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Re: grades, assessments, etc.



A small addendum to some of John D's remarks on grades:


Having served on many committees that look at transcripts,
I can tell you that grades are very hard to interpret.
Rampant and non-uniform grade inflation makes this worse,

Agreed, and the crux of my point, I suppose. I.e. the more data the better
(if coherently presented). Providing something like average grades for
classes would aid in the interpretation. Still leaving a lot difficulty in
interpretation none-the-less, I fully admit.

but that's by no means the only problem: There are so
many uncontrolled dependencies on school, teacher, class
syllabus, etc. that I despair of ever seeing a meaningful
GPA, with or without inflation.

OTOH, I do believe they serve some reasonable purpose and that GPA does have
some meaning, both intended and not intended. And I suppose both what Rick
was saying and what I also agree with is that significant grade inflation
over the years has made the discrepancy between how well you can trust them
noticably worse.

As an example, 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.

Bottom line: don't let
somebody use the "grades aren't meaningful anymore" argument
to bamboozle you into doing something that you wouldn't
otherwise be doing. I doubt that grades could _ever_ have
been trusted for the purposes some people seem to want them
to serve.

Unfortunately, it is not my decision as to whether or not to do the
"something", we are being forced to do it. Our administration has already
been "bamboozled", or perhaps better to say North Central Accreditation (its
hard to know where to lay the responsibilities) and they make up the rules.


. . .<snip of a lot of stuff I agree with>

Note that in British universities there is a heavy emphasis
on final exams (which are set by a university board, not by
the individual course professors). So there's centuries of
data available for those who are interested.

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?


No-win situations include:
-- no way to grade elective special-topics courses. I have
no idea what a grade is _supposed_ to mean in a course
like this. Special topics in basket-weaving? Special
topics in quantum cosmology?


Surely you have some idea; for example an "A" in a special topics course
certainly wouldn't mean the student did not participate at all in the
special-topic course. Barring out-right fraud, of course. And I confess to
nit-picking here, as I agree one hase little idea of what the grade means.

I think this is one reason many schools limit the number of credits
available through special-topics to a rather small fraction of the required
credits for graduation.

Joel R