Re: grades, assessments, etc.

["John S. Denker" <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

"RAUBER, JOEL" wrote:
> ... one's grades aren't solely a measure of mastery of a body of
> subject material (something that many argue is the ideal).  It is also to a
> significant degree a measure of ability to follow directions, ability to
> "please the boss" and other such properties rolled up and mixed up into one.
> I'd argue that that is not entirely bad.  As a prospective employer or as a
> prospective research advisor those are qualities for which I would like some
> measure and to believe GPA provides some basis.

Ah, that's the crux.  The problem is, different bosses
value different qualities.  Different job descriptions
demand different skills.
 -- The receptionist has to have good attendance and
has to smile sweetly at everybody who walks in the door.
 -- I've been happy to hire mad scientists who show up
when they jolly well feel like it and never smile at
anybody ... but do their job very, very well.

 1) In general, you can't possibly guess what traits
bosses are looking for.
 2) Many of the behaviors that produce good GPAs (such
as signing up for the easiest-possible classes, not to
mention cheating) are anti-correlated with what I'm usually
looking for.
 3) To be blunt:  Teachers give out grades.  Teachers
like to feel important.  Ergo teachers drift toward thinking
that grades are important.  Well, sorry, they're just not
that important.  To the extent that you can use grades to
motivate the students, fine, but don't let students think
that grades _per se_ are the objective.


> > Weaknesses of the tripos-based approach include
> >  -- promoting slacking during the year followed by cramming
> >     for the exams.
> >  -- not immune to grade inflation.
> >  -- risk of too much power concentrated in board of examiners;
> >     need for "quality feedback process".
> Presumably there are strengths as well as the above weaknesses?

-- As previously mentioned:  tending to drive the students
and teacher together, not apart.  Good for motivation.
-- Some uniformity across different sections of the same
course.
-- Resistant to "teacher's pet" favoritism.
-- Excellent accomodation of the fact that different students
learn in different ways.  Some may take extra classes to
learn the required material, some may take fewer, some may
prefer lecture format, some may prefer doing lots of reading.....

In particular:  Consider writing skills.  This requires knowing
the fundamentals, but it also requires a lot of reading and
writing.  Some students will need lots and lots of coaching
on the fundamentals.  Others won't.  And then the practice
can come from a creative-writing class that requires a lot
of written work, or it could equally well come from a history
class that requires a lot of written work.

So I'm arguing for high standards but !!lots!! of flexibility
in how the students prepare to meet those standards.  I've
spent years working and managing in a research lab.  This
line of work requires lots of originality and out-of-the box
thinking.  IMHO a regimented education tends to degrade kids'
innate originality.

I know quite a number of slightly-eccentric people whom the
teachers labelled as "learning disabled" but who eventually
grew up to be very successful responsible citizens (and now
get paid about four times what those teachers are getting paid).

> ... many schools limit the number of credits
> available through special-topics to a rather small fraction of the required
> credits for graduation.

IMHO most electives should be graded in such a way that
they don't count toward the "official" GPA.  They could
be graded pass/fail (or pass/no-credit) or just kept
"off the record" like pre-season ballgames that have
a score but don't contribute to the standings.

I still believe that GPAs are of verrry little value for
bosses, and I'm not backpedalling on that...  But I
recognize that grades have some value for motivating
some subset of the students.  You don't want them to
hesitate to take electives for fear of ruining their GPA.