for more than 20 years, i have been "running" a correspondence kind of course in basic stat ... that involves using a text and a study guide ... and, has 10 assignments they work on PLUS 2 proctored mc tests of 40 items each. now, in the grading, tests count 60% of the overall grade and the assignments count for 40%. for sure, the scores on the assignments tend to be high ... partly due to the fact that they have considerable time to work on them ... and CAN get help (from me and others i suppose, and perhaps most importantly, i grade them quickly and leniently generally speaking). however, BY FAR, most of the course work is taken up by doing these assignments ... perhaps 100 hours for assignments and, only 5 for the tests. it would be almost unethical to say that because of the lack of variability in grades on the assignments and, the fact that they CAN (and probably do ... though rarely do students know one another in this course) get help ... that assignments should only count say ... 5/10 percent of the course. this would be totally unfair to the students.
i even worry about only giving 40% weight to the assignments but, DO want some variation in grades ... and that comes primarily from the proctored tests i am not suggesting that there has to be a 1 to 1 correspondence between effort/work AND, weight for grade but, there is some unethical IMbalance to this that we should not step over At 10:52 AM 4/8/02 -0300, Robert J. MacG. Dawson wrote: >Alan McLean wrote: > > > > A number (>10!) of years ago I directed a subject with assignments and > > of course had this problem. (I say of course because there is always > > some variation among markers!) I went through an incredible amount of > > heart burn, trying to do the best thing for the students. I started by > > taking into account both class means and class standard deviations, > > using the linear transformation referred to before. Then I decided that > > the SD had very little variation, and simply leveled the class means. > > Our usual solution in my department is (unconsciously?) based on the >dictum that a good experimental design ahead of time is better than >fancy fudging afterwards. > > We rotate the graders among the sections by week, so that each > student >gets graded roughly the same number of times by each grader. (We also do >the same thing on the final exams, with each instructor grading one or >more questions across the entire multisection course. > > We also remove confounding variables by not grading the > assignment, but >a weekly quiz based on the assignment. [However, in many courses it is >not a pure quiz, but a part of the learning process in which they are >permitted to ask for hints and have work checked before submitting it. >Then they get 85% of their course grade from strictly-invigilated, >closed-book or limited-note exams. It seems to work.] > > -Robert Dawson >. >. >================================================================= >Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the >problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: >. http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . >================================================================= Dennis Roberts, 208 Cedar Bldg., University Park PA 16802 <Emailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]> WWW: http://roberts.ed.psu.edu/users/droberts/drober~1.htm AC 8148632401 . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
