: Michael Smith [mailto:ersaram...@yahoo.com]
Sent: Sun 2/8/2009 8:07 PM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: Re: [tips] globeandmail.com: Professor makes his mark, but it costs
him his job
What if the pass cuttoff is the equivalent of 80%? Then minimal performance
would
Wednesday 2:00-3:30
From: Christopher D. Green [mailto:chri...@yorku.ca]
Sent: Sunday, February 08, 2009 1:31 AM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: [tips] globeandmail.com: Professor makes his mark, but it costs him
his job
As Marie notes, he did give grades and the grades were uninformative about the
quality of student learning.
Schools that use narratives rather than grades do provide information about the
quality of student learning. In addition, there is an implicit grade associated
with the decision about
Jim Clark wrote:
One year I decided to make the assignments voluntary (I can't remember why
although I am now being taken to task for using too many TA hours for the
course, and this might have been the case earlier as well ... much of TA time
is spent marking assignments). Guess what?
Hi
I think the secret to the difference (assuming there is a difference in the
actual doing of assignments) is the 4 tests for Chris versus my 2 tests over an
entire year. That is, students would not find out until Dec in my full-year
course that they should have done the 3 assignments during
My experience is closer to Chris'. I have a set of assignments
that are voluntary. I don't take them up or grade them. The
assignments are to help students identify whether they understand
some topic. I have been pleasantly encouraged by the number of
students (both strong and weak) who
I thought there was empirical data relative to how students perform in
classes that only have a pass-fail approach. I should be able to cite
this but recall how it became clear fairly clearly that most students
performed at the minimum level to get a pass. Ergo, the brief trial with
pass-fail
: Professor makes his mark, but it costs
him his job
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) tips@acsun.frostburg.edu
Date: Sunday, February 8, 2009, 5:15 PM
I thought there was empirical data relative to how students perform in
classes that only have a pass-fail approach. I should be able
It is too bad that this (now former) professor's politics obscures the
critical educational question he poses: Would students work harder on
their courses if there were no grades (i.e., if knowledge was the ONLY
thing they could hope to take away from a course)?
