Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 19-Jan-2024 01:34:57 JST Paul Cantrell

   • mekka okereke :verified:

   Take note! Once again, @mekkaokereke is saying something important that too many people simply have no clue about.

   There are some closely related questions I always like to ask when grade inflation comes up. (short thread)

   1/ https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/111777136401771719

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 19-Jan-2024 01:36:40 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:

     @mekkaokereke Suppose every student does excellent work. Should every student get an A? If that happens, isn’t it a •good• outcome we should applaud?

     If it happens consistently, should we raise grading standards? If so, does that mean grades should change meaning over time after all — that we should embrace grade •deflation•?

     People think they have clear answers until they actually start thinking.

     (To be clear, these are questions to reflect on, NOT to toss off an opinion in my replies.)

     2/

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 19-Jan-2024 01:40:22 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:

     @mekkaokereke What’s the point of grades? Is it:

     FORMATIVE FEEDBACK: “You’re good at this, not so good at that. You did well enough at prereq X to take class Y.”

     RANKING: “Hey, employers, grad schools, you suck at interviewing, but don’t worry, we’ll tell you: this student is better™ than that student.”

     MOTIVATION: “Work hard or the institution will punish you”

     CREDIBILITY: “We only grant degrees to people who actually did something”

     These are all in •direct• mutual tension.

     3/

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 19-Jan-2024 01:45:01 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     I don’t have an easy answer. I do have two observations.

     OBSERVATION 1: Nobody has clear answers to this. When people have confident certitude about grades and grade inflation, it’s usually because they haven’t really thought clearly about this tension, and instead have feelings based in an intellectually muddy cultural value system that has more to do with hierarchy and their own position of (non-)privilege than it does with learning.

     4/

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 19-Jan-2024 01:47:17 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     OBSERVATION 2: Whatever the answers may be, time spent thinking about impact on students — quality of learning, who’s included and who’s excluded, long-term outcomes, human well-being — provides 1000x better returns than time spent haggling over grading policy.

     5/

   • Embed this notice
     Angus MacPherson (ngsmcphrsn@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 19-Jan-2024 01:51:12 JST Angus MacPherson

     in reply to

     @inthehands

     RITUAL: “This is how it’s always been done. We had to suffer, so you must suffer too.”

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 19-Jan-2024 01:51:41 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Ben Ramsey
     • Peter Bindels

     @ramsey @dascandy42 Yes, grading on a curve is almost unheard of in the modern era.

   • Embed this notice
     Ben Ramsey (ramsey@phpc.social)'s status on Friday, 19-Jan-2024 01:51:42 JST Ben Ramsey

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:
     • Peter Bindels

     @dascandy42 @inthehands @mekkaokereke I heard about teachers who used grading curves, but I never experienced it myself, not in high school or university.

   • Embed this notice
     Peter Bindels (dascandy42@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 19-Jan-2024 01:51:44 JST Peter Bindels

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:

     @inthehands @mekkaokereke I've never understood the US grading system with everybody being graded on a fixed curve from A+ to F. It implies that if you're in a class of idiots you don't even have to do much but you can't score meaningfully high despite being a potential genius, and in a class of absolute geniuses you're never going to get anything but an F, even if you're really smart.

     When an F can be really smart and an A+ can be somebody not competent... what value does it even have?

   • Embed this notice
     Laura Langdon (lauralangdon@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 19-Jan-2024 01:53:31 JST Laura Langdon

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:

     @inthehands @mekkaokereke So much this! Former math prof here, and I think grades should be entirely replaced by a binary “Mastered this content?” box. Everything else we try to make grades signify is noise.

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 19-Jan-2024 01:53:36 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     My own view — which you’re probably picking up by now — is that nothing I do as a teacher has a lower value-to-cost ratio than assigning grades.

     Grades are embedded in our institutions in ways that make them hard to just wish away. They do serve some purposes, but we should view them as almost pure cost, a problem to be mitigated, not a virtue to be elevated and defended.

     /end

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 19-Jan-2024 01:58:26 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:
     • Tyler Cohen

     @tylerzonia @mekkaokereke Yeah, sounds like you’re squarely in the FEEDBACK camp in my last. I prefer that too, whenever possible: if I must assign a grade, at least let it somehow be useful to the student.

   • Embed this notice
     Tyler Cohen (tylerzonia@zirk.us)'s status on Friday, 19-Jan-2024 01:58:27 JST Tyler Cohen

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:

     @inthehands @mekkaokereke I’m not the usual kind of Prof. I take an artist’s perspective. I never compare students’ work to others. Making comics is new to some in the class & not to others. My questions when grading are simple: did the student engaged with the teachings, did they exhibit growth, did they work hard on projects from their individual level of storytelling development? I give a lot of “A”s. My work is to open students’ voices, not shut new voices down.

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 19-Jan-2024 02:01:13 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Dave Polaschek

     @davepolaschek
     Ask me about teaching intro computer science courses where half the students spent high school tinkering with whatever code they were able to get their hands on, and the other half wrote their first line of code months or even days ago

   • Embed this notice
     Dave Polaschek (davepolaschek@woodworking.group)'s status on Friday, 19-Jan-2024 02:01:15 JST Dave Polaschek

     in reply to

     @inthehands The problems came in future years. 4-6 of us were Physics majors (depending on the year) and registered for courses together. For calc and physics courses, we tended to “wreck the curve.” One of the 2nd year physics courses has 5 people with a final average around 90%, and the next highest score was 40%. It was a tough course (honors freshman physics was a pre-req), but how does a prof grade a bimodal distribution like that without making someone feel cheated? 2/2

   • Embed this notice
     Dave Polaschek (davepolaschek@woodworking.group)'s status on Friday, 19-Jan-2024 02:01:19 JST Dave Polaschek

     in reply to

     @inthehands One observation from my experience. My freshman year of university, we started with 60 of us in “Honors Calculus” and finished the first quarter with 8 students in the class. It was a tough class, but the instructor had done it before and had grade brackets figured out for his material from previous years. The 8 of us finished with A and B, and I think the class mean was about 3.4. All well and good. 1/2

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 19-Jan-2024 02:52:32 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Ian Sudbery

     @IanSudbery They are!

     For example, if everybody met the prereqs, if everybody’s good enough to advance, then they should all get a good grade. But then grades can’t rank students (or rank them with coarser resolution, because the ranking is compressed in a higher range with fewer steps).

   • Embed this notice
     Ian Sudbery (iansudbery@genomic.social)'s status on Friday, 19-Jan-2024 02:52:33 JST Ian Sudbery

     in reply to

     @inthehands Seems to me that some of these are more in tension with each other than others.

     Are gatekeeping, ranking and credibility really in that much tension?

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 19-Jan-2024 03:00:02 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Ian Sudbery

     @IanSudbery You’re conflating the job of the grade-granting institution (are they good enough to have received a degree?) with the job of the applicant-evaluating institution (which applicant is the best fit for us?). If you think it’s the job of the grade-granted to determine the latter, then that’s a vote for the purpose being ranking, not gatekeeping.

   • Embed this notice
     Ian Sudbery (iansudbery@genomic.social)'s status on Friday, 19-Jan-2024 03:00:04 JST Ian Sudbery

     in reply to

     @inthehands

     Hmmmm.... I can see that they *can* be in tension. But I also see that in some people's eyes, credibility relies on some people failing - that is exactly people's complaint about grade inflation.

     Gatekeeping can also require ranking because there can be a limited number of spaces at the next level (be it a different module or a different program - e.g a PhD).

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 19-Jan-2024 03:01:08 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Ian Sudbery

     @IanSudbery As for “in some people’s eyes, credibility relies on some people failing” — yes, I think that’s exactly correct, and it’s worth digging in to •why• some people’s idea of credibility hinges on that. The reasons are not always pretty, or useful.

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 19-Jan-2024 04:02:16 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Ian Sudbery

     @IanSudbery I am just this morning wrestling with how to hand out a seat that’s opened up in a course in a way that’s need-based and equitable.

   • Embed this notice
     Ian Sudbery (iansudbery@genomic.social)'s status on Friday, 19-Jan-2024 04:02:18 JST Ian Sudbery

     in reply to

     @inthehands

     Perhaps. I tend to think of grades as being some sort of combination of Feedback , Motivation and Gatekeeping (probably in that order). Actually, I don't like grades for Feedback, so perhaps I should say assessment, rather than grades.

     But for gatekeeping/ranking, the grade-granting institution can be the same as the applicant-evaluating one (if, for e.g. courses have limited capacity). Hopefully students are chosen on the basis of potential benefit to the student.

   • Embed this notice
     Dad (geekanddad@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 19-Jan-2024 04:03:02 JST Dad

     in reply to

     @inthehands This is very freeing for many. Uncomfortable for those who’ve bought into maximizing the external measure.

     Downside: It can hurt people who want to go to graduate school but who listen to the “don’t think about grades” guidance and don’t think about the need to do well to get in to graduate school.

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 19-Jan-2024 04:03:02 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Dad

     @GeekAndDad Inside academia, Reed often comes up in these discussions of what to do about grades. I know that its model has caused some real headaches for the institution and its students, but it’s definitely in the conversation. I wish more institutions had that boldness.

   • Embed this notice
     Dad (geekanddad@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 19-Jan-2024 04:03:03 JST Dad

     in reply to

     @inthehands Reed College professors assigned grades so you have a transcript and can apply to graduate school, but as long as you’re passing your classes you don’t see your grades until you apply to graduate school or make an effort to go check (which is generally lightly discouraged). An effort is made to help transition students to intrinsic motivation - I’m interested in this subject and like learning - from the overly extrinsic motivation regimen in elementary and high school.

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 19-Jan-2024 04:57:54 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:
     • Avi Rappoport (avirr)

     @avirr @mekkaokereke
     Yes. Ranking actively damages pedagogy — and, more often than not, students.

   • Embed this notice
     Avi Rappoport (avirr) (avirr@sfba.social)'s status on Friday, 19-Jan-2024 04:57:55 JST Avi Rappoport (avirr)

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:

     @inthehands @mekkaokereke I always hated ranking, it has so little to do with learning or work. It is actually counterproductive in that if the class is a wild success there’s no way to tell by the grades.