I am having trouble understanding Richard Tarara's position. His first
sentence is fine, but after than I don't understand his logic. Let me ask
these questions?
(1) Why is it "fine" to offer extra credit to pull up grades? Once the
course requirements are established in the syllabus, I would only change
this if it were clear I had made a gross error in establishing the grading
criteria. This does not preclude offering substitute or make-up work to a
student who had a lengthy illness, or trying to understand why a particular
student might do poorly on exams when it seems clear s/he understands the
material. But why offer "extra credit" work in general?
(2) If extra credit is offered to everyone, and many student complete it,
including some good students who end up with greater than 100%, then the
final exam is made more difficult to make sure we don't have more than 10% A
grades, haven't you created a strong possibility of hurting students like my
son? He didn't do the extra-credit work because he didn't need it and he
isn't a "hurdle jumper." But you wrote an extra-hard final exam to cut down
on the A grades, and he might not do as well on that exam as he would have
if you had stuck with the original game plan. So everyone's exam grades go
down, but the students who did the extra-credit work are okay, and they end
up "edging out" students who did not do the extra-credit work. Or stated
another way, the extra-credit work actually becomes "required work" if you
want an A. But the extra-credit work is not necessarily a good indication
of student ability because...
(3) If the extra-credit work is done "outside class" there is no guarantee
the student turning it in actually did it himself nor is their any guarantee
she did not plagiarize it or have significant help on it. It seems to me
that well written in-class exams are the safest way to find out what the
students know. Extra-credit work merely measures how "hungry" the student
is and/or how much of a "hurdle jumper" s/he is.
There is not enough information here to understand all the dynamics of the
class Richard is describing. But in my 22 years of experience, half of
which I have been department chair, when students are clamoring to get into
a certain professor's course it implies "easy grader."
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
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