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Re: Where Have All the Boys Gone?



----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Edmiston" <edmiston@BLUFFTON.EDU>


(2) I think some practices by some high school teachers exacerbate this
problem. These practices consist of (2a) often assigning more "busy work"
than is necessary. (2b) Allowing students to do "extra-credit-work" to
compensate for poor exam performance.


It seems to me that the information that Michael has related here is a
strong call to all teachers in all disciplines to structure their courses so
that it requires some truly demonstrated skills and knowledge of the subject
in order to earn an A. It is fine to offer extra credit to pull up grades
to B, B+, even A-, but certainly a C student shouldn't be able to earn an A
simply on busy work. I strive to do this in my courses and am fairly
successful. I offer extra credit only when scores suggest such is needed
and offer it to everyone (and often have the really good students above
100%), but I watch carefully so that I don't get too many people in the A
range. If one does overshoot there is always the final that can be adjusted
to 'pull down' excessively high grades. I can keep the average grade in the
B to B+ range without having more than 10% earning an A. (It helps to be
tenured and have the Bio course be fairly unpopular so that the
administration is pleading with me to open another lab section to
accommodate the physics requests--all this for our 'Liberal-Arts' course.
;-)

Rick

**************************************************
Richard W. Tarara
Associate Professor of Physics
Department of Chemistry & Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN 46556
219-284-4664
rtarara@saintmarys.edu

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