On Aug 11, 2016, at 11:13 AM, Michael Ofsowitz <m...@rochester.rr.com> wrote:
> Bob: sort of; ideally, if I could remove IQ as a factor and still measure > learning (as an advancement in comprehension), I'd like to be able to reward > students for their achievement, rather than punish them. Not as a large > portion of the overall course grade, but as some small rewarding experience. > > For example, their ability to comprehend some topic in social psych might be > minimal, and on a test (and as I briefly mentioned, mine are all written - > short essay type) they might get a C- grade (or worse), which they experience > as punishment. But what if such a student has made significant progress from > a lower baseline to get to that C-? I appreciate what Michael is saying here. Students can get obsessed about grades, and their emotional reactions to them can interfere with their motivation. But the solution to that problem is not to change the grades, but to undercut the widespread misapprehensions about grades. I sometimes wonder if we have completely forgotten why we give grades at all. Grades are not “rewards” or “punishments.” Grades are information, and not even information primarily intended for the student who earns them. They are information about the student’s performance for the NEXT person or school or other institution that the student interacts with. Ideally we talk (or write) in detailed qualitative terms to students about their performance (and we do that when we write comments on essays). Ideally, we would also talk (or write) to people “down the line” who want to know about the student’s performance too. But classes are too big, school are too big, there are too many applicants to everything, and so we have impoverished our communication to a single letter (or perhaps to a not-very-reliable percentage) so that we can handle dozens, hundreds, thousands of cases in a short period of time. It seems to me that the appropriate response to a student “experiencing [a C-] as punishment,” is to talk to them about what grades are for and to disabuse them of that "experience.” Explain to the student who goes from D to C- that they have improved somewhat, and they should be proud of that, but that there is still a long way to go (if they even want to be among the top students in the class — perhaps they don’t really care; they just want to “pass”). But, more important, explain to them that grades are not "the thing.” They are just a (not very informative) indicator of “the thing.” What you ACTUALLY LEARN is "the thing.” Getting upset about grades is like getting upset about a thermometer. You can’t make things warmer or cooler by changing the thermometer. You only change the (arbitrary) scale by which we measure it. Actually changing the temperature requires us to manipulate (aspects of) the real world, not just our indicators of the real world. Same for grades and learning. Chris ….. Christopher D Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 43.773895°, -79.503670° chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo ………………………………... --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@mail-archive.com. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=49179 or send a blank email to leave-49179-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
