Stuart wrote, "When we calculate a final percentage grade, how reliable is it? Another way of putting this is: What is the standard error of measurement?"
Our official grading system is as follows: Grade Quality Points Percentage Equivalents A 493 - 100 A- 3.6790 - 92 B+ 3.3387 - 89 B 383 - 86 B- 2.6780 - 82 C+ 2.3377 - 79 C 273 - 76 C- 1.6770 - 72 D+ 1.3367 - 69 D 163 - 66 D- 0.6760 - 62 F 059 or lower I HATE the idea that a 70% equates to 1.67 quality points. If you get a 70% in my class, that should be a C. So I refuse to give minus grades. There are some exceptions. e.g., if a student blows the first test (e.g., 60%) but then gets three 80% test scores, I would consider giving that student a B- (even though the average is a 75%) because he/she got his/her act together. I do little or no "curving" on individual tests although I will make "corrections" if a students can convince me that one or more questions were poorly written or otherwise misleading. The bottom line is that a student is almost never unpleasantly surprised by a final grade. The student gets what he/she expects or gets a (small) pleasant surprise. The result is that in 30 years I've never had a grade appeal filed against me or any other complaint to a chair or dean. In all fairness, I should say that if a student comes to me and asks me to give a second look at an essay question, I do not refuse. The fact is, that after getting bleary-eyed on essay exams can't swear that each question was read & graded with the same perfect standards. In fact, I'll guarantee that was NOT the case. I make mistakes & will happily correct them if a student asks me to. Of course, this only goes for the last exam. I will not go over all of a student's exams for the entire semester. The fact is that grades are a very serious matter to students. We need to remind ourselves of that with some regularity. That doesn't mean we should abandon our standards or give in to grade inflation. The fact is that a few points here or there will have no measurable effect on the grades of 90% of our students. But for the few who have reason to believe there was a significant error and where that error will impact a letter grade, we should be willing to go the extra mile. Ed (The Crusty Old Curmudgeon........... or the Kindly Old Professor. I'm not always sure which) Edward I. Pollak, Ph.D. Department of Psychology West Chester University of Pennsylvania West Chester, PA 19383 Final Week Office Hours: Mon. 2-6 p.m. Tues. 10 a.m. - noon; thursday 8-10 a.m. and 12:30-1:30 p.m. http://mywebpages.comcast.net/epollak/home.htm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Husband, father, grandfather, biopsychologist, bluegrass fiddler and herpetoculturist...... in approximate order of importance. --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
