In a book I once read, there was a university in which a professor instituted a “No grades during the semester” plan in his courses. The reasoning was that anyone who was really interested in learning the course material would succeed in the classes and those who were just there to “make the grade” would fail. From what I recall, the experiment was a success, with most of the people actually raising their GPAs except for the truly poor students who got D’s and F’s regularly. Has this actually been implemented in any schools? I do know of one school in Olympia, WA (Evergreen University, I think) that uses a more subjective “evaluation” instead of letter grades, but I don’t think it is an accredited university. Do you think it would work? What would the overall benefit be?
“Teaching without words and work without doing are understood by very few.”
-Tao Te Ching
I have to say that I think a system like this could possibly work. The reason being, book smarts and studying aren’t for everyone, but knowing how to apply knowledge in ever changing circumstances is probably a more accurate measure of one’s talent. For example, in college, I had this one class at 8:30am that I never went to (I couln’t wake up that early, sad huh?), yet I got an A on every test. However, I ended up with a C in the class because participation was a huge chunk of the grade. However, others got high scores on participation because they were always there, but suposedly learning, yet got low grades on the tests…coming out of the class with a C like me. Did any of that make sense? I just thought it was ironic.
Jesus said…
John 14:1 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.”
John 14:11 “Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves.”
IIRC, the book would have been Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig.
I truly loved the author’s disclaimer about how the book was not intended to be a guide to Zen, or any other form of Buddhism, and ended with “And it’s not very factual about motorcycles, either.”
Sue from El Paso
Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.
I realize I’m probably hijacking this thread well off it’s intended course…
But I was in a conversation today with a colleague lamenting about how you can’t get anywhere these days without little pieces of paper on the wall proclaiming that you have mastered an appropriate breadth & depth of knowledge to be entitled to such piece of paper. But the pieces of paper no longer mean, as they did many years ago (before my time), that one has learned how to think… In fact, in too many workplaces, thinkers are considered odd & strongly discouraged from sharing their thoughts. Guess that’s why Dilbert is so popular.
And why I love this MB!
Sue from El Paso
Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.
Yes, Sue, that was the book. It’s a top ten book for me. I didn’t mention the title because, in my experience, people don’t seem to take it very serious when they hear the name. I take the whole book seriously and I think the topic has at least some merit.
“Teaching without words and work without doing are understood by very few.”
-Tao Te Ching
Christian, I think you made another point you didn’t mean to. A “C” is a mediocre grade, and all you’re saying is that you and your classmates exhibited different types of mediocrity in order to arrive at the same place.
I think gradeless classes are a terrible idea. Isn’t our education system degraded enough? University grades are already inflated. Classes are filled with punk-ass kids who get pissed when they get bad grades on their crappy classwork because, hey man, that’s just, like, the professor’s opinion, man. Well, as much as some people don’t seem to like it, there should be standards of quality which provide evidence of ability though demonstration of such. Grades may not be ideal, but I think they’re the best alternative available.
I occasionally teach as an adjunct. Based on my experiences, I think a) the instructors would love your proposal. Grading student tests, projects, etc is a lot of work. b) it would work as intended for most students, but a significant minority of students don’t know how well they’re progressing and need the feedback.
I typically give at least one exam during the semester (the midterm) early enough so kids can still drop the course. (Grading the midterm and the final is a lot of work in itself, so I don’t like to give more than 2 exams/semester). I’ve had kids who thought they learned everything they needed to know from just coming to class and listening to me talk… After a midterm wake-up call they either caught up with the form (sometimes getting an A anyway) or (seldom) dropped the class. I also assign lots of homework problems similar in spirit to exam problems. (I collect, but don’t grade the homework, both because I’m too lazy and because grading it results in students copying it from others instead of doing it themselves). I’ve seen students get anxiety attacks because they wanted to know what kinds of questions to expect on the final. In th situation you’ve described, they’d just panic.
Why should a college issue a ‘grade’ in a course? What inherent value do ‘grades’ have?
I am VERY strongly in favor of making sure that youth in America learn what they need and as much as they can. I object to the current public school approach that often forces teaching to the ‘least-common denominator’ in the class. But suggesting that ‘grades’ have a value in making sure we learn seems to lack any rational support. Usually, all they do is allow one person to feel superior to another, or inferior, as the case may be.
I’ve been thinking long and hard about this, as I will be teaching my first freshman comp course in August. I would just as soon not give grades at all; I think they cause students to focus on pleasing the instructor rather than on what they’re supposed to be learning. Unfortunately, we TAs don’t really have any choice in the matter. I’ve been trying to think of some way to minimize the “give her what she wants” effect, but I keep drawing blanks. I plan to open the first class with a short speech to the effect that grades are a measure of one’s progress, not a carrot or a stick or payment for services rendered. I have a feeling that the students will completely ignore whatever I say. I can’t blame them, really; Lord knows they’re surrounded by parents, fellow students, advisers, and prospective employers who do regard grades as an end in themselves. Sigh. I don’t know what, if anything, one instructor can do to change the habits of thought these kids have acquired from twelve years of letter grades and standardized test scores.
Haven’t the slightest idea whether this contributes anything to the debate, but thanks for giving me a place to vent…
MidnightVa…you’re right a “C” is not a great grade (my mother always reminded me of that as well). However, I would have gotten an “A” if the teacher graded more on knowledge and understanding of the topics, over how often I was there, visa versa, others would have gotten lower grades though if just being there wasn’t so important. I don’t know that I had a real big point or anything when I gave that example above, I just mentioned it because giving someone a concrete grade based on very specific criteria is in no way a measure of how much knowledge one has or how one can apply it in an every day work setting. That’s all, just my two cents once again :).
MidnightVa, I think you misunderstood me. I didn’t mean to imply that no grades should be given at all, just that they should be withheld during the term. I agree that standards need to be kept if a degree is to mean anything to us at all. What I am bothered by is the attempt at many only to get a grade. I beleive they are wasting their time as well as the proffessor’s by showing up in a class in which they have no intention of actually learning anything.
This also seems to prove detrimental to the students who are really interested in the course. I’ve had this experience myself quite a few times when uninterested students either disturbed the class or complained that I was wasting their time by asking in depth questions of the instuctor. The sad part was, I was almost always asking questions that nobody in the class knew the answers to, yet were either too scared to(because of intimidation such as this) or just didn’t care! I have even seen instructors who have given up due to the problem of uninterested students. They seem to have lost any drive to teach and are simply there to give “exams and homework” to prove the students actually did something to deserve the grade. It is haunting, really. We have this big, self-propelled monster of a university spewing out students with degrees, but a pitiful, meager amount of knowledge and skills.
Hmmm, sorry, hope I didn’t get too carried away there, but I’ve seen WAY too many people who have graduated without knowing what a verb or noun was or couldn’t divide three digit numbers!
“Teaching without words and work without doing are understood by very few.”
-Tao Te Ching
Ummmmm…I go to one. Well, I go to University of California, Santa Cruz. Here, you do have the option of requesting letter grades, but the default system is pass/no record. You do, however, get a detailed evaluation of your work for each class that you pass. The concept is that the university is here to teach you, and if you learned, that is a good thing. The evaluations point out your stregths and your weaknesses. A good evaluation reads like a letter of reecommendation. On the other hand, a just barely passing evaluation can be scathing (…Bob, when he showed up to class, did not participate in a constructive way…) As for the no record of failed classes, if you didn’t learn, you didn’t learn, and that is your loss. You are the one that wasted money and time, so the penalization is natural. Besides, fail is such and ugly word. I am chooding to pass/no record all of my classes because I think it is a good system. I learn so much better when I am learning for my own benefit, not a letter. In so maney of my classes in high school, interesting discussions were interuppeted by people saying “can we get on with the notes so that I can get my A on my test and get out of here?”. They missed the entire point of learning! Learning is something you do to enrich yourself and become better at what you are doing, not just get a degree so you can get rich. It is easy to get a decent grade and still not have learned anything, so grades are essentially meaningless, anyway. By the way, we don’t have any problems with our students getting into grad school. When the people look at a transcript of grades, they get a bunch of letters, but with a transcript of evaluations, they get a picture of the person’s stregths and weaknesses. A glowing evaluation is far more impressive than a sipmle “A”. On a sad note, they almost got rid of the evaluation system. If they had abolished it, they could make class sizes as big as they want. Thank goodness our university kept it because it is a good system, and UC Santa Cruz was founded as an experimental alternative in public education. Abolishion of the programs that make us special will just turn us into a less prestigious UC Berkeley and a prettier UC Irvine. Sorry for the rant…but yes, no grades are good grades.
“Never forget that you’re never more than 72 hours away from death by
dehydration. Drinking will only prolong that death.”
-Joe Dietz
Actually, I think English universities do not award grades for individual courses.
Correct me if I’m wrong,
[aside] like anyone here needs an invitation [/aside]
but from what I’ve gleaned from British novels, I believe that undergrads are assigned to grad students for mentoring. You go to lectures, & then meet in small groups or even 1:1 with your mentor to simultaneously enhance & assess your mastery of the material. When you have finished your coursework, your mentors recommend what level examination you sit for (Firsts are good). You then take oral &/or written exams to cover the knowledge you should have accrued during your time there, and if successful, earn your degree.
There’s lots I don’t quite understand & may have misunderstood what I think I know. Does anyone have any better idea of how the English university system works & thoughts on whether such a system could ever work here?
Sue from El Paso
Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.
The problem with a gradeless university is that it requires excellent, dedicated instructors–something that you are unlikely to find at most universities. In my experience, most university departments have at best 2 or 3 faculty members who enjoy teaching and students and the rest are there primarily to do research–in fact, most profesors consider research to be their “job” and teaching is a sort of unaviodable chore that has to be done. Bluntly, I don’t think most university instuctors have either the skill or the motivation to make subjective student evaluations without the framework of grades.
I think the solution is probably that profesors need to write better tests, not get rid or grades.
I went to New College in Sarasota, Florida, where we got a satisfactory/unsatisfactory grade and a written evaluation (anywhere from two paragraphs to two pages) for each course. Courses with unsatisfactory grades just weren’t recorded on your transcript. There were no course requirements, so you could do most of your work in your major or you could spread out your work over many areas.
You had to do a lot of independent study and you had to do a senior thesis. A course was whatever you and one professor agreed was a course. A successful term was whatever you and your advisor agreed was a successful term. A major was whatever you and two professors agreed was a major. A senior thesis was whatever you and three professors agreed was a senior thesis.
The average SAT score for entering students was 1330. We have one of the highest percentages of graduates earning Ph.D.'s. About half of the people who enter New College leave before graduating.
My wife has a degree from Evergreen University. Based on my exposure to people with BA degrees granted by schools that do more formal grading, I would have to say that her level of education is at least equal to theirs. As to Evergreen being accredited, I don’t know. Marcie is spending the day in her office. I will try to remember to ask later. Also, I have a niggling memory of an interview with or a biography of James Michener wherein he mentioned being part of an experimental group of students who were not formally graded but were reviewed. IIRC, Michener felt this system was superior to more tradional methods.
I am a great fan of the concept but reluctantly skeptical about the odds for effective implementation. Building on previous points, the tonier English applications, if I understand correctly, involve intensive one-on-one guidance and discussion. It’s much less “read and regurgitate” than “absorb and be able to discuss”. Very time intensive.
Sadly, the US system is much more open but also very populous. Faculty are tenured much more for research and publication than actual teaching. A lot of teaching is done by “grad asses” (wuz one myself for a while) and the method is usually based on “assign and lecture, discuss some and test”. Students (ahem! like myself) become quite adept at using the system to make the grades as much as to master the content.
It is clunky and inexact. The mechanics of “making the grade” often don’t equal “scholarship”. That said, I don’t know how a more realistic and quality based system could be implemented without great cost. Hey, it isn’t like tuition isn’t a burden now.
Sue, I went to an English university … it wasn’t anything like that. We had a few hours of lecture per week and then an hour or two of seminar, where you meet in small groups with other students (no mentors), in the classroom, to discuss and present to the rest of the class what you learned. Everyone in the same course (or “module”) takes the same exam. And yes, every module is marked.
There may well be universities in England that fit your description but I would suspect they are, as Veb suggested, the “tonier” ones.
