Hi
On Wed, 22 Dec 1999, Peter Westfall wrote:
Jim Clark wrote:
Artificially giving all students (or almost all) the same grade
does not minimize variation in the underlying trait, achievement,
in this case. It simply hides the variation so that one does not
know to what extent one is minimizing differences in achievement,
and rewards students for not trying to achieve more than some
minimal level.
I don't Deming would have said assignment of Pass/Fail should
be "artificial". If the student doesn't perform, then of
course they shouldn't Pass. He did say, on the other hand,
that grading imposes an artificial scarcity of A's (also of C's
and D's). These are again Deming's words, and echo Dennis
Robert's comments about the pure subjectivity of the grading
process.
Artificial scarcity is _not_ a necessary feature of grading (see
below) and a relatively small number of high grades does _not_
necessarily indicate anything about the subjectivity of grading.
Students (or employees or whatever) vary on characteristics that
affect their performance in class (or on the job), such as
ability and motivation. To treat all human beings as some
homogenous group indicates to me a serious misunderstanding of
human beings. We should certainly do everything we can to
maximize performance of everyone, but there are limits to what
can be achieved.
The motivation for the students should be in Joy of Learning
(one of Deming's 14 points) rather than the grade. This I
agree with wholeheartedly. How can we achieve this? I think
it is our main challenge as educators. Using the grading
system as a motivational substitute for Joy of Learning is
lazy, inefficient management of our classes.
You do not promote joy of learning by creating a system in which
people who work hard find that people who do less or poorer work
achieve the same benefits (i.e., grades, salary). That strikes
me as a good way to disillusion everyone. You can certainly
downplay the consequences side and emphasize to students that
they should focus on understanding and learning the material,
that evaluations are primarily to provide feedback on how well
things are going, and the like. Mostly, you need to design the
educational system to maximize learning and achievement by as
many students as possible (e.g., well organized instruction,
constructive evaluation, enhancing interest in the material,
teaching study or other prerequisite skills, and so on).
Students who are fairly sure they are not going to get the
coveted A, or who only need a "C or better" are going to give
less effort. This will increase variation, and operates
contrary to the stated goal of the system.
In fact research shows that low aptitude students tend to study
_more_ than high aptitude students, which results in a moderation
of the relationship between aptitude and grades (i.e., reducing
variation). One hypothesis is that students study as much as
necessary to achieve some level of perceived
understanding/learning, and the amount of study needed differs
across students.
Grading is not equivalent to ranking, unless one uses a forced
distribution. One can grade without any restriction on the
number of As or other grades other than the achievement of the
students. I would be interested in hearing about any empirical
evidence that non-use of grading schemes produces better or even
as good learning as the use of grades?
I think this is a very important point: what can we do in place
of ranking? Now, as much as you say you don't use ranking, I
am not sure you can get away without out. What if all of a
sudden everyone got A's by your criteria? Wouldn't the
administration get on your case? Then, you might say, just
make the criteria harder so that we get back to a "normal"
proportion of As, Bs etc. Well, aren't you just back to
ranking?
In my experience, the odds of everyone getting As by any sensible
criteria are quite slim. By sensible, I mean not so excessively
low that everyone passes some real minimal standard (e.g., as for
driving a car, to use an example from another posting). In fact
I teach an honours methods and statistics class that routinely
has half the class receive As. The class has select students to
begin with and is designed so that hard work is pretty much
ensured. Even though grades at our institution are formally
reviewed by a committee, I have never had a problem. As for
changing criteria, that is a complex issue. I teach my students
now far more than what I learned in the comparable class 30 years
ago. Such evolution does occur, but it is not artificial. For
example, graduates today are expected to have greater computer
expertise.
I don't have any data from the classroom experience, but I do
have an observation from business. Texas Instruments had a
policy of ranking plants in terms of their performance. The
employees at the top plants received bonuses. Great idea,
right? Motivates
