I'm a bit late in the game, but here goes...
In my introductory psych classes, I offer a policy wherein students are
allowed to replace one grade during the term with a makeup exam. They can
take another exam over the same material and "erase" their initial
performance. They can do this ONCE during the term, and all such makeups
are done at the end of the term. I do this with several rationales:
1. I don't believe in dropping a grade, as that seems to send the message
that you can get a high grade without mastering all the material.
2. I tell them I won't "curve" poor exam scores unless I also curve high
exam scores... that is, set the mean of each exam to a C and use standard
deviations to set the other grades. That logic was applied to me in
undergrad, and on Social Psych exam on which I got a 92, it was a B (since
the mean on the exam was around an 87).
3. It provides me with a way to make up for exams in which disasters happen.
4. It provides me with a built-in makeup exam policy in which I don't have
to quibble over what is an "acceptable excuse."
5. It gives all students a chance to succeed, even if they have that one
bad day on an exam.
Anyway, that's my 5 cents....
David W.
At 03:15 PM 9/20/00 -0400, Michael J. Kane wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>I have a 2-part question, based on the following (too true) premise:
>
>I just gave the first exam of a Cognitive Psychology course, which
>consisted of
>multiple-choice and short-answer questions. The class includes many 1st and
>2nd year students, with a smattering of 3rd and 4th year students. Based on
>percent-correct scores, my grade distribution breaks down as follows:
>A's: 11%
>B's: 11%
>C's: 11%
>D's: 18%
>F's: 50%
>
>Yikes. Clearly, some students performed admirably, but many others did
>not. So here
>is part 1 of my question:
>
>Would you leave the grades as-is, or re-scale them somehow? If the
>latter, what method
>would you choose, given that the 2 highest grades are near-perfect scores
>(98%), and the
>bottom grade is 25% correct? I'm typically not fond of finding breaks in
>the distributions
>as a means to assign grades, because I do not want to foster competition
>among my
>students. I also would like each exam and quiz score to be a number
>(e.g., 90%, 75%)
>so that's it's easy for students to calculate their grades as the semester
>proceeds. Are there
>good reasons NOT to simply give everyone a free 10%, for example, which
>would raise
>everyone's grade and make the distribution look a little more reasonable
>(beyond the fact
>that a few students will have grades over 100%)?
>
>The 2nd part of my question is, given that many students did not do well,
>many of us --
>including me -- are likely to feel some sense of failure. Although I
>would like to think that
>these poor grades will improve the motivation and work ethic of my
>students and me, my
>previous experience suggests that this will be true for only some
>students. Any suggestions
>on how to *build* motivation and/or confidence in a situation like this,
>as opposed to crushing it?
>I've been at this just a few years and I'm not sure I've figured it out yet.
>
>Thanks much!
>
>-Mike
>************************************************
>Michael J. Kane
>Department of Psychology
>P.O. Box 26164
>University of North Carolina at Greensboro
>Greensboro, NC 27402-6164
>email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>phone: 336-256-1022
>fax: 336-334-5066
>
David T. Wasieleski, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology and Counseling
Valdosta State University
229-333-5620
http://chiron.valdosta.edu/dtwasieleski
"You say you're life is like a movie.
It's all gonna work out in the end.
I think your life is like a desert.
Where does it go? Where does it begin?"
--Dave Matthews Band
"True Reflections
