Muriel Strand wrote:
> a bit of empirical evidence i have to offer is about some negative effects of
> the use of grading, which i realize is the opposite of what you asked for. when
> i was a senior in high school, a chinese girl decided not to take trig/analytic
> geometry because she was afraid it would ruin her gpa and affect her college
> acceptances.
The fact that in some situations grades may not be beneficial, does not
imply that in the general case the disadvantages outweigh benefits
(besides your "evidence" looks much more anecdotal than empirical).
There are a number of options for students to account for you the
problems you cited: 1) learn the material on your own; 2) some
schools allow either official or unofficial audits; 3) some schools
allow for Pass/Fail grades; and 4) some schools allow students to
erase poor grades after repeating a course.
>
> evidence that non-use of grades may have a beneficial side:
>
> antioch (at one time and perhaps still) has had an open-file policy, such that
> any student who didn't like the grade they got in a course could simply remove
> from their file the record of that course (grade & credit). this does not seem
> to have affected the school's reputation adversely, that i am aware of.
>
> not taking grades too seriously allows one to learn out of interest, which tends
> to lead to better retention and recall, as i can personally attest.
If you have some empirical references that show (in the general case) that
eliminating grades significantly enhances student performance in universities
I would be very interested.
--
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~athe0007
