I am enrolled in a post-graduate distance program leading eventually to a Diploma (halfway to an MSc). It is a global program from a well-known university, with thousands of students from all around the world. All of the courses are distance, with just a few online interactions with staff and a final written exam in a local test center. Despite my initial reservations about a distance program, it works pretty well, and I feel that I have learned just as well as if I have been attending lectures in a lecture hall with a real professor.
My one qualm is this. There is no transparency whatsoever in the grading process. Last year I sat for the final exam in one course, and felt that I did really well. I had prepared seriously for it, and came out of it expecting a perfect score, which would be 5/5. When I got my results, I had received only 4/5. Not a bad score, but a bit of a surprise given how confident I felt both before and after the test. But I can live with a 4/5, given that the passing grade is 2, and I am not interested in class rank (I am a mid-career professional doing this mostly for fun and to pad my CV a bit). But I can’t get any information from the university why I got only 4/5, because they don’t ever return the graded papers. They also don’t allow students to keep the original question papers after the exam. The current year’s exam and graders’ notes will be shared as a practice test for the next year, but they are only available much later, and the graders’ notes are very general.
I checked with other students in the program and they have had the same experience. That is just the policy. I am allowed to demand a re-grade, but they still won’t give me any feedback on my performance. As I said, it isn’t life or death for me, but my real question is about the learning aspect. How can I possibly maximize my learning potential if I don’t know where I went wrong?
I haven’t been in an educational program in about 20 years, but this seems really odd to me, especially given the quality and reputation of this school. Am I right that this is a poor practice, or is there some nuanced modern educational thinking that I am unaware of?
I have no real experience with distance learning, but in general, yes, a student definitely needs and should expect to get feedback on his work. It’s important for learning to be tested and to see what you got right or wrong.
Final exams, however, seem to be an exception to this rule. It’s fairly typical in my experience for final exams not to be returned to the students who take them.
Don’t really think that it being a distance course matters. I one got a “B++” on an exam from a TA. That grade didn’t even exist as far as I could tell from the school grading policy. And the test was supposed to be graded on a curve and the TA gave out no A’s at all, and I was the only one with a B++. The TA didn’t like me because I was too much of a smart ass for her taste. I complained to the professor – the grade stood.
It seems OK that they didn’t return the final paper, but weird that they declined on offering feedback when the student requested it. Have you tried contacting the professor directly about it? It may be that the program itself doesn’t mandate the professors, but the person grading you should understand that you want to know what the weaknesses were.
Also, did you have a rubric (point breakdown) that you could use? That at least gives you a pretty good idea of where they may have taken off points, if you are honest with yourself to see weaknesses in your job. Then you can then calculate what the mark was.
Also surprised that the course used only one work to compute the whole class, when there is a current push to use various types of assessments.
The above was written by someone who was required to do a certificate in higher education learning and teaching.
I run a department with a postgrad online certificate program. Every course has specific grading criteria in the syllabus and uses electronic rubrics for transparency in grading. There should be very little surprise (beyond you thinking something was good and your prof interpreting it differently). It should be very clear, even if a student disagrees with something subjective.
Also, there are assignments for various reasons I do not allow students to keep in my classes, but they can always see it and have a chance to discuss.
I’m actually getting better feedback from my current online course than from the last one I took in person, in 2010-11. Every subject has a forum where the teachers post an “interaction question” for each lesson; we have to post the answer to that and to the in-lesson questions; most teachers have been quite good about giving feedback there. Each lesson has a multiple-choice test that gets “graded” automatically - in quote marks because it’s not part of the grade, it’s for your feedback; again, most of the time there is an explanation of why is that the correct answer and they’re pretty good.
We need to ask specifically for feedback on the final exams, being able to get it kind of helps compensate for the forced curved grading. I hate forced grading precisely because I find the grades quite meaningless.
Thanks. I am somewhat clearer about why my program might be doing it, but not really any clearer about my performance. The exam and the graders’ notes will eventually be published online, and will give a general overview of how students did on a particular question, parts where they were relatively strong, and areas where they lost points. This might be of some use for me if I remembered exactly what I had written. But as I said, we are not allowed to keep our response papers and the graders’ notes come out months later.
I have not ever pushed to speak to any of the teaching staff; I only asked the online advisory staff about the policy. Perhaps if I asked more directly I might get some feedback.
As for the reason for this policy, I think I can understand why schools might not generally give back the final exam papers. I think I remember something similar back when I was in undergrad and grad school. Your final exam performance is relatively less important as a learning tool as you will be finished with the course by then. It is more important to get feedback during the year. In the case of my courses so far, there are no required assignments or any other interaction with teaching staff, so no opportunities for feedback. There is one optional assignment which does get feedback (I think), but I have not done these. I understand that some of the higher level modules do have one mandatory assignment (possibly with feedback).