Timeline for Why target for low grade medians and generous curves, rather than extra credit? [duplicate]
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
22 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Mar 3, 2023 at 14:39 | vote | accept | Layman | ||
| Mar 3, 2023 at 9:44 | comment | added | Ian Sudbery | I don't think this is a duplicate of the associated question. That question is about whether curving is fair. This question is about why target a low average score on an exam. One can make 40 a B and 50 an A without curving. | |
| Mar 3, 2023 at 9:42 | review | Reopen votes | |||
| Apr 2, 2023 at 9:50 | |||||
| Mar 3, 2023 at 3:22 | history | closed |
GoodDeeds ZeroTheHero Scott Seidman Sursula Anton Menshov |
Duplicate of How is grading by curve fair at all? Are there any arguments in favor of it? | |
| Mar 3, 2023 at 1:54 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Mar 3, 2023 at 0:06 | comment | added | Bryan Krause♦ | @ZeroTheHero No one has suggested an exam that is needlessly difficult with respect to passing. The situation described is one where the threshold for passing an exam is far lower than the maximum possible credit on the exam, rather than a more typical "90% for an 'A'", etc. | |
| Mar 2, 2023 at 23:15 | comment | added | ZeroTheHero | @BryanKrause if every student is expected to study 100 hours per test to get a passing grade because exams or assignments are needlessly hard, the course load in the class is unnecessarily high. | |
| Mar 2, 2023 at 22:38 | comment | added | Bryan Krause♦ | @ZeroTheHero I don't see how posing a difficult question in an exam causes the student to fail their other obligations. | |
| Mar 2, 2023 at 21:04 | comment | added | ZeroTheHero | @BryanKrause I disagree. Students have other things to do than work on arbitrarily hard assignments to the detriment of their other courses. Some may have hold jobs outside the university, some may have other obligations. I recognize the need to have challenging assignments (for which I am locally notorious) and exams, but if the class average is such that students who achieved 30% get a high B or an A in this course, something's wrong with the format. | |
| Mar 2, 2023 at 20:06 | comment | added | Bryan Krause♦ | @ZeroTheHero I don't see any disrespect towards students in asking them to attempt something hard. It would be far more disrespectful to assume they are only capable of something easy. I know I hated math classes where you were primarily graded on demonstrating all the intermediate steps: for some problems, the solution became obvious to me and it was silly to write out the rest of the basic algebra for a course in calculus. | |
| Mar 2, 2023 at 19:55 | comment | added | user111388 | Are you having a certain region or even school in mind? | |
| Mar 2, 2023 at 19:52 | comment | added | Jon Custer | @ZeroTheHero - and yet it was one of the best classes I ever took. I learned a great deal about how to wrestle with difficult problems, which has served me very well over the years. Learning how to approach hard problems in the real world needs practice and training, not a bunch of problems with a neat, simple. "right" answers. | |
| Mar 2, 2023 at 19:43 | answer | added | Alexander Woo | timeline score: 7 | |
| Mar 2, 2023 at 19:33 | answer | added | Thomas Schwarz | timeline score: 2 | |
| Mar 2, 2023 at 19:32 | comment | added | cag51♦ | Can you clarify your definition of "absolute grade"? Does your professor or institution have a well-defined grading scale that says 40% = F? Or do you just have a preconception that a 40% "should" be an F? | |
| Mar 2, 2023 at 19:27 | comment | added | ZeroTheHero | @JonCuster I can only say I strongly disagree with this approach, and I know of no-one operating on this philosophy: it is disrespectful to students as it assumes they have nothing better to do than work on impossible assignments. it's easy to make arbitrarily hard assignments, and if indeed this was the case then I join the OP is question. | |
| Mar 2, 2023 at 19:22 | comment | added | Jon Custer | @ZeroTheHero - one advanced physics course I took was set up so that a grade in the 30's was in fact an A. The homework and tests were made so that any given problem was extremely difficult to actually finish fully and correctly. The point was for the professor to see just how far along you actually got. Different philosophy. An extremely good course all the same. | |
| Mar 2, 2023 at 18:16 | review | Close votes | |||
| Mar 3, 2023 at 3:22 | |||||
| Mar 2, 2023 at 18:04 | comment | added | ZeroTheHero | I find it impossible to believe that students scoring in the 30s or 40s can be bumped to an A except in very exceptional circumstances, such as a technical error on the exam, and exceptional circumstances don’t make a trend. I suppose the instructor could be entirely incompetent but again I doubt this is a trend. | |
| Mar 2, 2023 at 18:03 | comment | added | Buffy | Is this simply a case of a flood of students into a "popular" major and a very difficult entry level course or two to push students into other majors since the place can't handle such a flood in later courses? This happens periodically in CS, for example, but less often in math. | |
| Mar 2, 2023 at 17:56 | comment | added | Buffy | Sorry, this isn't very understandable. And where do your assumptions come from about "trend" and such? | |
| Mar 2, 2023 at 17:53 | history | asked | Layman | CC BY-SA 4.0 |