I hope you’re not serious, because I wasn’t.
They’ll write it with other big words, like “sarcasm” 
Your stale invective aside, I do not think we are talking about the same thing here. I would not be “unable” to establish a basic framework. I would be quite honest up front that in order for grading to have any kind of real pedagogical value, it should be flexible. There is nothing sacred about 25% quizzes, 25% homework, etc. If I found that my system encouraged lack of class participation, lack of time spent on homework, or excessive studentsmanship, etc, then I would alter it mid-stream.
This is not a capricious or whimsical decision. If all of my students were not submitting homework or writing crap essays in anticipation of pulling their grades out of the final, then I would certainly tell them that the rubric is being reassessed and that I would fully support them if they wished to revisit some of their writing exercises. If I find that they are killing themselves perfecting their writing and are really improving, I would reward them for it and back off the weight of the final exam if my pedagogical goals have been met.
If you would hate an instructor with my attitude, then quite frankly, I would probably hate having you in my class.
Look at that, I agree completely.
The grading system is not the fucking commitment, the education is. The former is an abject slave to the latter. Professors who shirk their real pedagogical responsibilities by hiding beneath their rigid grading systems are incompetent. A professor who wants to make good on his commitment to educate has to be willing to adapt to whatever the circumstances require. Sometimes adding, deleting, or otherwise adjusting the grading system or the curriculum are necessary and advantageous, even if it creates some ambiguity for the students.
Ah, see, I hope (perhaps in my naiveté) that my grading system, without being changed, WILL accomplish my pedagogical goals. I can’t be too far off in my assessment, as all my best teachers have stuck to their syllabi like glue.
How does a grading system set by someone else inform your educational goals? Not critical, just curious.
My experience also differs: my best teachers have amended their syllabi and grading systems in interesting (and certainly non-abusive) ways to compensate for class needs, interests, etc. The best ones just admitted that they were compiling our final grade holistically and that this would be informed by how much of their feedback we bring to bear on their assignments.
Furthermore, I was thinking of this very much within the context of the kinds of classes I would like to teach. That is, very small and reasonably dedicated to the subject matter.
Would I do this for an Econ 101 class with 100+ students? Fuck no. Perhaps this clarifies.
What happens if some students are doing well under the current grading scheme, and others aren’t? I’d be worried that a professor would alter the scheme to benefit the students he likes and hurt the ones he doesn’t like. I’m not saying you do this, but I’m saying some professors would.
I’ve had some professors with real doozies of reasons for liking or disliking certain students- some physics professors who didn’t think women should be physics majors. I could have seen them altering the grading scheme somehow to benefit the men in the class at the expense of the women. Or I could see some professors changing their grading scheme in some way to penalize those whose political opinions differ from the professor’s. Again, I have absolutely no evidence that you would do any of this, but I’ve known professors who might have.
I meant that if they were able to teach useful and interesting classes without needing to change the syllabus partway through, I should (in theory) be able to as well.
And of course, the smaller the class gets, the easier it gets to mark based on personal knowledge of the student, and the more the marks become fluid anyway. I, myself, wasn’t thinking of those types of classes. Which, in my experience, tend to be something like 25% participation and 75% paper (including drafts and stuff) anyway, giving the prof as much leeway as he/she wants.
Death by slides 
Actually, it’s Theory and Methods, so there aren’t as many slides and a lot more jargon. And since art history is pretty much the slowest of disciplines to let go of silly ideas, postmodernism still abounds. Though apparently some people have been realising how stupid it is, just within the last few years. :smack:
Also, for you people bickering about changing the syllabus: it’s the least of my worries. Any one of the things listed above might be all right, but ALL of them is just a little too much to bear. But thanks for the hijack.
The issue is not so much to reward success and punish failure but to make sure that the syllabus actually incentivizes achievement. If the grading system is not encouraging the behavior that I want to see, I would change it. This behavior can be induced from the quality of written work and class participation.
As for privileging some groups of students over others, well, that is vile and unfortunate. It is critical that students have some recourse in cases like this. It is doubly important that professors be able to document their classroom decision-making in case a student does wish to seek redress.
Laur,
Well sure. Different strokes. We also put a man on the moon without so much as a personal computer, so in theory, we should still be able to do this. I do not think this makes it particularly desirable, even though a good outcome will probably be reached.
I had two favorite classes in grad school. For one, we had two homeworks per week. The grades were either a check, a check plus, or a check minus. This was fine with me. Either I could solve the problems or I couldn’t. This system made some folks absolutely berserk.
IME, there really wouldn’t have been much recourse in cases like this. It’s awfully hard to prove discriminatory behavior on the part of a professor, especially in a small class. And, if the professor has tenure, not much is going to happen even if it is proven to the department’s satisfaction.
And all this assumes that the professor is discriminating against one sex, or race, or religion, or some other protected class. It’s much, much harder if the discrimination is on the basis of political opinions or personality. It is, of course, equally wrong for a professor to discriminate on personality as it is to discriminate on sex, but it’s much harder to prove the former and get something done about it.
Yeah, my mom said she had a problem with that system when some of her professors used it. I always wondered why she thought it was so bad. 
Bolding mine.
I can’t believe they let you near students talking like that.
My sarcasmometer is broken today, it seems.
Amen! And woe betide the new graduates who expect it to, which is nearly all of them. Typical conversation:
New graduate: But…but…but…
Older worker: Yeah, life sucks, don’t it?
I’m glad to find the rare academic willing to alter his gameplan when it doesn’t seem to be working instead of pressing on regardless. A syllabus, especially now that profs actually expect you to go to class, is only a framework, not a contract. For that matter, a contract needs to be flexible, too, with additions and subtractions as the situation on the ground changes. Any company that claims its contracts are perfect as they are originally written hides enough charges to cover whatever revisions may come along or else is doing the same thing over and over. Innovation forces flexibility.
However, verbification like you did went out even before Postmodernism.
I rather suspect Lucan & the Poetics of Violence and Game Theoretical Models of the Political Economy of Late Roman Egypt are not being taught in the large halls with the 100-level courses and all three students in both classes can accept Maeglin’s teaching style.
What can I say, this is a typical fucking response from a typical professor. You like your way of doing things and no matter what arguments anyone makes against them, you’ll simply drag out your old warhorse of undergradates being lazy and anti-intellectual for any role you need it to fill.
If you’ve taught more than one previous version of the class, frankly, you should have this stuff figured out by now. If you know that you need to make writing assignments worth a certain number of points, make them worth a certain number of points. Changing them in the middle of the semester is, like it or not, a hallmark of an individual that’s disorganized and has failed to accurately anticipate how people will respond to your class.
Also, here’s another thing that applies to all professors. No, I am not required to be interested in your class, in your arcane and incredibly specific topics of study, what you wrote your thesis on, your music, how you spent your summer, what you ate for dinner last night, nor photos from you taking your dog to Water-World last Sunday (<-true strory for molec. bio class!), and how you grade shouldn’t be a direct attempt to measure my interest level. Your grading should be based upon the information or skills presented in class, the readings, or whatever else people could reasonably expect me to learn in your class, and my ability to retain it or use it.
Now trust me, I have nothing against interesting classes. I’m all for them, and frankly I wish that professors would make more of an effort to make information presented in class interesting because it makes actually learning any of the material easier. But if you simply want me to listen to you in class to massage your own ego, then you’re teaching for the wrong motivations.
Teaching in a tech school is much more fun… When I was doing that, I had to use multiple guess tests and was having a lot of trouble with cheaters. So I cut them up into 4 different orders and gave each row the test in a differnt order than the ones on either side.
The looks on their faces as they brought the tests up for grading as I pullled one of 4 different ‘key’ sheets out … Bawahahaha
I was lucky that I did not have to teach down nor teach to a test as the shop side of the class could save some and teach others that there is other ways to get there or to be of value…
I had completely different ways of dealing with big classes verses small ones and always tailored to each one over and above that depending on it’s make up.
I hated to have a full schedual of big classes… I did not feel I was doing a good nuff job to run that many through a ‘go/ no go’ guage… that is not education to me…
YMMV
An Ethics professor?
Maeglin, I mean no disrespect, but that sounds like an excuse to screw people over. “They were fools for trusting me.” “Other people won’t treat them honorably, so if I did it would be coddling.”
Frankly, I don’t trust people like you. Your morality is much to negotiable. I always tell the truth, and I expect people to do likewise - or I don’t consider them worthy of comment. Changing a schedule is just tinkering with the order. Changing the rules, however, is simply vile. If there is a major problem and the course needs to be changed, it should be done because there is a fundamental and naked flaw in the material, not because the teacher feels like giving someone a break or making it hard on someone else.
Companies do sometimes screw employees. Those that make a habit of it and reward it die in the long run. Those that encourage and reward employees succeed. How many times have we on the Dope heard someone’s tale of office cruelty, lies, or mismanagement - with the neat little moral about said company dieing thereafter?
I don’t think it’s your place to grade behavior, except as it directly impacts the classroom environment. You are supposed to grade achievement, as far as I can tell.
What? That’s it? You’re not grading fairly, so the student has to try and get their grade changed? What kind of justification is that? (Horrified look.)
Professor Maeglin, I am very, very glad I did have people like you grading. I often did only average on individual homework assignments, because it takes me time to digest the material. I did very well on major tests, however, because I came tounderstand it better than my classmates. Under your system, would I be punished because you don’t feel like keeping your promises.
You’re not winning yourself any battles.
I also don’t think that the outside world is any less regimented than academia, except perhaps in certain high-stress jobs where the unexpected is expected, like journalism. Sudden things happen all the time, but they’re not usually job-related. Your dog dies, you get sick, your car breaks…life’s a bitch, and it’s a whole lot easier to deal with when your professor doesn’t suddenly change the whole structure of the class.
So much love. I’ll try to hit the highlights.
Since there is obviously some confusion, I am not a professor. I have taught in a classroom, managed a curriculum, etc. Returning to the academy is a personal goal. My views are informed by my experience. This is not strictly relevant to the logic of my opinions. I do not want to misrepresent myself, but I also don’t want to hear “you’ve never taught in this setting, what do you know”. That doesn’t stop us from arguing about everything else.
Anne, you make very good points. Flexibility relies on the goodwill and fairness of everyone involved. If this does not happen and the student has little or no recourse, then it pretty much sucks. If your only two options to fix it are to remove the human judgment element entirely from grading or to fix the institution of tenure, well, I’d rather see the latter. Teachers still play favorites even if they have less flexibility about grades.
brownie55, your contribution to the discussion is duly noted and will be given the consideration it merits.
dropzone, you old kidder. I dunno why you have a hardon for postmodern theory, but sadly, it has not gone out, at least not in disciplines where it has been the most destructive. We can only hope and wait.
If you’re not interested in the class, don’t take it. If you decide to take the class anyway, perform as if it were the most interested fucking class in the world. If your papers scream that you don’t give a shit, chances are, they actually do suck. If your work is well-considered and polished, your level of interest would make no difference to me. I do not think this is particularly controversial. I would not care what music you listen to or how you spent your summer, so I would expect the same in return.
I don’t know what issues you may have had in the past, threemae, but there is a disconnect between your remarks and my views. For example:
Makes my point exactly. This is the typical old professor who won’t change his exams, won’t change his rubric, or won’t change his curriculum despite the fact that his entire class is unsuccessful. We’ve all had that guy. We call him a burnout.
This is exactly the kind of bullshit that I hope to avoid. If something isn’t working or could be done better, change it.
Or the hallmark of an exceptionally organized individual who can put dynamic feedback from students into practice immediately. Or the hallmark of an individual with some other dubiously relevant personality trait. Or…what was your point again?
I just don’t understand it. I have some people telling me that this is really deviant and some people telling me this is typical. Which one is it?
Let me try to step back here and clarify a little. I was originally replying to LaurAnge’s post. She is taking some high level stuff in grad school. I was in grad school last year. The professors spent a lot less time caring about grading systems and all of that crap. They just expected us to attack the material with a vengeance. Some folks felt uncomfortable in a less structured environment. I loved it.
I am not suggesting drastic ad hoc changes to classes where cumulative knowledge is important. If you are taking Calc I, you need to learn a specific set of skills to advance to the next level. You probably have one main textbook that will cover the entire two semester sequence. This is a class that tons of people take, there are lots of instructors, and the math department basically sets the curriculum. There is not a lot of room to play around. There is also probably not a lot of new research on how to take basic derivatives and integrals.
Changing a textbook that students dropped $200 on is the sign of an asshole of the highest order. Hurting their chances in Calc II by farting around is the same thing. You teach the skills, and hopefully between you and the TAs you can help the students who are having difficulty. Likewise, if you are teaching French, there are only so many ways to handle basic grammar. You will have quizzes every week, and probably not a hell of a lot of papers. You’re not quite ready to talk about Hugo en francais.
As the knowledge gets more specialized and less cumulative, there are more opportunities to make changes. In the class where we got checks for grades, the teacher was constantly tinkering with the curriculum to make sure that all of our skill levels were accommodated and that we covered material helpful to everyone’s diverse research interests. Lots of political economists? We did extra constrained optimization problems. Folks working on collective action problems? Extra set theory. She was an inspiration. I will be lucky if I am one tenth the teacher she is.
There were well over twenty people in the class, all with varying levels of skill. In the beginning, I was the dumb kid in the back with less experience than anyone else in the room. While I am still the same dumb kid, I got a lot better at math.
Hey dude, I can massage my own ego pretty well on my own. I want to teach because, well, it’s fun. Because I get really excited about the stuff that interests me, and apparently it helps keep the students interested, too.
This thread is like crack. Too bad it won’t kill me so quickly.
smiling bandit,
I do not see how that is a necessary conclusion of my position.
You can infer my character from my position on grading systems? You must be incredibly perceptive. Perhaps you can make a case that they are not completely orthogonal, because that is how it looks to me.
It does not follow that you would be “punished” because I “don’t feel like keeping my promises.” I would tell you on day 1 that I take a pretty holistic approach. 25% quizzes, 25% papers, etc, but that this was subject to a little revision throughout the course of the year. Drastic or stupid changes? No. The point is not to shaft people. If you are negatively impacted, you aren’t just going to be left out in the cold.
Here’s another example, from my favorite teacher as an undergrad. It was a senior seminar, 20-25 people. There were supposed to be three short papers over the course of the semester, maybe 4-6 pages each. After grading the first one, she decided (quite rightly) that none of us could write for shit. She didn’t put it quite in so many words.
She believed that we would get more out of weekly shorter writing assignments (like 1-2 pages) than out of three papers over the course of the semester. This way we would get constant feedback and could improve our writing as we went along. Another teacher might have just given us mediocre marks and proceeded business as usual. She revised the curriculum, made a few changes to the grading system, and trucked right along. She took on a much bigger grading burden, but I’ll be damned if my skills didn’t improve. This is the kind of commitment I hope to have to my students.