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El Chupacabra
Joined: 22 Jul 2009
Posts: 378
Location: Kwangchow
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 Posted: Mon May 31, 2010 8:09 am Post subject: Re: University Grades Whats Your Bell Curve |
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| KayuJati wrote: |
| Wake up who: the students or the administrators?? |
The students. The object of their final is to assess listening comprehension, not reading guesswork. With a disincentive for guesswork, they will have more incentive to concentrate.
At least that's my hypothesis. I'm just mulling this over, mind you, as a comprehension incentive and not as a punishment. But thanks for questioning; my tone is often sarcastic and maybe my words could have been clearer.
| KayuJati wrote: |
| I wouldn't go picking fights with the administrators over this pass/fail issue. |
Fortunately, I am not mandated to fail X number of students, as some other FTs elsewhere have. My only restriction is a weighting that favors the final paper over classroom performance, which I have adapted to creatively.
The administrators will support my crazy papers as they always have. I just need to decide if the negative scoring will have the desired positive effect on performance, ie. encouraging concentration on the task of listening, not the task of guessing answers before listening. With a paper in front of them, lazy students often try this guesswork, which demotivates them from actually listening to the passages before guessing. In the laboratory, they have had plenty of mock exams where they have been given time to think about possible questions before seeing the actual questions. This does increase their focus, as they are unsure of what they need to remember about a passage.
My median scores, for all classes, are in the lower 70's. This is about where grades should be, if C students are the average. By contrast, I have a colleague whose medians are in the high 80s. He is known departmentally as a wimp, and the administration questions whether he is actually testing for anything worthwhile.
I believe that if I use negative scoring, I need to do it in such a way that my "C" students will still pull C grades. Perhaps this means more hours in exam design, I dunno. But my intent, despite my sarcastic tone, is not to "go picking fights" with students or administration. It is to creatively deal with the bureaucratic restrictions in a way that is academically fair, valid, reliable, and constructive. |
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caleypatrick
Joined: 20 Mar 2010
Posts: 63
Location: Sichuan
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| Posted: Mon May 31, 2010 1:33 pm Post subject: |
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| I just bell curved 350 students. My objective: Have no more than 5 % be in a position to fail before the final exam. My real objective: Be just another white-skinned, blue-eyed teacher looking to get along without any hassle from the mind police. |
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KayuJati
Joined: 21 Feb 2010
Posts: 313
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| Posted: Mon May 31, 2010 3:26 pm Post subject: |
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| caleypatrick wrote: |
| I just bell curved 350 students. My objective: Have no more than 5 % be in a position to fail before the final exam. My real objective: Be just another white-skinned, blue-eyed teacher looking to get along without any hassle from the mind police. |
And I can say, sans sarcasm, that you will be able to survive with this approach. Good job. It is easier, of course, to grade on a normal distribution (bell-shaped curve) with 350 students, then with, say, 5. |
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KayuJati
Joined: 21 Feb 2010
Posts: 313
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| Posted: Mon May 31, 2010 3:33 pm Post subject: Re: University Grades Whats Your Bell Curve |
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| El Chupacabra wrote: |
| KayuJati wrote: |
| I wouldn't go picking fights with the administrators over this pass/fail issue. |
Fortunately, I am not mandated to fail X number of students, as some other FTs elsewhere have. My only restriction is a weighting that favors the final paper over classroom performance, which I have adapted to creatively.
The administrators will support my crazy papers as they always have. |
If you have the support of your administration, then by all means try something different. I wouldn't subtract MORE points for incorrect answers than you give for correct. How will a student feel if they get a negative score?
I used to proctor SAT II exams, and remember that students got 4 points for a correct answer, and 1 for an incorrect. No answer = 0. Thus, it took four incorrect answers to wipe out one correct. This discourages guessing because there is only a 25% chance of guessing correctly unless they can eliminate one or two choices before guessing between the leftover choices.
In my 20+ years of teaching (15 years internationally), I have found that punishment marking does not do very well. Thus, I have learned to structure marking as incentive-based instead. |
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El Chupacabra
Joined: 22 Jul 2009
Posts: 378
Location: Kwangchow
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| Posted: Mon May 31, 2010 7:03 pm Post subject: Re: University Grades Whats Your Bell Curve |
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| KayuJati wrote: |
How will a student feel if they get a negative score?
I used to proctor SAT II exams, and remember that students got 4 points for a correct answer, and 1 for an incorrect. No answer = 0. Thus, it took four incorrect answers to wipe out one correct. This discourages guessing because there is only a 25% chance of guessing correctly unless they can eliminate one or two choices before guessing between the leftover choices. |
That's a better way to do it, thanks. Subtracting two points for one incorrect answer may be seen as punishment, which is not what I want to convey. Subtracting 25% for one incorrect answer is more likely to incentivize listening. That may also ensure that my C students still stay within the C range. |
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rc81
Joined: 03 Jul 2009
Posts: 85
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| Posted: Tue Jun 01, 2010 1:28 pm Post subject: |
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| caleypatrick wrote: |
| I just bell curved 350 students. My objective: Have no more than 5 % be in a position to fail before the final exam. My real objective: Be just another white-skinned, blue-eyed teacher looking to get along without any hassle from the mind police. |
thats basically my thinking. except for the fact that i didnt think about where they were before now. thats their job. i did do a good amount of work to correct their mistakes during the semester. im just giving 40% As, 60% Bs. maybe 1 or 2 Cs per class for major attendance problems. We will see how that works out. |
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