Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Marks Are Posted!
The grades for my biochemsitry course have just been released to the students. I've already got several email messages from students who are complaining about their marks. One student got "only" 84% and wants to know how to petition for more marks. One student failed the final exam and ended up with a C- for a final grade. She thinks this is unfair.
Sigh. Why do we have to go through this every year? Is it just my students or does eveyone have this problem?
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16 comments :
It's not just you, Larry. Back when I was a professor at the University of Connecticut, I had the same problem. I'm curious how people respond.
When someone came grade-grubbing, I would typically offer to regrade their entire portfolio (homework, exams, whatever) and see if I could find a few more points for them that might elevate their grade--but I also warned them that the opposite might happen, that I might actually lower their score if I found a few mistakes that I missed in my original grading or a few places where I should have deducted points the first time around.
I never had anyone take me up on my offer to go back through and regrade, perhaps because the irritated sound of my offer suggested that scores were more likely to go down than up.
Guess I'm just a "strict father" type when it comes to dealing with grade-grubbing students.
Everyone has this problem.
I've been a TA 10 times, and every. last. semester. at least one student would enquire, sometimes politely, sometimes not so much, about the horrible injustice I had visited upon them.
Hah, I'm not surprised at my mark. Then again, my genetics course forgot to add exam marks to my final mark, so anything less than a nuclear bombshell won't faze me.
I couldn't imagine complaining to my professors when I was on college. I usually knew within a few points what I would get before the grades were posted (from graded papers, labs, and exams during the year). And I knew I earned that grade. It wasn't the professor's fault if I did poorly.
There are times when students are justified in asking for higher marks.
When I was studying there was one exam where the following scenario occurred: I won't go into specifics, but during the academic year we'd worked through a number of scenarios where a solution was developed that consisted of two parts. The students were used to this two-part process, it was fairly rote.
Along came the exam where the problem specifically stated that only the first part of the solution was required, not the second. After reading the question carefully to make sure I wasn't mistaken I went ahead and provided only the first part of the solution.
When the results were handed out, I found that I had received only 50% of the score for that problem.
What had happened is that every other one of my classmates had provided a full two-part solution to the problem, and the lecturer decided to mark according to that instead. So, because I had only done 50% of the work, I only got 50% of the score.
It took 20 minutes of polite arguing before I got him to give me the proper score. To this day I'm positive he never understood what my complaint was. He kept saying that it would be unfair to mark everyone else down, even though I pointed out that he didn't need to do this - their answers contained what was asked of them, they just carried on with more work that wasn't relevant.
That's the only time I ever seriously disputed a result.
Sometimes I feel out of place because although I'm in my first semester of teaching, I'm pretty strict when it comes to grades. Of course, as I'm just a TA, the professor can override my opinions. I really felt this one student in my class deserved a "C," but the professor chose to give her a "B." And then that student complained to use that she got a "B" instead of an "A"! If only she knew how lucky she was that I wasn't the one making the final decision on her grade . . .
I hope my professor doesn't talk about his students in an open forum like this. It's so mean and disrespectful.
a student says,
I hope my professor doesn't talk about his students in an open forum like this. It's so mean and disrespectful.
I think it's perfectly okay for students to talk about their Professors in an open forum. They can complain about bad teaching and about poor behavior on the part of Professors. At some point Profesors might actually read the comments and take them to heart.
If the goal is to make Professors behave more appropriately then this is a good thing, no?
What should we do when students behave badly? Wouldn't you like to know what Professors actually think about mark grubbers, cheaters, and student who fake illness in order to skip a term test?
What's your opinion of such students? Do you condone this behavior in students you know or do you speak out against it?
I liked this take on negotiating grades:
The reason I do not negotiate with students is the same reason I do not negotiate with my dentist when he tells me to floss more, or that I need a root canal on tooth #19: I am simply not qualified to offer my opinion on a topic I know very little about. Students take our courses for various reasons -- they are required to, they are interested in what we teach, or they have heard that ours is "must" before they graduate. Whatever the reason, no undergraduate is qualified to assess his or her own work with just three to 14 weeks of the topic under their belt. My students are free to love me or hate me, but I am not willing to concede that they know more about what I teach than I do.
I don't disagree with the fact that its students fault when they get a bad mark. Its wt majority point of view, and its correct to an extent.
Though, a different point of view could be that, when a student gets a bad mark, a part of "teacher" also gets a bad mark in "teaching". Proffessors might know a lot about the subject matter, no question abt that, but can they effectively get the idea accross? (which is not always easy) Being a teacher is a huge responsibility, and it shall not be treated merely as creating and marking tests and exams.
anonymous says,
I don't disagree with the fact that its students fault when they get a bad mark. Its wt majority point of view, and its correct to an extent.
Though, a different point of view could be that, when a student gets a bad mark, a part of "teacher" also gets a bad mark in "teaching". Proffessors might know a lot about the subject matter, no question abt that, but can they effectively get the idea accross? (which is not always easy)
No doubt about it. At the university level education is a cooperative venture. The teacher and the students need to respect each other and work together to learn the basic concepts in a course.
This doesn't seem to be possible in many cases. It seems as though a majority of students view their Professors as enemies who are standing in the way of their goals. It seems as though the demands placed on Professors to spoon feed them the right stuff are way out of line with the ideal cooperative experience that most of us would like.
Now, I realize that my criticism of student attitudes is not any better that the standard bad mouthing of Professors that you hear around every lunch table, but I have an excuse. The goal is to open up a dialogue by making both students and Professors aware of the fact that our attitudes need to change. Students have to become more responsible, and more respectful, and we Professors also have to have more respect for our students.
Surprising as it might seem to you, Professors actually know that we have problems—after all we do read the student evaluations even though we question their usefulness. What seems to be limiting our ability to make changes is the attitude of students who haven't read very many Professor evaluations. :-)
Because of their limited experience with university, students don't realize that there are better ways of doing things. Some of those ways require changes on the part of students. It's not only the Professor's fault that university education is in such trouble.
We need to work together to make changes and that means we both have to admit that we are contributing to the problem. Frankly, from my perspective, it looks pretty hopeless. Neither side is very willing to admit that they can do better.
we student love to blame on everything but ourselves. ;)
so, here is somethings we forgot to blame upon.
The GPA system...the way our marks are being catagorised. If only 84 was seen as 84 and not somewhere between 80-84, no student would ever ask you to turn that 84 into 85!
Sadly, wt suppose to be mutual growth of learning has become all about "marks". and I blame that on the modern competitiveness of professional schools ie.med school. No matter how many times profs say that "grades don't matter that much," they themselves constantly judge students based on their grades whether it be NSERC application or summer work.
Sometimes i feel like present grading system is very directional towards certain types of learning styles. We definately need a better system!!!
I would like to abolish the grade point system.
Several other schools have done it (e.g., University of British Columbia). It serves no useful purpose at the University of Toronto that couldn't just as easily be accomplished with percentages.
Grade do matter. We all recognize that a student who gets all >80% in every course has something that a student with a 65% average doesn't have. When we say that grades don't matter we mean that the difference between 78% and 82% shouldn't matter.
There's no easy way to change the Medical Schools. We could play dirty by moving to an honours/pass/fail system. That would encourage pre-med students to go elsewhere.
The British system solves the whole problem by turning the finals into an arcane marking process. No-one every knows his/her final marks unless you actually request an exam reprint, which incidentally costs a couple of pounds. I haven't reviewed any of my final examinations thus far and I doubt I could argue with my Professors on that point. Besides that every exam is usually marked by two persons plus an external examiner.
Now the question is, do you want to get rid of arguing with your students for the cost of having such an elaborate marking process?
ciao,
Mike (who is in favour of oral examinations anyway)
If it is an essay, I always try to ask my prof. specifically, what I did wrong, and how I can improve. If I feel that I earned more points based on their response, than I try to convince them. However, in more objective subjects, I rarely do try to get more points since wrong is wrong (usually). However, i feel the professor who feels he knows more than his students is a little arrogant. I mean, isn't that knowledge progresses. You learn and then expound upon what others know. Sometimes, you prove your teachers wrong.
anonymous says,
If it is an essay, I always try to ask my prof. specifically, what I did wrong, and how I can improve.
And how's that working out? Have any of your Professors come up with magic solutions? Have some of them actually spoken the truth and told you to just get smarter?
I'll let you in on a well-kept secret. Most Professors have no idea how you study and learn so they're in no position to give you advice on how to improve. University students are adults. By the time they reach university, they should know most of the best ways to study and learn. It's extremely unlikely that they've missed some special trick that will change their lives.
If I feel that I earned more points based on their response, than I try to convince them.
I'm sure you do.
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