Hugh Haskell is correct. The extra credit I strongly disagree with is extra
credit that is primarily busy work. This seems to be rampant in high
schools around here. I know this from talking to students coming to
college, I know it from talking to my son and daughter, I know it from
talking to high school teachers.
Another way to characterize extra credit (the kind I don't like) is to view
it as a life-preserver. I don't remember the origin of the following story,
and it probably has many variations, but it illustrates my point.
A student is failing physics. He goes to the professor and asks if the
professor can assign some extra credit so he can bring up his grade. The
professor says, "Gosh. With the problem sets and lab reports you're already
working on you're not swimming, you're drowning. And now you're begging me
to put some extra weights on your back. That doesn't sound like a very
smart idea."
I think real "extra credit" is possible, but it will be an extra burden if
it is going to be meaningful. It is more appropriate for students who are
doing well and want to do more. If students in trouble are capable of doing
meaningful "extra credit" rather than busy work,they should spend their
extra time on the existing assignments. If we give them "extra credit" that
is just busy work, we aren't teaching them to swim, we're just throwing them
a life preserver. Often, by the time I see them, they have been thrown a
life preserver so often that when I refuse to throw them another they can't
believe how mean I am.
Hugh is also correct (in my experience) that the capable students asking for
extra credit are the grade-grubbers. By far, the students asking for extra
credit are the students in trouble. But the next largest group would be
those students who have an A average and are afraid they might goof up and
lose their A. They seek extra credit as a "cushion" to protect their A.
On the other hand, students who are sincerely interested typically don't ask
for extra credit; they just do the project on their own. This term, in my
linear electronics class, a student called me over to his lab station and
asked me to help him with his circuit. When I got there, I found it wasn't
the circuit he was supposed to be working on. He had already done that
assignment plus the next two. The assigned lab he had completed was using a
phototransistor to detect the flicker in the flourescent lights in the lab.
Having done that, he had brought in his portable CD player and had hooked
his headphones to the operational amplifier that was receiving the
phototransistor signal. He then ran the CD-player "line out" to another
opamp which was driving an LED. He was trying to send his CD music to his
headphones over a light beam.
His circuit was working, but the sound was distorted. I explained about the
need to handle both positive and negative signals, and how his current
set-up was just sending the positive signal and clipping the negative. I
explained that one way to fix this is would be to reset the zero point so
the total signal fluctuates about a positive level rather than fluctuating
both above and below zero. We had already covered offset amplifiers, so I
told him to add a positive offset to his LED driver. Then I explained the
need to AC couple his phototransistor to its amp so he would eliminate the
DC component from going to the headphones. He worked another half hour and
was receiving a nice clear sound in his headphones.
Now that was "for real" extra effort. It was not extra credit because he
did not ask for credit, and I would not have had any mechanism to give it to
him if he had asked. But, of course, he didn't need extra credit; he
already had the highest average in the class.
Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D. Phone/voice-mail: 419-358-3270
Professor of Chemistry & Physics FAX: 419-358-3323
Chairman, Science Department E-Mail edmiston@bluffton.edu
Bluffton College
280 West College Avenue
Bluffton, OH 45817