Re: trend grading policies
>This is a good point. But it can be handled by giving the midterm less >weight to begin with. You have an argument for giving a midterm a lower >weight, but not a variable weight. And I do give the midterm lower >weight. A long standing tradition in Britain (and the derivative Irish system) was for all weight to be on end of year exams (classes typically ran for the whole academic year). When I arrived in Ireland in 1992, there were only two exams that counted for arts students in standard three year degree programs: at the end of the first year, and at the end of the third year. The first year exams determined whether you went into the pass or honours stream of classes; the third year exams determined your graduating grade. Exams at the end of second year did not count; they were only a guide to the student's progress. This is patterned after the Oxford-Cambridge system. There, it appears to work. At my university, like most universities in Ireland and the UK, it was not working. When I arrived here in '92, I immediately caused a ruckus by telling students in the MA class that their grade in my course depended on weekly homework assignments and a midyear exam as well as the end of year exam. They were unhappy because it upset their traditional study method. Classes began in October and ran through the beginning of April. There was then a month long study break, and then exams. The library was virtually empty until the break, when the students actually started studying. Because no one studied until the break, it made it very difficult to build on material over the course of the year. The problem is that 18 and 19 year olds are not mature to understand the importance of regular studying. Oxford and Cambridge solved this problem by weekly tutorials with regular academic staff. They could get away with this because of heavy taxpayer subsidies. Like most places, my university could not, so we got students who did almost no work until the last minute. Not surprisingly, as the number of students has grown (from 1000 twenty years ago to 15,000 now), the system has shifted to increased use of half-year classes, and a lot more examining during the year. I might also add that third year economics options were a mess, because almost no one took intermediate theory classes in second year seriously, because the exams did not count. William Sjostrom + William Sjostrom Senior Lecturer Centre for Policy Studies National University of Ireland, Cork Cork, Ireland +353-21-490-2091 (work) +353-21-427-3920 (fax) +353-21-463-4056 (home) [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.ucc.ie/~sjostrom/
Re: trend grading policies
In a message dated 1/30/03 6:19:06 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: >This is a good point. But it can be handled by giving the midterm less >weight to begin with. You have an argument for giving a midterm a lower >weight, but not a variable weight. And I do give the midterm lower >weight. Indeed, one might take the logic to its extreme and use only a final exam for the grade (or at least for the exam portion of the grade), as do law schools and graduate tax programs associated with law schools. Having completed masters degrees in both taxation and history, I preferred having a final and no midterm, and used only a final for the exam portion of the grade during my first year of teaching at Iowa. The undergraduates loved having no midterm, but towards the end of the semester had substantially heightened levels of anxiety, so I switched to having a midterm and a final. In my undergraduate and first masters program days I tended to suffer from what I called mid-semester slump. I'd start out with the best of intensions, then get distracted and not perform particularly well on my midterm exams. For the finals though I'd study intensively and often pull off end-of-semester miracles, getting grades my instructors thought impossible for me based on my mid-term performance. On more than one occasion I benefitted from a higher weight to the final or even a variable weighting system which regarded the exit value (as my cost accounting professor put it) as substantially more important than any eariler value. In the tax program, which operated on the quarter system, I'd hit my slump right at finals, so having all the grade in the final exam actually worked against me there. I don't recall suffering the mid-semester slump during either my MA or PhD programs in history, though I must say that I found graduate level courses in history substantially easier than technical undergraduate courses. I have benefitted once and probably twice since the PhD program in history from professors who raised the weight of my final work over my midterm work, and I'm grateful. I had a former student ask me for a recommendation recently and looking back at my comments on his work I see that he got an A- rather than an A or even A+ because his early work was mediocre. In other words, I gave him a grade based on fixed weights, his later brilliant work notwithstanding. I've always said though that I wouldn't want to have me as an instructor. :) DBL
Re: trend grading policies
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >I hope the particular economics course, industrial organization, is > of the second type. If so, trend grading would be worthwhile. By trend > grading I mean weighting assignments late in the semester heavier > or "bumping up grades if students are improving." Furthermore, my > unsupported assertion is that all classes that are both worthwhile and > interesting are of the second type. > > Patrick McCann > > p.s. this is less of an attempt to change the policy than to defend the > policies of other professors who were criticized so harshly. This is a good point. But it can be handled by giving the midterm less weight to begin with. You have an argument for giving a midterm a lower weight, but not a variable weight. And I do give the midterm lower weight. -- Prof. Bryan Caplan Department of Economics George Mason University http://www.bcaplan.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] "He wrote a letter, but did not post it because he felt that no one would have understood what he wanted to say, and besides it was not necessary that anyone but himself should understand it." Leo Tolstoy, *The Cossacks*
trend grading policies
I believe this is topical; it was sparked by the pronoucement of the grading policy for an economics course by an economics professor on this list. He said that if one gives better grades to those who do well in the end of the semester, one simply discriminates against those who work hard at the beginning of the semester rather than those who work hard at the end of the semester. This seems to be true only in the case of those courses which do not build on the material taught at the beginning of the course. For instance, a foreign language course which taught you sets of nouns each week. On the other hand, a foreign language course which taught you verbs the first week, how to conjugate them the second week, and required you to use them in complex sentences the third week would be fundamentally different. If someone were to do well the third week and not the first, they would have learned more than someone who did well the first week and not the third. This is because knowledge of the first week is required to do well in the third. I hope the particular economics course, industrial organization, is of the second type. If so, trend grading would be worthwhile. By trend grading I mean weighting assignments late in the semester heavier or "bumping up grades if students are improving." Furthermore, my unsupported assertion is that all classes that are both worthwhile and interesting are of the second type. Patrick McCann p.s. this is less of an attempt to change the policy than to defend the policies of other professors who were criticized so harshly.
