Hi all,
I have a 2-part question, based on the following (too true) premise:
I just gave the first exam of a Cognitive Psychology course, which consisted of
multiple-choice and short-answer questions. The class includes many 1st and
2nd year students, with a smattering of 3rd and 4th year students. Based on
percent-correct scores, my grade distribution breaks down as follows:
A's: 11%
B's: 11%
C's: 11%
D's: 18%
F's: 50%
Yikes. Clearly, some students performed admirably, but many others did
not. So here
is part 1 of my question:
Would you leave the grades as-is, or re-scale them somehow? If the latter,
what method
would you choose, given that the 2 highest grades are near-perfect scores
(98%), and the
bottom grade is 25% correct? I'm typically not fond of finding breaks in
the distributions
as a means to assign grades, because I do not want to foster competition
among my
students. I also would like each exam and quiz score to be a number (e.g.,
90%, 75%)
so that's it's easy for students to calculate their grades as the semester
proceeds. Are there
good reasons NOT to simply give everyone a free 10%, for example, which
would raise
everyone's grade and make the distribution look a little more reasonable
(beyond the fact
that a few students will have grades over 100%)?
The 2nd part of my question is, given that many students did not do well,
many of us --
including me -- are likely to feel some sense of failure. Although I would
like to think that
these poor grades will improve the motivation and work ethic of my students
and me, my
previous experience suggests that this will be true for only some
students. Any suggestions
on how to *build* motivation and/or confidence in a situation like this, as
opposed to crushing it?
I've been at this just a few years and I'm not sure I've figured it out yet.
Thanks much!
-Mike
************************************************
Michael J. Kane
Department of Psychology
P.O. Box 26164
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Greensboro, NC 27402-6164
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
phone: 336-256-1022
fax: 336-334-5066
