Alternative Grading
Problem with Traditional Grading
This was my first response to dealing with my concerns about the
problematic effects of grading on my students' education and psychological
well-being. I wrote this in hopes that it would be an empowerment tool for
students, helping them to adopt healthy attitudes towards the grading that
indeed is an important part of their lives.
This is a summary of why I think traditional grading undermines the goals
and ideals of liberal arts education. It was published in the Winter 2001 issue of the Friends Association of Higher Education Newsletter. It
is a modified version of a paper I presented at the Friends Association for
Higher Education conference in June 2000 at Earlham College, Richmond,
Indiana.
- "Transforming Grading:
From Learning by Fear to Learning by Love," a paper I have written
and intend to try to get published. Once
the paper is accepted for publication, I will post the complete
bibliographical citation.
Self-Assessment Grading
Here is a version of "self-assessment handbook" I give to my students
when I use Guided Self-Assessment as the basis for grading in some of my
classes. This handbook shows the details of my system, which works quite
well.
The process is accompanied by
these worksheets that students fill out at the appropriate times during
the course. Versions of some of these worksheets could be used even for
courses that are not graded on self-assessment.
Students tend to be appreciative of this opportunity and for the most
part handle the responsibility extremely well. They mention that it is
difficult, at times painful, very eye-opening, but very worthwhile because
it really does help them to take more responsibility for their own
education, and they learn more about themselves in the process.
I used to use this method in all of my classes (even courses I co-taught
with others)! In the 2006-2007 academic year, I experimentally tried a
new system (see next) and only used self-assessment grading in the senior
seminar, "Metaphilosophy."
Using Non-Binding Grades During the Semester
During the academic year 2006-2007, I tried a new system of grading in
most of my courses--one of assigning "non-binding" grades on quizzes and
paper assignments during the semester. The idea of "non-binding" grades
is that these grades give students accurate grade-like feedback on their
work during the course, but the basis of the final course grade is not to
average those grades together. Instead, the final course grade is based on
the final exam and the final integrative paper. By learning well from
the quizzes, students should be able to do well on the final exam. By
learning well from feedback on their papers, students should be able to
write a good final integrative paper.
The purpose of this grading system is to alleviate grade-anxiety
during the semester while still giving students accurate grade-like
feedback. This allows students to freely make mistakes and learn from
those mistakes before it "counts." It eases the tension in the classroom
when graded material is returned, greatly reduces students' temptations to
quibble over grades and inspires them to ask good questions about grading
standards, and motivates students to pay close attention to the verbal and
written feedback when graded material is returned.
In practice, the vast majority of students do slightly better on their
final exams than their quiz averages, and also do slightly better on their
final papers than their in-semester paper averages.
Unfortunately, this system of grading does tempt some students to miss
quizzes and paper assignments altogether. These students typically are not
able to catch up and so tend not to do very well on the final exam or final paper at the
end of the course. But I have not yet come across any other system of
grading that guarantees that everyone stays motivated and does well in the
course. And so my own tentative conclusion is that the benefits of this
system outweigh the problems.
Part of what I like about this system is that the students who
do well have demonstrated the ability to function from high levels of
self-motivation: not relying on all grades "counting" to motivate them
to complete assignments. They have perceived the educational value of
trying their best and paying careful attention to feedback throughout the
process of learning. I myself prefer a grading system that encourages and
rewards the development of this kind of self-motivation.
Other Proposals for Grading Reform
This is a proposal I submitted for consideration at St. Lawrence
University when I learned that others wanted to propose finer
gradations in grading (a shift from grades of 4.0, 3.5, 3.0, 2.5, etc. to
grades of 4.0, 3.75, 3.5, 3.25, 3.0, 2.75, etc.). In spring 2005, the
faculty at St. Lawrence voted in a change to finer gradations, by a narrow
margin. The ".25 interval" system of grading went into effect Fall 2005.
The following chart shows how GPAs (grade point averages) do in fact
change if you round grades in different ways. This table shows the
kinds of rounding historically used at St. Lawrence University. Other
schools often use +/- systems, which numerically convert to grades such as
3.3, 3.7, 4.0. What my little table shows is that it is dubious to compare
GPAs on 4.0 grading scales if the systems of rounding are different.
|
Actual |
.25 Rnd |
.5 Rnd |
.0 Rnd |
|
3.35 |
3.25 |
3.5 |
3 |
|
2.8 |
2.75 |
3 |
3 |
|
3.6 |
3.5 |
3.5 |
4 |
|
2.3 |
2.25 |
2.5 |
2 |
|
3.0125 |
2.9375 |
3.125 |
3 |
Note that not all sets of grades would necessarily always round down
on .25 intervals and up on .5 intervals. What is
interesting is just that the GPAs are different. Two students with the
same grades would have different GPAs depending on whether they started
before or after the change in grading intervals--and yet those students who
came in the midst of the change have both kinds of grades averaged together,
as if averaging these incommensurable scales is legitimate!
Here is a table showing what happens when you average together the grades
of students graded under both systems. Imagine these five hypothetical
students who happen to get exactly the same raw grades in their courses
every year (the grades from the above table)--but the grading system changes for all except Student 1
sometime during their time here. This table shows the differences in
their final GPAs at the end of their four years (the yearly GPAs are taken
from the table above):
|
|
Yr 1 GPA |
Yr 2 GPA |
Yr 3 GPA |
Yr 4 GPA |
Final
GPA |
|
Student 1 |
3.125 |
3.125 |
3.125 |
3.125 |
3.125 |
|
Student 2 |
3.125 |
3.125 |
3.125 |
2.9375 |
3.078125 |
|
Student 3 |
3.125 |
3.125 |
2.9375 |
2.9375 |
3.03125 |
|
Student 4 |
3.125 |
2.9375 |
2.9375 |
2.9375 |
2.984375 |
|
Student 5 |
2.9375 |
2.9375 |
2.9375 |
2.9375 |
2.9375 |
In this case, the student lucky enough to have arrived before the change
has the highest GPA. The student unlucky enough to have spent all four
years under the new grading system has the lowest. Again, it is not
the case that this change results in lower GPAs for all students--the
point is that the very same raw grades average out to different GPAs
depending on the grading system. Worse, these GPAs are then compared
to those of students from schools that may use the .3/.7 intervals
(plus/minus grading)--an altogether different system, but because it is
also a 4.0 scale we think it is essentially the same!
We place a lot of faith in these numbers that we are not in fact even
computed in a mathematically responsible way. Can we really say that the
GPA has a stable and unambiguous meaning?
|
