YMN The Young Mathematicians' Network
Serving the Community of Young Mathematicians
Sections: Front Page   Job Search   Grad Life   Career   Work and Family Life   Editors   Misc   Research   Teaching   Undergrad Life   Events   News
Display: Sort:
Grading on a curve | 4 comments (4 topical, 0 hidden)
[new] I always graded on a curve (none / 0) (#2)
by SeminoleNo1 on Mon Dec 09, 2002 at 02:09:37 PM PDT

Well, not always, but when I taught at the University of Virginia and at UCSD, I always did my class roughly on the normal bell curve. That allowed me to worry less about how I had to grade my tests to fit some predescribed 90/80/70 scale. And at UVa, that was pretty much expected by the adminstration in my time (early 90s).

The adminstration (above the dept) expected that the average grade would be a B- (UVa had +/- system). So the way the math dept interpretted that was when the final grades were set, we would figure across an entire course (say all the business calculus were we had common exams) where the 50 percentile was, and B- was assigned to an appropriate range around that. Next, we would consider what final score we were somewhat comfortable with saying "the students above this line we would feel ok saying they are ready for the 'next' course". That would be the C- cutoff point (C- being the minimum grade needed to take the "next" course"). Similarly we did for the cutoff between D and F. Usually, one standard deviation above the mean was the cutoff between A/B.

At UCSD, where I had more autonomy, I did something similar, with C+ being the target median grade. I made my target cutoff for pass/fail based on would I want a student with that score in the next class if I were teaching it, and so on.

To me, 90/80/70 is just too arbitrary. As an undergrad at Florida State, there was one girl I knew who got the top score in her class, but because that was an 89.5 or something like that when adjusted to a 100 point scale and the professor believed in sticking to a 90/80/... scale, she got a B. Since it was a class of 25 or 30 students, well, to me that doesn't sound right that no one deserved an A. Sounds to me like the teacher was too prideful to admit he made the tests too hard. That's a big reason I just avoided the arbitrary assignments of numbers to grades even before a course started -- it's just not realistic.

Additionally, it avoids students asking for a curve -- you give students feed back on "if the class ended today" after each exam, then remind them only the final scores are on the "curve".


Grading on a curve | 4 comments (4 topical, 0 hidden)
Display: Sort:

Menu
create account
FAQ
Search
Recent Comments

Login
Make a new account
Username:
Password:

SourceForge Logo Powered by Scoop
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective companies. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest

create account | faq | search