In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Gus Gassmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>When I was a TA at the University of British Columbia there was a >(modified) percentage system in use. (Modified means that the grade >reported was weighted by the number of credits.) Even though they >did not use letter grades, a score of 80% or higher meant "First class >standing", which was useful for scholarship eligibility. Instructors were >actively discouraged from assigning 78 or 79%. It was either 77 or 80. This is approximately the case at the University of Toronto as well (which in typical U of T fashion assigns and uses _both_ numeric and letter grades, with 80 being the threshold for an A-). Nothing dire happens to me when I give out a grade of 79 (as I regularly do), but there is indeed official "encouragement" not to. In my opinion, this verges on dishonesty. It seems to be motivated by the desire to avoid complaints from students who get a 79 and think that some small increase in a mark on some component would put them over the boundary line. Such students can indeed be annoying, but avoiding the problem by lying to them about the location of the boundary line is not the proper solution. Radford Neal . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
