Posted on 04/29/2022 9:26:58 AM PDT by karpov
Inside some University of California academic departments and colleges, an atypical idea is gaining steam: deemphasizing, or even ditching, the A-F grading system and rethinking how to assess student learning.
Divisions like UC Berkeley’s College of Chemistry and UC Davis’s Department of Mathematics are deliberating whether to change how they grade students. In some cases, that means awarding students a pass or no-pass grade rather than a letter grade. Other times, it may mean allowing students to choose which assignments get the most weight in determining their grade.
At UC Irvine, Academic Senate leaders are currently evaluating long-term options around grading and have met with officials at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where students don’t receive letter grades for their first semester, to learn about that university’s approach.
Departments at other UC campuses also are experimenting with making changes to how they test students, putting less emphasis on high-stakes exams, because some students aren’t good test-takers but can demonstrate their understanding of the material in other ways. Some departments have begun using two-stage exams: Students take a standard individual exam before also taking a group test where they work with other students.
The changes are especially being considered for first-year students to give them more time to get used to the rigors of college work and learn the material over the course of a semester rather than discourage them early on with low scores on tests and other assignments.
All the possibilities are a welcome development to Jody Greene, the associate vice provost of teaching and learning at UC Santa Cruz, who argues that letter grades aren’t necessarily indicative of whether a student has mastered the material.
(Excerpt) Read more at kqed.org ...
I've been a software engineer since 1980. The declining quality of graduates spurred an industry to test for competence and issue certificates. Having 40 years of experience in the field doesn't excuse me from having to spend time and money studying cert materials and sitting for expensive exams. The pressure to do that comes from the practice of requiring specific certs of employees assigned to work on a contract. The customer demands it in the contract. The employer demands it of employees who want to work on the contract.
Having the certs is demonstration that you can study materials and pass exams. It is no guarantee of ability to apply concepts to get real work done. Much of the exam material is very broad and only a small percentage maps to the work to be done. Still, it offers some small assurance to a hiring manager that the applicant isn't a total BS artist.
I have a friend in the UK who earned a PhD in linguistics. I sent her an e-mail a couple years ago to see how she was doing since graduation. She said it was necessary to pursue a new career in cyber security. She could not feed herself with employment related to her PhD. At the time, I was studying the CEH (Certified Ethical Hacker) materials. She said the better cert in the UK was "CREST". For the CREST cert, you must actually successfully breach a test target (practical exam) in addition to the written exam. She now works for a large bank in the UK.
On my "todo" this year is CySA+ (Cyber Security Analyst) and Pentest+ (Penetration Tester). This is in addition to wrapping my head around Docker/Kubernetes/Kafka/Spring Boot and upgrading 30 year old applications to operate inside those current frameworks.
Passing students get a remote pat on the head, and a gold star?
I attended a Calif Community College in same time period.
Accounting classes by night.
Got 4.0 in ALL of my classes.
“The Rubber Hits The Road” when an employer cannot get anything useful out of your time there.
A little far-fetched, but we're getting there. I recently watched some videos of malls and streets in China, they were full of shops and booths dealing with electronic products. We don't have that equivalent here. Smart people there in China (female and male), fully immersed in creating electronic gadgets and components, and hundreds of them in shops and booths outnumbering other stores. Meanwhile in USA malls, our millenials are selling smoothie drinks and are immersed in sports fashions and toys. Back in the 1970s and 1980s we had electronic stores, computer stores and the like everywhere; most are gone now.
All that new infrastructure Biden wants to build needs REAL MATH.......
This is not to protect bad students. It’s to protect bad teachers. This is why one of the most evil organizations in the USA, The NEA, is behind it. Without a grading system teachers can’t be evaluated.
I walked into the lecture hall for the final. The prof had a very dour expression. After everyone was seated, he explained the reason for his bad mood. 3 students in the room had located the ditto masters for the final that the provost office dumped in the trash. They were discovered and sitting in the room. For their dishonesty, the rest of us would pay dearly. The final exam from the stolen ditto master would not be given. The exam would be an essay based on material in the book that was never stocked at the book store. Your final grade will be based on this essay. None of the midterm or quiz grades will be considered. The prof then announced that he was on the way to the airport to return to Princeton. Grading would be done by the TAs. No appeals accepted. Most of the class got a failing grade. I squeezed a C out of that crappy experience.
An equally difficult final exam occurred in my Genetics class under Dan Lindsley. We had 4 students from the med school that had returned to try to get a better grade. About 20 minutes into taking the final, one of them jumped up, shrieked and ran out of the room. Lindsley was a tough task master...may he be covered in Drosophila melanogaster throughout eternity.
NOT ME
that’s when the graduates move back in with their parents-
By enticing unprepared students, then coddling them to keep them enrolled, they’re merely leading kids to failure and resentment.
They’re creating an apartheid of IQ.
Ms Jody Greene ... not a biologist
70s here. I was a 17-year-old sitting in class with mostly grizzled guys (in their late 20s - Hah!) - returnees and/or vets. It was an experience that I'm glad that I didn't miss, although I later emigrated and studied abroad. It was a college when I began, then was "upped" to university during my "tenure" ("CSU&C at S." to "SSU").
Somehow I get the impression that you were a Physics major, as was I. Or at least a Natural Science / Engineering major.
For years, I couldn't mention my "alma mater" without some joker asking, "Isn't that where the Art Majors dipped their asses in paint and sat on canvases with it?"
Actually, it was the Psychology Dept. But they ruined the reputation of our entire university for YEARS.
Regards,
Go ahead, go all the way and make their “education” meaningless.
Yes, it SEEMS far-fetched, doesn’t it? But whoever would have thought that WOKE crap would send us from Country #1 in math and science all the way down to Country #38 in global rankings in a few short decades?
If this WOKE crap continues and we do not get back to a meritocracy, where do you think this will end? How far can we dumb down secondary and college education and just graduate people without hurting their feelings with bad grades and the use of red ink on their papers?
Aye, there’s the rub, huh?
If this trend continues, we won’t be able to build anything here. Everything will be designed by foreigners and built by foreigners. But Americans will have high self-esteem and continue to feel good about themselves.
Drosophila melanogaster...faeces.
Graduated what year?
Regards,
If a university has no graduation standards I don’t see how they can maintain accreditation. Wait forget that, I forgot the left controls that to.
Years ago, when UC Santa Cruz opened, they tried a British style tutorial system of grading, without letter grades. It was a failure. Professors were giving multiple choice tests but having to write a narrative about the result: “I like the way you colored in option A on question number two.“ Also, it made either going to grad school or getting a job more difficult because employers and admissions departments didn’t know what to think of their applicants’ transcripts.
Pay your fee, get your P.
What a joke!
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