Dear Educators in this forum, Please allow me to request your help on what I consider to be a critical matter. It may be possible that some here may not consider this issue to be related to metrication. However, I beg to differ. This is what's "cooking" around here at the U of A (University of Alberta). There has been a proposal presented before the General Faculty Council that will meet this coming 2001 Mar 19 to evaluate a potential change of our grading scale to adopt a 4.0 alpha-point system which is the one most commonly used in the US. The problem with this proposal is that they have very ambitious plans to transform this into a provincial crusade to get other post-secondary educational institutions to move away from "decimal-based" grading systems, among others, in favor of adopting a clearly inferior, cumbersome, unnecessarily complicated grading system. I, for one, strongly believe that this would be a very grave mistake and great retrocess in our educational system. Firstly, because such 4.0 grade scale and alphabetical letters have clear technical flaws, such as incoherence and inconsistency in the way points are assigned to grade letters, lack of rationality, logic and difficulty for accurate mathematical manipulations. Secondly, because one does have alternatives which would far exceed any virtue that such obscure 4-point system would, to be more specific, "decimal-based" grading systems, such as 0 to 10, or 0 to 100. Therefore, I need your help to first of all find if there is any literature or publication out there that could somehow (and I very much doubt it!!...) substantiate, support this type of system. Secondly, I'd also like to know if any of you would know of publications that would be supportive of "percentage / decimal-base" grading systems. I plan to address this GFC this coming Monday on this subject and would like to have strong amunition that could hopefully dissuade its members to go ahead with this proposal. I already know that this will be a very hot and debated issue, as I'm sure such proposal has not advanced without considerable pressure from Academics and perhaps from those who would like to see such system universally adopted in the whole North American continent (maybe even in the world! I've heard talks of moves from some South American countries to also consider adopting something along these lines there!!!). Thank you so much for your help. BTW, if anyone would like to "pitch in" with personal messages or something, I'd be glad to pass some e-mail addresses you could use for that purpose. Once again, thank you for your very expeditious response. Regards, Marcus Berger Who needs Cupid? Matchmaker.com is the place to meet somebody. FREE Two-week Trial Membership at http://www.matchmaker.com/home?rs=200015
