-in. However, I do not support the idea that having not handed in an (1, maybe 2 depending on the total number) assignment whatsoever (for whatever reason) has to mean that it drops your mark across the whole term by X percentage. And yes, I never really cared about other people's scores when I myself did really well. http://www.every1graduates.org/PDFs/BeyondTheIndicators.pdfmicro, is that the second one you source? what page is the no zero thing on because it's a pretty lengthy article. That isn't it. I don't recognize that pdf.
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This is a self-solving problem - if the assignment is minor and unimportant, like a single homework, then the worst thing that can happen is it drops your total grade by 1-2%, as homework is usually no more than 20% of the grade by weight.
If the assignment is a major one (like one of 3 or 4) - you better make sure you hand it in, or else you deserve to get whatever the drop is.
You can implement a policy of dropping 1-2 lowest grades from homework assignments (including 0s) if you so wish, but in my experience it makes little difference in the end, not enough to affect the letter grade most of the time, again due to little weight of the homework.
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intresting topic.
i'm enjoying the discussion.
just thought i'd share.
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On November 04 2009 03:49 micronesia wrote:
You are teaching a class (high school, college, whatever). You give five graded homework assignments and assign each one a score. What grading system will you use? What do you do if a student doesn't complete the assignment on time? What about if he/she never turns it in? How will that count.
Personally, I would allocate 20% to each assignment, to be divided up differently on each assignment depending on whether it's divided into problems, stages, etc. If a student doesn't complete the assignment on time, he loses some points (perhaps 20% per day as someone else in this thread suggested), and if he never turns the assignment in at all, he gets a zero. Disclaimer: I'm not a teacher, just a student and occasionally a tutor/grader.
This is a perfectly valid system. However, what range of grades corresponds to an A? At my high school, 95-100 was an A+, 90-94.4 was an A, 85-89.4 was a B+, etc. Each of those bins is equivalent to approximately 5 percentage points.
This is pretty similar to my high school and college, although this system seems a little kinder since it doesn't have A-, B-, etc. I always hate getting something with a minus sign on it.
But after D (65-69.4) what happens? F covers all grades from 0-64.4 (varies slightly depending on school). So if you don't hand in an assignment and are assigned a 0% which is 65 points below passing, then you will need to get <calculations>.
It's true that F is a big category, and it isn't a very kind letter either since it stands for Failure. I think it's highly dependent on the content of the assignment whether someone who has earned 50% of the points has failed, but generally it's accurate to say that someone who does no work whatsoever or never turns in his assignment has failed.
At my high school we had report cards every half semester, and at my college we get them every semester, which I presume is fairly standard. In the middle of the grading period and again a week or two before grades are finalized, most teachers give any student who has not turned in an assignment a notice to that effect. In most cases this leaves students plenty of time to do something to handle the missed assignment, whether it's completing the assignment late, doing extra work on a different assignment, consulting the teacher for help, or dropping the class.
If we also consider the ability of a 0% to have an emotional effect on students (due to its severe weighting), then this could become a recipe for disaster (failure in the course, etc).
The way I see it, a zero for someone who deserves a zero is simply accurate feedback. A teacher who refuses to give a zero to a student who deserves one is not doing him any favors. A kind teacher might offer the student extra help with the course, a chance to redo the assignment, or an additional assignment to make up for his zero. A strict teacher will say, "Look junior, I gave you a deadline for this assignment, and you could have turned it in on any day up until the deadline but you did not. You missed ALL your chances, and you've done nothing to deserve yet more chances. Try harder next time."
In colleges, the 4.0 scale is much more forgiving about failing grades. Suppose your student got an 95 on one assignment, an 80 on two of them, a 65 on one of them, and a 0 (didn't hand it in) on the last assignment. Using my high school's old grading system, that would work out to (95+80+80+65+0)/5 or 64%. This students has failed. However, using a college-style grading system, the student scored approximately a 2.2 which is a low-mid C.
As some have already mentioned before me, the college style grading systems that I know of perform exactly the same calculation. The student's average is 64%, which is a D, and on a GPA scale this translates into a 1.0. At some schools this may be considered a failing grade, but at the schools I have attended 64% would be barely passing.
Educational researchers are beginning to evaluate this system and are arriving at one unanimous conclusion: punishing students for incomplete or unsubmitted work with a disproportionately low grade is demonstrated to have detrimental effects on student motivation, performance, and learning overall. Not only is there a mathematical unfairness in 0% being 65 points away from passing (more than half of the total 100 point scale), but it causes students to shut down, do less work, and learn less effectively.
<related reading>
P.S. One alternative is to maintain the same traditional system but use 55% (for example) as the lowest grade you can get on an assignment.
I don't think there is a problem with "punishing" students with a 0% for doing 0% of their work. I think the enormous impact of zeroes is just a symptom of grade inflation. This problem lies with grading systems who declare a 50% a failure equivalent to a 0% (i.e. both represented as F) and do not often give out grades in the 0%-50% range to students who deserve them. As a result, students' sense of what grade is acceptable is heavily skewed toward the top end of the grading scale. A grade of 50% is pretty much universally considered a horrible, even "rock bottom" grade to get, instead of being thought of as halfway between perfect (100%) and nothing (0%). And overall, grades are taken as the outcome of school, where the truly useful outcome is the information gained.
It took me until college to figure this out, but grades are not a true measure of a student's skill or effort. The idea of a grade is simply to communicate how well the student performed in the class, which is invariably based on the professor's personal expectations, comparison with other students in the class, and random circumstances that disrupt the student's performance unexpectedly. I don't think this is any different than real life. Based on what I hear from my parents and my friends who have graduated, salaries and promotions have a luck and/or circumstance aspect just as grades do.
I do think that there are important things that teachers and students can both do to minimize the number of zeros they give and receive respectively:
As a student, my favorite way for professors to avoid giving me zeros is to have a policy such as, "There will be an assignment every week, and at the end of the semester your worst assignment will not count for your final grade." In this case I don't feel like I should be nervous about forgetting an assignment in the printer, or getting sick one day, since I have one free fuckup.
Obviously I have never been a professor, but I feel like my responsibility as a college student is to be organized, stay on top of my work, and handle unexpected circumstances maturely. I find that if I go to my professor's office and say something like, "I don't think I'll be able to complete the assignment for Friday on time, since I have a big presentation on Friday. Would you be willing to give me a 24 hour extension, so I can work on the assignment after my presentation?" the answer is usually yes.
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On November 04 2009 06:07 Xeris wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2009 05:53 Mastermind wrote:On November 04 2009 04:05 Xeris wrote:
And ya there's the work ethic component. Sure you could have a smart kid who doesn't need to do the homework to get an A in the class, so your system would reward him for being lazy basically. That's not how life works though. If he's in a work situation and misses his deadline there's nothing he can do, he'll get fired, etc. Your proposed system basically rewards coasting, which is a bad lesson to teach to high schoolers.
I disagree with this. When I was in HS I didnt do many assignments because I saw no educational value in them. I gained nothing by completing them except for a grade that I didnt care about. In the real world you only need to do what is necessary to complete the job. Not a bunch of extra filler material that is designed for the soul purpose of eating up your time. If I am going to gain something from an assignment, I will do it. Which is exactly what happened when I was university. In HS I probably did 30% of my assignments and in University it was more like 98%. I did what work I needed to do in order to understand the material and ace the exams. And that is exactly how it works in the real world. If you need to know how to use a certain computer program to do your job your boss isnt going to make you take the training course for that program if you already know how to use it, but in high school they would force you to do it anyways. The HS system is totally broken in my opinion. It is a fucking joke. It is designed so any idiot can pass which makes it extremely boring and unrewarding for those people that are intelligent. The point of the assignments isn't actually learning something. In very few college majors (aside maybe from engineering and hard sciences) you don't learn actual job skills. As a Poli Sci major - I've learned absolutely nothing in my classes that is making my job (researching at a Think Tank) easier. The point of school assignments is to teach you work ethic, responsibility, etc.
You dont learn job skills in engineering (at least mechanical here at msu)
im fucked..... =((
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some kids just have trouble dealing with deadlines, yes, and a lot of them get demotivated once they hit a roadblock and aren't able to finish on time, because then they realize they have a choice in whether or not to do the work - which is true, but to teach work ethic, they need to be tricked into thinking that there ISN'T a choice
no nambly pambly "make our students feel better" compromises - usually in the past, teachers could beat their students for acting out of line - so what really needs to be done here is some form of discipline from either parents or students with a punishment so severe kids would never even think about doing it again
and that involves pain and shame, and we all like our kids to feel special, but pain and shame works better in a lot of cases
so beat your kids
and establish a school system where if you don't complete your work, you get an incomplete and won't be allowed to pass the class, AND you only get ONE chance where you can simply hand in your incomplete work for the credit you would have received, and make sure the parents make a BIG deal out of this whole process (and beat their kids if they don't)
and then save up the money for therapy years down the line in case they need it
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I'll agree that shame works. It sucks and it isn't fun at all to learn that way, but there were some things I had to learn over the course of last year where if I didn't it was shameful. I can still recite them without a pause right now. And it isn't for everyone, which is the problem with every other teaching method.
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i think you should be able to hand in work "late", just get -X per day that it is handed in late rather than an instant 0
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might've been mentioned already but,
weight assignments: i.e. homework 20%, projects 20%, tests 60%
drop the lowest homework grade
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I am so happy that I don't have to deal with the bull"# that seem to be graded homework.
One test at the end of the second year for 25% of the final degree mark, one at the end of the third year for 50% and one thesis by the end of the fourth for 25%. Nothing else counts, labs are pass/fail with fail = cannot sit exams = failed exams = kicked out.
How does graded hoework work in curved classes anyway (seem to be common in the US)? Do people like trick each other into giving the wrong answers? Or do they still help each other out and stuff?
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i prefer courses with 0 hw and a couple tests + finals
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My professor assigns homework but he weight them into our grade. Exams 20%/Midterm 30% and Finals 50%? (I forgot the exact numbers but meh, this is Math) Something like that, homework is just there so we could study
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My school has this policy where every class you forget something your maximum possible grade goes down 10%. Then 10% the next class if you forget again or still haven't done it. Then another 10%, then only after that does it become a complete 0.
All the tests and quizzes and regular homework is all a percentage of your total grade, and all of them are weighted accordingly.
Only complaints about my school's system are the grade intervals are not equal, As Bs Cs Ds span more percentage than A- or A+ or C-, etc.
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On November 04 2009 10:15 Sadistx wrote:
This is a self-solving problem - if the assignment is minor and unimportant, like a single homework, then the worst thing that can happen is it drops your total grade by 1-2%, as homework is usually no more than 20% of the grade by weight.
If the assignment is a major one (like one of 3 or 4) - you better make sure you hand it in, or else you deserve to get whatever the drop is.
You can implement a policy of dropping 1-2 lowest grades from homework assignments (including 0s) if you so wish, but in my experience it makes little difference in the end, not enough to affect the letter grade most of the time, again due to little weight of the homework.
I'm surprised more people didn't pick up on this. In my entire high school career, I don't think I've ever seen such a thing as micronesia pointed out: that is, one lost homework grade causing someone to fail a class or completely screwing up their grade. Since when was a single homework assignment so important to a person's grade? My AP Biology class had close to 1100 points, with each assignment worth around 10 points, each test about 100, final being 200. My AP Calc AB/BC class had something like 500 points, but each homework assignment was worth 2 points. APUSH, 10-15 point homework assignments, cumulative total of around 800 points. And it goes on.
I completely fail to see the connection between missing one homework assignment and failing a class. Moreover, if that homework assignment really is that important, then, like Sadistx said, you better hang it in. I would say the vast majority of teachers give you some leeway in that regard, either by notifying you way ahead of time that this one "homework" (I don't even think you can call it that if it's worth so much of your grade) was enough to drop your grade 2 letters. Moreover, most teachers allow you to turn it in with full credit as long as you have a legitimate excuse, and most also allow the grade decay per day late. I seriously do not see this as a huge issue in the education system; that a single homework assignment screws someone over to the degree of pass/fail.
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Assessment should only be on understanding of the materials being taught. I always make it clear that the homework assignments are to help the students to understand the materials better, do them or not is up to them.
Quiz and tests are tools to check for student understanding, i do a quiz after each new concept, (every other day) not just to see my students' understanding, but also assess on my own presentation of the new concept. if there are many students not getting them, then it is my fault as the teacher, but if only a few students who are failing on a particular quiz or test, then they are the one who needs extra help. And of course there are those who fails all the quiz and does not give a fuck about them, and blame it on the teacher  And all the teacher had to do is point the finger on the rest of the class who understood the new concepts, and it would be very apparent on who is to blame.
I had been using this system of assessment for the past year, working pretty good so far. oh and if a student's final is scored higher than the average score of all the quiz and mid terms, then that would be his final grade, otherwise everything is average out at the end. I have not seen anyone who failed everything but Ace the final to pass the class yet.
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The thing about school is that it is a competition. You are competing against all the other students and they have the EXACT same grading scale as you do. If you miss an assignment that is completely your fault and you should get no credit for turning nothing in... If you got 55% for free there would be many lazy douche bags getting much higher grades than they ever would, which makes the people that try hard not too far ahead of the people who obviously are going to fail academically.
There needs to be a harsh grading scale in both high school AND college for two reasons:
1) If you cannot keep up with a tough grading scale in high school you will either do badly and decide to give up or you will rise above the toughness and really be prepared for college. Either way it helps the people who really strive and it weeds out the people destined to fail. Education should be provided to everyone but it is important that only the people who want it get the most resources (college education) to make use of.
2) What's the use of giving kids a handicap. Who do you want running businesses and designing your cars/bridges/stuff or keep tracking track of your bank accounts or medical records; a retard that couldn't pass most of his classes because he was lazy or the motivated girl that rose above the tough grading scale in high school and did really well in college?
Life is a competition and it's survival of the fittest in everything humans do...
I see where you are coming from micronesia.. I am sure you feel bad when half your physics students fail the course because they are lazy but that's why they have a curve in college: its really fucking hard!
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On November 06 2009 05:34 Hypnosis wrote:
The thing about school is that it is a competition. You are competing against all the other students and they have the EXACT same grading scale as you do.
Right, as long as everyone faces the same rules, which are not arbitrarily skewed somehow, I see no problem. They could be more or less harsh, but they apply to everyone.
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EPT
