Jon, I agree with you on all points, and basically operated under those principles.
However, there is a fly in the works with a weak class, one I ran into head on. #1: You can't give Cs in grad school. Basically, as a student, if you make more than one C, you're out of the program, or at least on probation and could lose an assistantship, if you have one. Administrators who need to keep their program numbers up for funding would FREAK if Cs were showing up with any frequency. #2: Grad students know this, and will not risk getting even 1 C. If it even remotely looks like they are at risk of getting a C or worse, they'll drop the course, if it isn't a core requirement course. Obviously core requirement courses are different, and there's other stuff to take special care with on those. But, for a case in point, in a technology-intensive, Flash and RIA-interaction design course I taught which was dual-listed, 400-600 (at the time, a new course I had proposed and gotten thru curriculum cmte, so definitely not a core requirement), I had drawn in a number of my engineering undergrads, some very talented honors kids, to work alongside my master's students studyingg IA and interaction design. I thought, cool, I can put them in collaborative groups and they can help each other, Vygotsky's "zone of proximal development." The problem? The undergrads ran circles around a very weak class of grad students (to keep the numbers up, administrators had even admitted folks UNDER our previous GRE cutoffs) who could barely manage the technology, but weren't doing well on the design or theoretical issues either. It was a disaster, and the grad students were crashing under the rigors big time. By six weeks into the course, all but one of the grad students had dropped. Meanwhile, the undergrads finished with flying colors, produced an incredible CD of rich and fantastic projects. But boy was I in the doghouse with my administrators. Chris On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 12:03 PM, jon kolko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, > > I've heard a number of times that some faculty (and program heads) consider > their programs as contracts with the students - that you pay a certain > amount of money, and you get a degree. "Professional" programs are often > framed this way (those that attract more disciplined and often older > students). While I can certainly see the appeal of this (particularly from > an administrator's point of view), if a program is accredited, there needs > to be a sense of rigorous assessment built into the grading schema. A "C" > has always meant "average", and if your students are doing average work, > give them average grades. The flipside of aggressive and difficult grading > is that you need to be prepared to do aggressive and difficult > rationalization, and I know a lot of professors who are turned off by this. > But this seems only fair to me - if you give a harsh grade, you need to > offer both constructive criticism and a thorough substantiation of the > grade. This is no different than a harsh critique - "It sucks" doesn't cut > it in Design, as you have to explain WHY it sucks. > > So I guess my answer to your question about administrative imperatives is > that your grading should be in no way connected to or influenced by that > imperative - you can give fair grades and still have 15 students in a class. > And I truly think you owe it to all paying students to give fair grades, > because when someone who gets straight As and naively thinks they can get a > job at a high pressure consultancy has no design skills to speak of, they > get a rude awakening during their interview and they begin to negatively > taint the reputation of the institution. That isn't fair to the company, to > the student, or to the school. > > "And it annoys the pig..." > > :) > > Jon > > > On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 10:11 AM, Christine Boese < > [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> These are excellent points Jon, and many programs sincerely strive to do >> this. >> >> But having worked in such programs through bad economic times as well as >> good, I have another question to pose to you. What do you do when >> administrators REQUIRE numbers, and the quality of your students, for >> various reasons, is not that good, and the majority can't survive the rigors >> you want to put them through? >> >> There are two sides of this, particularly with grad class recruitment >> efforts and admissions. In good economic times, the primo students are being >> snagged up straight to industry, so you can end up with weak classes of >> students that way. >> >> And in bad economic times, really bad times, beyond when layoffs send >> folks to grad or second degree programs, people just don't have the money to >> spend on an expensive school (esp if student loan sources are completely >> drying up). >> >> There is a sweetspot, I suppose, where bad economic times fill classes >> with great students, before they start to cull them due to lack of funds. >> >> But there's an administrative imperative (you must admit a new class of 15 >> grad students every fall, for instance) that can be quite demoralizing for a >> faculty member, I have to say. And then the next thing you know (probably >> not at SCAD, but elsewhere), you've got a class of students you have to show >> how to open and close multiple windows and save files on a server for >> collaborative projects. >> >> It's a dilemma, so if you don't have an answer to my question, join the >> club! If you do have an answer, tho, please share! It will make me feel >> better. >> >> Chris >> >> > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
