Just a couple of weeks left in my class this semester, and in-person attendance is hovering at <3 people each class. I still get most students logging on remotely, but they don’t actually interact during class. Classes are recorded, but I don’t try to track whether students watch the recording. That’s made teaching less fun for me and, I suspect, less beneficial for students.
I anticipate that I’ll be fully in-person in the fall semester, and I’m confident that the in-person experience is better for students. That being said, I’m a little more bullish about online education than I used to be. (That’s bearish for my profession, at least for most of the people in my profession.) Oddly, it’s not because of my teaching this semester. Instead, it’s because I bought a Peloton a couple of months ago.
I’ve never taken spin classes in person, but I’ve been stunned at how well the Peloton package motivates me to work out - not only for riding the bike, but also for stretching and yoga classes. Somehow, Peloton has been able to create a user experience that kind of game-ifys workouts so that you’re motivated to do them. And it’s hired instructors who are absolutely motivational even though they’re just showing up on a screen.
So while I don’t think there’s necessarily a perfect translation from the workout model to the educational model, I’ve been wondering how to bring some of that Peloton energy into class. (Being more attractive and charismatic doesn’t seem to be an option, unfortunately.)
Well, the semester is officially over - I posted grades earlier today. Something interesting is happening at our school, though:
For the last year, and including this semester, we have an emergency grading system in place. This means that students earning a D or D+ automatically have their grades converted to an Emergency Pass, while students earnings an A through a C- have their grades reflected on their transcripts. Importantly, an Emergency Pass has no effect on the GPA calculation.
Over the past two weeks, we’ve gotten several emails from administrators urging us to be consistent in our grading. Apparently, many students have asked their instructors and TAs:
not to apply a curve to their grade
to ignore any extra credit or bonus work that they’ve already completed
to simply lower their grade to a D+ or D
all with hopes of maintaining their GPA with an Emergency Pass, rather than a B or a C.
I haven’t experienced this with my students this semester (so far), and I’d feel completely comfortable ignoring such a request. But I feel bad for overworked TAs getting pressure like this. I appreciate that the university is trying to minimize COVID’s disruption on students, but this Emergency Pass system gives obviously perverse incentives and it isn’t surprising that students are acting accordingly.
I’m not understanding why this bothers you. For GPA sensitive students a B is way worse than a D here. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to just turn a pandemic afflicted school year into a pass/fail school year for people who pulled a B or a C in difficult conditions.
But people getting a B or a C aren’t getting the pass/fail. So students have the incentive to try to perform worse in order to get the (no effect on GPA) D rather than the (potentially GPA-reducing) B or C.
It bothers me that we have a system that encourages students to perform worse. Seems bad for education.
Sure and because of that I feel like your school making only d’s eligible is the mistake. We all have to make the best of a bad situation though so assuming you have the power to grade however you like you can fix that yourself by telling the students that they can request the pass fail option for any grade received.
Then you turn in a D on request. That way you remove the need for your students, who if I remember correctly are studying either econ or finance, to try to correctly game the system by tanking.
I’m pretty sure if tanking didn’t occur to you in either of those disciplines you don’t even deserve to pass lol.
I don’t see how all grading systems have this feature. In a normal grading scheme:
Better student performance leads to better grades
Students want better grades
Therefore, students have the incentive to try to perform better
In this grading scheme:
Better student performance leads to better grades
Students do not monotonically want better grades, because there’s a weird feature where getting a B is worse than getting an A, and getting a C is worse than getting a B, but getting a D is better than getting a C (for students with an above 2.0 GPA).
So students have a non-linear, non-monotonic incentive to perform worse in the class.
Depends how you define, measure, and reward performance. (That was Deming’s area.) The incentive is to get a better grade and do only enough to get that grade.This doesn’t necessarily require more effort, learning, or understanding. Students know this. Your school’s new scheme may be worse than normal but it just makes the problem clearer.
You seem really bothered by the prospect that a B student who tried for an A but missed by a couple of points asking for a lower grade and being given it. By definition I feel like anyone who earned a grade better than a D should have the ability to also get credit for having passed the class in a pandemic and not have their GPA negatively impacted.
I guess I’m not understanding why you actually care. A student requesting and receiving a higher grade is obviously a problem, but a lower grade? Who cares?
What you very much want to avoid is a situation where a student has a middle B and has to decide whether to stretch hard and put in a lot of effort to try to secure the A… or to just totally intentionally fuck up their grade to secure the D. I would have picked option 2 as the safer option fwiw in undergrad without even blinking. Especially if the class was a lot of work.
Better that they get a freeroll than that choice basically. You want to incentivize them to try as hard as they can to secure that still achievable A. Asking them to take a risk for it is stupid. I would have responded to that setup with ‘lol fold pre’.
Your dislike for this seems weird. They’re not asking for any grade they want, just something that is lower.
I’d honestly be fine with that policy not just now, but at all times. If you want a lower grade than what you received, then I’m happy to give it to you.
Design a dumb policy and watch weird stuff happen when people play the optimal strategy for it. Whoever was in charge of putting this into place should resign immediately. Can’t have people that myopic making big decisions.
This is so crazy to me that I’m not sure if I’m the insane one or I’m just not describing it correctly. Your proposed situation would allow every student to observe their course grade and then choose whether to have it recorded as a grade (and included in GPA) or have it recorded as a pass (and not affect GPA). This means that students can just choose the pass option for any grade that’s not an A, and everyone ends up with a 4.0 as long as they can get an A in a single class.
This seems obviously bad. It would mean that you couldn’t effectively require students to maintain a certain GPA to retain or be eligible for scholarships. It would mean that you couldn’t require a particular GPA for major classes. (For example, you might require an overall 2.0 to graduate, but a 3.0 average in your accounting classes to graduate with an accounting degree.)
For the record, I was in favor of the emergency grading system we had in place last year. Under that system, students could elect a pass/fail option in advance (with a deadline at some point midway through the semester), and any grade of D or above would be recorded as a pass and not affect their GPA. There’s no gaming the system in that setup, and it doesn’t provide perverse incentives for students to try to perform poorly on their exams in order to lower their grades from C to D.
Sure, but this all started with me complaining about the current structure. I’m not sure why it matters that we had a better system last year. If anything, it just makes it worse that someone intentionally chose to make the existing system worse.
Why would I give all non-A’s a D? How am I supposed to know which students would be happy or unhappy with getting a B? For someone hovering just below a 3.0 average, a B+ could actually push them over an important GPA threshold. More broadly, for anyone whose course grade is above their cumulative GPA, replacing that course grade with a D/pass is harmful.
You really need to examine your Grading Privilege and contextualize your actions through the paradigm of your cis male patriarchal experience. By not automatically awarding all of your students As you are perpetuating the injustice of countless settler-colonial genocides in miniature, every semester.
Yeah I’m sorry @spidercrab but I don’t think I could possibly disagree with you enough about this. I think saying that you’re losing the forest for the trees is a huge understatement. If anything the possibility that someone could lose their scholarship because they made a C in your course makes it morally required of you for you to provide the option to turn the grade into a D. I don’t actually care at all if they had the option to switch to pass fail at the mid semester point. Your students just went through a highly irregular 14 months and the last thing they need is ‘accountability’.
You’re freed up from an academic standards point of view because nothing about this last 14 months has been regular or routine and as a result as long as there isn’t another major global pandemic it won’t set any kind of precedent. You aren’t obligated to ever offer any of this ever again any more than the university is required to convert all future D’s into non-GPA affecting pass grades.
But you’re absolutely right that the universities system is poorly designed and creates all kinds of stupid incentives. Which is why it’s your responsibility to fix it to the degree that you can and err on the side of mercy wherever possible.
I get that you’re not actively trying to be cruel, but the results of what you’re doing here speak for themselves. You’re just wrong.