Yale Bulletin and Calendar

May 11, 2007|Volume 35, Number 28|Two-Week Issue

When it comes to grades, giving is
no easier than receiving, says panel

Teachers may not like the fact that students can be more obsessed with their grades than with the information and skills they have learned in a course, but grades are a "necessary evil," contended Yale psychology professor Marvin Chun at a recent forum at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

"Why Do We Grade?" was the theme of the ninth annual Spring Teaching Forum and Innovation Fair held on April 13. The event, organized by the Graduate Teaching Center, explored questions about how and why students are evaluated. These included: What are grades supposed to communicate? Are they designed to give information to the students, potential employers, graduate and professional schools, or other faculty members? And how and to what extent do grades shape the learning environment in the classroom?

Bill Rando, director of the Graduate Teaching Center, told the assembly of instructors-in-training that he believes "grading, in whatever form it takes, is a big part of teaching. We may wish that grades mattered less, but wishing it doesn't make it so. Quite the opposite -- not caring about grading makes grades matter more."

At the heart of the forum was a panel discussion on "What Grades Communicate, Why They Matter, and Whether We Need Them." In addition to Chun, the participants included Valerie Hansen, professor of history; Charles Bailyn, the Thomas E. Donnelley Professor of Astronomy and Physics; and Justin Zaremby, a Prize Teaching Fellow in the Department of Political Science.

Chun admitted that he didn't get high marks in college or graduate school, and still dislikes grades and tests.

Nevertheless, he noted, grades offer feedback that can motivate and redirect students. Any single score can be misleading, however, he advised the assembly. "Comprehensive feedback would be better, but grades are a necessary evil."

In his popular "Introduction to Psychology" course, Chun tries to "minimize the role of grades," he explained, focusing instead on how students apply what they've learned to everyday life and to the day's news. In order not to punish those who are poor test-takers, he takes care to weigh in other factors -- such as papers and participation -- in his evaluations of students. "I tinker with this every year," he said.

Hansen stressed that teachers need to be explicit in their evaluations of students. "If you're not giving someone an A on a paper, you need to explain why," she said, noting that she always types her commentaries, believing it's only fair since students are required to type their papers.

In her history courses, most of the grades Hansen gives are for papers, where there is a lot of room for subjectivity, she said. To make the process as fair as possibile, she suggested that Yale adopt the British system, in which outside graders read papers from which students' names have been removed. This kind of "blind evaluation," she argued, eliminates the possibility that a professor's personal bias will creep into the evaluation of a student's work.

Objectivity is less of an issue in the grading of problem sets, which are exercises "with known correct answers and clearly defined mistakes," explained Bailyn.

When assigned problem sets as homework, students are encouraged to work in groups, to consult sources and to ask questions -- because the point of problem sets isn't to assess individual mastery of the subject, said the scientist, but to ensure that students go through the mental workout that the problems present.

Still, these exercises need to be graded, contended Bailyn, because "solving problems can be intensely frustrating." If no grades are recorded and there are no consequences for not doing the homework, he said, "The temptation would be to let it slide." Because problem sets are deliberately designed to challenge even the most advanced student, they are graded using a "points off" approach, which allows for partial credit if a student shows understanding, even if he or she didn't solve the problem completely or correctly, explained the professor.

Bailyn said he has found that counting homework as 25% of the final grade and tests as the remaining 75% seems to be an effective balance. "Tests are for assessment," he told the audience. "Homework is a way of making students engage in the core intellectual activity" of the discipline, which is how they will gain "active knowledge" of what the professor and textbook teach, he said.

Zaremby, who was an undergraduate at Yale before enrolling in the Graduate School, admitted, "I arrived here eight years ago as a typical grade-grubbing, hyperactive Yale student" -- the very kind, he noted, that he now has to contend with as a teaching fellow.

The grading system dates back to medieval times, when European, and especially German, universities became "credentialing institutions" for both government and the private sector, Zaremby explained. In those days, grades were a way to differentiate one student from another in the medieval job market, and to a certain extent, grades still serve this function for college students who want to go to graduate or professional school, he noted.

"Academics are uncomfortable with this," Zaremby said. "They want to focus on higher things than their students' grade obsession."

Some students seem to believe there's a secret trick to getting an A, he said, "But there's no trick." The very best students understand that courses are not something "to get through" but a way to grow and change, Zaremby contended.

All the panelists agreed that it's a good idea for teachers to come up with strategies to challenge students' expectations about grades. Bailyn, for example, said that while he has tried using a loose "check, check-plus, check-minus" system, it didn't work as well as a numeric score. However, he advised the teachers-in-training against using 100 as the perfect score.

"High school locks in the idea that a 90 is an A; 80 is a B; 70, a C," he said. If a perfect paper is 30 points, he noted, students are much less likely to argue about their score than if they can easily translate it into a letter grade.

All of the panelists advised the future instructors to give feedback through the semester and to grade mid-terms more stringently than final exams. This strategy, they noted, motivates students to work harder in the second half of the term and also promotes a sense of relief when the final grade is better than expected.

-- By Gila Reinstein

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