Hmmm . . . would you prefer to earn less than $20K per year and have no job security but a legit degree, or would you prefer to earn $52,500 per year and have tenure but a sham degree?
'Diploma-mill' Ph.D.? No problem at Northeastern Illinois (CHICAGO SUN-TIMES)
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Grade-Grubbing vs. Education
One of the most frustrating aspects of teaching is grading. I've had brilliant friends quit the academy or secondary-school teaching who cited grading--and all the emotional turmoil that seems to accompany it (elation and triumph but moreso frustration, anger, and disappointment--from both sides of the grading pen)--as one major reason they left the profession. Let's face it: no one really likes grades. Students of all caliber maintain almost a religious fear of their report cards (do we even call them that anymore?), citing parents, financial aid, participation in athletics, or their own personal standards as reasons for being obsessed with their marks on papers, tests, assignments, and courses. Most professors and teachers that I know think of them as those ridiculous letters or numbers we end up plugging into gradebooks and spreadsheets while wishing that we could just find a better way to assess our students' learning.
My own personal gripe is against students who spend so much time complaining about how their marks did not reflect their efforts. How might a teacher even go about assessing effort? Shall we use cameras to monitor students' every move as they complete homework, study for an exam, or compose an essay for class? Given the uproar over privacy in the scandal that recently took place in Pennsylvania about schools using Webcams to watch students in their homes, I doubt this is a workable policy. But even if instructors could watch every single one of their students (and this may mean 50 students or hundreds depending on class size and how many courses are taught per term) and somehow try to assess each one's effort (heart rate? blood pressure? stress level? concentration? time spent working/tearing out one's hair/beating one's head against a desk?), how would we compare? Should Student X, who spends 30 hours on a paper and worries constantly about the project but makes careless mistakes and doesn't meet the requirements of the assignment, receive a higher grade than Student Y, who spends 15 hours and is less stressed out but carefully meets all the expectations and polishes his or her work--just because X put "more effort" into it? This hardly seems fair, either.
Teachers can only assess the products placed before them, and if they're fair teachers, they will have already carefully explained the parameters of their assignments, either on the syllabus or in individual assignment instructions or both. Exams, I think, are a bit easier to deal with if they are multiple-choice, true/false, etc.: answers are usually right or wrong, and/or partial credit is available if a student shows competence at least a certain part of the way through a specific question. But for any kind of work involving writing or presentation, detailed grading rubrics--and evaluating work with a sense of integrity toward those stated standards--are essential in keeping an instructor as objective as possible while also clarifying for students the criteria for assessment.
Yet in my own experience (and this happens every semester), I find that even though I have long, detailed, explicit assignment descriptions and a long, detailed, explicit grading rubric that discusses how exactly I evaluate their work, students still will complain that their effort is not being taken into account or that I grade too hard or that my expectations are too high. What I don't understand about these complaints is the following:
1) If the syllabus and grading rubric are proffered on the first day of class and the student does not agree with the stated expectations, then why does he/she take the course? Why does the student not simply ask around or check out Rate My Professors and get into an easier class if he/she cares more about grades than the actual coursework?
2) Why do students (or their parents) spend exorbitant amounts of money on a small, highly ranked, private liberal arts university if they do not want to fulfill or exceed the expectations an outsider would have given the school's reputation? Recently, I received one of the most wonderful emails I have ever read from a student, which included the following:
[Your class] is the most difficult I have had at Trinity so far and is the only class that has met the standard of academic rigor that I expect from an institution like Trinity. Thanks for challenging me and other students. It's refreshing to have a professor that truly challenges their students but is still available for guidance.
This is perhaps one of most complimentary comments a student could give me! This kind of positive feedback helps assuage my vast annoyance at and frustration with students who care more about their grades than their education because it proves that there are students out there who are in college for the right reasons--to learn content, to develop skills, to broaden their minds, to meet challenges, to grow as human beings, to prepare for life and career after school. The student who wrote this email represents the kind of student many of us teach for: the student who doesn't let grades be the purpose of classes but rather learning the material and gaining some understanding of the concepts in order to be able to apply them (mastery of which, by the way, would equal good grades, anyway).
Yet it saddens me that mine has apparently been "the only class" the student has taken at the university so far that met her expectations. I've received comments at least once a year from students who likewise complain that there needs to be more consistency among all the sections of the course I teach since it's much easier to make As in other instructors' classes. Now granted, I will say that this goes back to my earlier question: if what you care about is an easy A, then why not register more carefully for your classes? But this kind of complaint raises my hackles not so much at the students but rather at the instructors who do not care enough to maintain high expectations of their students. I once saw a professor write on a student paper, "This essay deserves a C, but I'm giving it a B." How can an assignment deserve one grade but receive another? What is the point of blatant grade inflation except to confuse students about standards for competence or excellence or to feed this overwhelming obsession with grades rather than education?
Perhaps it's an endless, unbreakable cycle, but nevertheless, I'll leave you with this document on "Interpreting Grades in College: A Guide for Students." It makes some excellent points, some of which I've touched upon here. But I fear that unless changes occur in attitude and expectation and integrity among both students and faculty, the cycle of grade-grubbing, grade inflation, and grade obsession will just continue.
My own personal gripe is against students who spend so much time complaining about how their marks did not reflect their efforts. How might a teacher even go about assessing effort? Shall we use cameras to monitor students' every move as they complete homework, study for an exam, or compose an essay for class? Given the uproar over privacy in the scandal that recently took place in Pennsylvania about schools using Webcams to watch students in their homes, I doubt this is a workable policy. But even if instructors could watch every single one of their students (and this may mean 50 students or hundreds depending on class size and how many courses are taught per term) and somehow try to assess each one's effort (heart rate? blood pressure? stress level? concentration? time spent working/tearing out one's hair/beating one's head against a desk?), how would we compare? Should Student X, who spends 30 hours on a paper and worries constantly about the project but makes careless mistakes and doesn't meet the requirements of the assignment, receive a higher grade than Student Y, who spends 15 hours and is less stressed out but carefully meets all the expectations and polishes his or her work--just because X put "more effort" into it? This hardly seems fair, either.
Teachers can only assess the products placed before them, and if they're fair teachers, they will have already carefully explained the parameters of their assignments, either on the syllabus or in individual assignment instructions or both. Exams, I think, are a bit easier to deal with if they are multiple-choice, true/false, etc.: answers are usually right or wrong, and/or partial credit is available if a student shows competence at least a certain part of the way through a specific question. But for any kind of work involving writing or presentation, detailed grading rubrics--and evaluating work with a sense of integrity toward those stated standards--are essential in keeping an instructor as objective as possible while also clarifying for students the criteria for assessment.
Yet in my own experience (and this happens every semester), I find that even though I have long, detailed, explicit assignment descriptions and a long, detailed, explicit grading rubric that discusses how exactly I evaluate their work, students still will complain that their effort is not being taken into account or that I grade too hard or that my expectations are too high. What I don't understand about these complaints is the following:
1) If the syllabus and grading rubric are proffered on the first day of class and the student does not agree with the stated expectations, then why does he/she take the course? Why does the student not simply ask around or check out Rate My Professors and get into an easier class if he/she cares more about grades than the actual coursework?
2) Why do students (or their parents) spend exorbitant amounts of money on a small, highly ranked, private liberal arts university if they do not want to fulfill or exceed the expectations an outsider would have given the school's reputation? Recently, I received one of the most wonderful emails I have ever read from a student, which included the following:
[Your class] is the most difficult I have had at Trinity so far and is the only class that has met the standard of academic rigor that I expect from an institution like Trinity. Thanks for challenging me and other students. It's refreshing to have a professor that truly challenges their students but is still available for guidance.
This is perhaps one of most complimentary comments a student could give me! This kind of positive feedback helps assuage my vast annoyance at and frustration with students who care more about their grades than their education because it proves that there are students out there who are in college for the right reasons--to learn content, to develop skills, to broaden their minds, to meet challenges, to grow as human beings, to prepare for life and career after school. The student who wrote this email represents the kind of student many of us teach for: the student who doesn't let grades be the purpose of classes but rather learning the material and gaining some understanding of the concepts in order to be able to apply them (mastery of which, by the way, would equal good grades, anyway).
Yet it saddens me that mine has apparently been "the only class" the student has taken at the university so far that met her expectations. I've received comments at least once a year from students who likewise complain that there needs to be more consistency among all the sections of the course I teach since it's much easier to make As in other instructors' classes. Now granted, I will say that this goes back to my earlier question: if what you care about is an easy A, then why not register more carefully for your classes? But this kind of complaint raises my hackles not so much at the students but rather at the instructors who do not care enough to maintain high expectations of their students. I once saw a professor write on a student paper, "This essay deserves a C, but I'm giving it a B." How can an assignment deserve one grade but receive another? What is the point of blatant grade inflation except to confuse students about standards for competence or excellence or to feed this overwhelming obsession with grades rather than education?
Perhaps it's an endless, unbreakable cycle, but nevertheless, I'll leave you with this document on "Interpreting Grades in College: A Guide for Students." It makes some excellent points, some of which I've touched upon here. But I fear that unless changes occur in attitude and expectation and integrity among both students and faculty, the cycle of grade-grubbing, grade inflation, and grade obsession will just continue.
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