Our Grading System is Broken • Hacker News Board

Re: Our Grading System is Broken

#11

Post by jey » Wed, Mar 04, 2009, 9:58 PM UTC

time_management wrote: post #9

Making homework optional across the board (e.g. you can get an A if you ace the exams) is silly. It makes sense for a few courses (e.g. freshman writing, calculus sequence, intro language) which exist to train a specific mastery that can be objectively tested in a short period of time. It doesn't make sense, though, to pass a CS major based on exams alone (as opposed to programs), an English major without papers, or…

I doubt the author of the blog post is saying projects and papers shouldn't be assigned. He's probably just saying that normal homework is a complete waste of time for some people.

I personally abhorred homework and loved projects and tests.

Re: Our Grading System is Broken

#12

Post by baddox » Wed, Mar 04, 2009, 9:59 PM UTC

jey wrote: post #5

psyklic wrote: post #4

It seems to me that learning material over a long period of time is better than just "crashing" for exams, which this author's proposed system would encourage. It is easy to imagine that a student will skip an assignment at one point, then stop doing homework altogether. The student will realize he should have done the homework toward the end when he realizes his grade, but by then it will be too late -- his homework…

His suggestion just saves the people who already know the material or who learn in other ways than homework from being penalized by having to do a ton of pointless busy work. If a person who thinks they can learn the material without doing the homework ends up trying to cram and then failing the test, that's his/her own problem. That person should just do the homework unless they're sure that they can learn the mater…

Exactly. Struggling students already have the option to not do their homework with the existing system, this new suggestion doesn't change that.

Re: Our Grading System is Broken

#13

Post by baddox » Wed, Mar 04, 2009, 10:01 PM UTC

sethg wrote: post #8

There's no sense in prescribing a change to "our grading system" without even referring to the content of the class that's being graded, based on the assumption that all the work a teacher gives out to students can be classified as "homework", which is for the purpose of practice, and "test", which is for the purpose of comprehensively measuring one's performance. For example: If the teacher assigns a 10-page researc…

Actually, I would consider the large research projects to be the tests of that course. Besides, the English/lit/composition courses I've taken don't really give small daily or regularly assigned "homework" assignments anyway, so this plan wouldn't really apply to those.

Re: Our Grading System is Broken

#14

Post by baddox » Wed, Mar 04, 2009, 10:03 PM UTC

tokenadult wrote: post #2

These are interesting suggestions. There is much more about the arbitrariness of grading systems in a book I read in high school, Wad-Ja-Get? The Grading Game in American Education. http://www.amazon.com/Wad-Ja-Get-Grading-Game-American-Educa... That book makes the excellent point that EVERYTHING about grades is arbitrary. Having a uniform system of accumulating scores on class work to set a course grade, as the auth…

Precisely! This is why I've always liked standardized tests (although admittedly, I did far better on my ACT than on my high school grades). Unfortunately, there are many arguably legitimate complaints about standardized tests, namely: that they're governed by the state or federal government, and that they may encourage schools to "teach to the test."

Re: Our Grading System is Broken

#15

Post by rsheridan6 » Wed, Mar 04, 2009, 10:08 PM UTC

It wouldn't work. Homework is there so that you learn the material well before the exams instead of cramming. If it doesn't count towards the final grade, people won't do it.

I had a professor who said that having frequent (like twice-weekly) quizzes, which has the some purpose as assigning homework, had reduced the number of failures in the class considerably.

Re: Our Grading System is Broken

#16

Post by baddox » Wed, Mar 04, 2009, 10:08 PM UTC

time_management wrote: post #9

Making homework optional across the board (e.g. you can get an A if you ace the exams) is silly. It makes sense for a few courses (e.g. freshman writing, calculus sequence, intro language) which exist to train a specific mastery that can be objectively tested in a short period of time. It doesn't make sense, though, to pass a CS major based on exams alone (as opposed to programs), an English major without papers, or…

I agree with your statement about only being able to judge 4 or 5 quality levels. This of course only applies to subjective work, not to things like math, grammar, etc. Subjective classes like Composition usually don't feature such an emphasis on daily or otherwise regular homework assignments, therefore the large assignments would be the tests. But I would also argue that 4-5 levels of quality is too much, because is the grader comparing papers to other papers, or to some ideal paper that exists in his mind? I think for subjective grading, the only options should be pass or fail.

Re: Our Grading System is Broken

#17

Post by decode » Wed, Mar 04, 2009, 10:08 PM UTC

I was a full-time student for about 20 years, all said. I was never assigned a homework assignment that did not benefit me in some way. Whether by teaching me something new, honing a skill, or reinforcing and deepening knowledge I already had, each homework assignment I did was helpful. It seems like the author wants to cut out all of this beneficial work just because he can do well on tests. I don't think that's a good idea.

Re: Our Grading System is Broken

#18

Post by baddox » Wed, Mar 04, 2009, 10:10 PM UTC

rsheridan6 wrote: post #15

It wouldn't work. Homework is there so that you learn the material well before the exams instead of cramming. If it doesn't count towards the final grade, people won't do it. I had a professor who said that having frequent (like twice-weekly) quizzes, which has the some purpose as assigning homework, had reduced the number of failures in the class considerably.

But with this system, the "safe" option is still to do all the homework assignments. If you're implying that making them option "punishes" the "bad" students (by bad I simply mean more likely to fail), then by that logic requiring the homework punishes the "good" students.

Re: Our Grading System is Broken

#19

Post by sgupta » Wed, Mar 04, 2009, 10:15 PM UTC

baddox wrote: post #10

sgupta wrote: post #3

"Making the tenth of a percent from 89.4 to 89.5 worth immensely more than the 9.4 percent from 80 to 89.4 is idiotic." I got an 89.4% in a CS class and asked the professor, whose office hours I frequented, if he could bump me up to an A since I was so close. His response was: "If you truly understood the material and deserved an A, you would have earned an A by a large margin rather than missing it by a small one."

Then your teacher is admitting that my design only the few tenths of percents surrounding the letter grade cutoffs are worth anything. I suppose it's just a matter of opinion, but I find this system remarkably arbitrary.

Even if the grading system is arbitrary, it's usually fully transparent and disclosed ahead of time.

I knew that the cutoff for an A was 90%, and I also knew that the grade would be calculated based on my projects and exams. I knew the exact weight of each project and exam too, all within the first few days of class.

I knew what was expected of me in this situation and didn't deliver, so it was my fault for not getting the A - not the grading system's fault. But my 89.4% was so close to an A that I somehow felt entitled to getting one, but as his quote points out, I didn't really deserve it.

Re: Our Grading System is Broken

#20

Post by time_management » Wed, Mar 04, 2009, 10:45 PM UTC

baddox wrote: post #16

time_management wrote: post #9

Making homework optional across the board (e.g. you can get an A if you ace the exams) is silly. It makes sense for a few courses (e.g. freshman writing, calculus sequence, intro language) which exist to train a specific mastery that can be objectively tested in a short period of time. It doesn't make sense, though, to pass a CS major based on exams alone (as opposed to programs), an English major without papers, or…

I agree with your statement about only being able to judge 4 or 5 quality levels. This of course only applies to subjective work, not to things like math, grammar, etc. Subjective classes like Composition usually don't feature such an emphasis on daily or otherwise regular homework assignments, therefore the large assignments would be the tests. But I would also argue that 4-5 levels of quality is too much, because i…

But I would also argue that 4-5 levels of quality is too much, because is the grader comparing papers to other papers, or to some ideal paper that exists in his mind?

I think, in general, the grades A, B, and C map to the following standards of acceptable work:

A: That of a student intending graduate study in the field. B: That at a major. C: That of an ordinary student, e.g. a non-major.

Hence, C is failure in graduate school, whereas a C in Calc 2 for an English major is unambiguously not failure.

F obviously represents failure. D is essentially a high-fail that's counted as a pass. It means, "you didn't pass this class, and you shouldn't use it as a prerequisite, but you didn't do so poorly that I want to set you back a course." D would probably vanish if college weren't so fucking expensive.