Worth it? Grade appeal?

[historicallinguist]

Hello. Linguists. I am a first year MA student in school A who will transfer to a Ph.D. program in school B next year (with an offer in hand already). So, now I have a problem. I am taking one class required by the MA program taught by a Prof who is both the chair of the department and my advisor. I know that the semester just started but problems come very soon (just like the problems sets!). The core issue here is that he reduced my grade of the submitted problem sets by 25 percent for some absurd reasons. If I did something wrong in the problem set, fine and I would accept the grade. But he was basically saying that I did not answer some of the questions that were not even asked by the prompts of the problem, and therefore I missed some important points he expected me to make in the solution, and thus a big chunk of my grade was taken away. I feel this is not fair, and such grading is capriciously arbitrary with no rubric whatsoever. I wrote to him a two days ago, trying to solve the issue and find some way to avoid potential similar disputes in the future, without escalating the issue to the higher administration. But I haven't heard anything back from him yet, and I am not sure whether he is going to write back to me to address this issue. In case that he refuses to address the issue, what should I do next? This one grade in itself is one issue, but may be not the most worrisome. The more worrisome issue I have is that he may continue to do such things, assigning grades arbitrarily and capriciously, with no good rationale behind how he grades problem sets or other works.(He does not even have a grading system in the syllabus explicitly telling me what ranges are for A, B, C, D, and F respectively!)

Because now it is the beginning of the semester and I do want to avoid such potential disastrous situation that may be too late to handle at the later time, I checked out the student rights page of my university. According to the page, I have the right to file two complaint for instructor misconduct for "not stating clearly grading scale and criteria", and for grade grievance respectively. The issue at hand here is whether it worths to go so far to file a complaint or two complaints, escalating the issue beyond the level of the department. Filing a complaint or two complaints would certainly save me from potential continuous unjust treatments in this class, and thus have a decent grade out of the class. This is the thing I could get out of the filing process. But filing such complaints will certainly damage my relationship with him, and potentially alienate some other people in the department. This is the downside of the filing. On the other hand, not filing would potentially keep me acquiescing to accept the unfair treatment and therefore I would end up with a bad grade, no matter how hard I work in this class. The good side of not filing would be maintaining cordial relationship with him and other people in the department.

So, I got a dilemma right here. Should I file or not file? Any input would be greatly appreciated! 

[humidz]

You already have an offer in hand, for a PhD position. That probably means nobody will ever care about a grade you got during your MA again. I have a D in my MA transcript, it didn't stop me from getting into all the grad schools I applied to. People in linguistics (rightfully) don't care as much about grades as they do in other fields, they care about sample writings & letters of recommendation, so focus on those, and just silently say "fuck it" to teachers who might treat you unfairly. Don't let them be more important than they have to be, and pick only those fights worth picking.

[rising_star]

Is this a serious question? You're actually asking if you should wreck your relationship with your advisor, who is also the chair of the department, over a grade on a problem set? This is a clear overreaction on your part. If you want to get a better grade in the future, go to office hours to get a clearer understanding of how problem sets are being graded and what you need to make sure you're doing. This means talking to the professor and perhaps other grad students to see how they did so you all can learn from one another's mistakes. Do NOT escalate this to those higher in the administration (remember, you're challenging a department chair here) and do NOT file a complaint about instructor misconduct. 

Most of what you're complaining about is par for the course in a graduate class. I can honestly say that I don't remember any grad classes where the ranges for grades were explicitly listed. Also, instructors are not required to provide rubrics with assignments. Those who do are being nice/helpful but I never saw a rubric in a graduate course. Hell, I don't even provide detailed breakdowns of everything you can lose points for in upper-level undergraduate courses. You really need to chill out, manage your expectations, and talk to more senior grad students about what is being asked of you, what you should be doing, etc. If you think about this more calmly, I hope you'll think about the bigger picture here. How much of your grade is being determined by problem sets? How many problem sets are there over the course of the semester? It's unlikely one grade on one problem set is going to wreck your course grade, unless you let it.

[TakeruK]

I agree with the others. I am a huge proponent of fair and transparent grading schemes. Last year, I taught the grading session to new TAs at my school and I tried my best to emphasize the importance of a transparent grading scheme. Our school's teaching center instructs our faculty to do the same.

So, in my opinion, good instructors should do the same. For an upper level class or a grad class though, rubrics shouldn't spell out exactly everything you must do in order to get a grade because grad students are expected to know it. For my grad class, my rubric for full marks would say something like "Reflect critically on the answers you find" and I mean that when you calculate X = 5 or whatever, I expect a note discussing why X=5 is a significant result, even though the problem set itself only says "Solve for X." instead of "Solve for X and tell me why it's important." because then I have to add that extra phrase to every single question, plus, it's not always an important result---it's up to the student to reflect on the answer and decide whether it's worth writing more about, not up to the instructor to spoon-feed all these questions.

However, this doesn't mean that every instructor you get in school (grad school or otherwise) will be a "good" instructor in this sense. Sometimes you will get instructors with terrible lecturing skills. They might write illegibly on the board, provide homework sets late, don't grade things on time, make last minute changes to problem sets etc. You'll meet a huge range of instructors ranging from absolutely terrible to average to mostly good with a few faults to perfect. You're not going to do yourself or anyone else any favours if you file complaints for every instructor that isn't perfect.

The complaint system is likely meant for really bad cases where some kind of high level intervention is necessary. This is not one of those cases. I don't know the full story but not providing clear rubrics is hardly a major "infraction".

Instead, my advice is to meet with the professor and find out how to not lose points in the future. I hope you wrote your email from 2 days ago in a nice tone that won't damage relationships! You should approach this as a learning opportunity for you. Do not come to the meeting with the mindset of regaining these points or with the intention of having the professor justify their actions. Come to the meeting with the perspective of something like "I see that I lost points for X, Y, Z here, and I would like to improve this in future problem sets. Do you have any suggestions or ways for me to improve?". 

If you wrote your email from 2 days ago in a different tone, I suggest that you follow up with something more like the above paragraph and ask for a meeting. Or come during the next office hours. By the way, 2 days ago is....Wednesday? I wouldn't think that not getting a response for 2 days means they won't respond to you. It's also the long weekend now, so don't expect a response until later next week.

[fuzzylogician]

What others have said. The fact that you have actually gone to the trouble of thinking through and reading up on formal complaints and that you talk about 'escalating' the situation is very worrisome. You just got to this new school, your job is to observe and learn the norms of the place; don't make any sudden moves that you'll later regret. The thought of ruining your relationship with your advisor over a problem set grade is beyond absurd. Don't do it. As others have said, go to office hours and try to get a better idea not only of what specifically he was expecting of you for this pset, but more generally how to go about solving other psets in this class (and others as well). You have decided that the grading was absurd, arbitrary and capricious.* I would encourage you to entertain the very real possibility that that is NOT the case, and to take this as an opportunity to learn what you are missing to make sense of the grade. It sounds to me like you did not understand what the question was asking and therefore only did part of the work/only answered part of the question.** So this sounds like a norms/expectations problem, partly perhaps to do with your department's culture and partly perhaps to do with the fact that this is the first time that you are attending this kind of linguistics program, so you might just need to learn the quirks of the field. For what it's worth, I never once had a rubric for any of the assignments I did I grad school, nor will I be making one for classes that I teach now. By the time you get to grad school you should pretty much know what's expected, and if you have questions or concerns, the solution is to talk them through in office hours, not to file formal complaints. 

* And this would make the second time that you've suspected someone at this school of targeting you in some harmful way with no evidence or reason. That, too, is worrisome.

** A way to check this: did (many) other students get points taken off for missing the same parts of the same questions? If so, maybe there is a problem with the formulation of the question, otherwise it's more likely you. But whatever the answer, this is just one pset, and you would be well advised to just put it away. 

[TakeruK]

I kind of went off on a tangent in my last post, I realise now. My main point is that now, in your MA program and especially in your PhD program and in other situations both academic and otherwise, the best response to a potential problem isn't always to "report to authorities". It's generally best to first talk to the person and clarify intentions and give it some time for you and the other person to resolve. There are some exceptions, e.g. someone is unlawfully harassing you.

Also, to clarify the rubrics thing---it doesn't have to be an actual rubric. For courses I TA, I provide a one page sheet that lists expectations for problem sets (it's tough to write rubrics for problem sets since each problem is different). I sometimes also write a mock question and a mock student response, and then I "grade" my response so that expectations are clear. 

[historicallinguist]

@TakeruK@fuzzylogician@rising_star

Thank you for your inputs. Before I wrote that email 2 days ago (now 3 days ago), expecting that there will be another problem set due early next week, I was trying to meet with him in person during his office hour this week and ask for clarification of expectation so that any potential future dispute can be avoided and for some kind of explanation of the graded problem set . But during his office hour, he was not in office! In class, expecting that next Monday is a holiday, I am not sure whether he is going to have office hour then. Therefore, I asked him, and he said yes! What a surprise! But then the next day, he emailed me saying that he forgot next Monday is going to be a holiday and asked me to email him whatever questions I have. Therefore, I wrote that email two days ago. 

It is true that one problem set is not that a big deal. But I still do not get clarification of his expectation over the whole week, and the second problem set is going to due soon. 

As for previous office hours, I virtually visited his every office hours (sometimes he was in his office during his office, sometimes not). I actually asked for clarification of his expectation of the problem set. But he was telling me something like "I am a easy grader", "Don't worry much about your grade. Focus on learning" etc. Not really answering my questions. But assuming what he said was true, and he was a easy grader, I did not ask further. But it turned out that he is certainly not an easy grader he claimed to be. 

The problem set is for 40 percent of the final grade. But how many problem sets are there? I do not even know! On the syllabus, there are 45 problem sets. On the first day of class, he said all 45 are going to be graded. The next week (i.e. the second week) the number becomes 43, because he said he felt like to not to grade two of the three problem set submitted this week. What the number would eventually become? I cannot tell! 

Fuzzy and Takeruk, you guys raised a very good question. The core issue here is that I do not even know for which X, Y, Z did I lose points. He wrote in his comments that "You did not make general observations" for the data. Clearly, he thought I answered only part of the question. But the issue here is that "making general observations" is not part of the question. The question was asking me to list words and their meanings (very different things!). It would be absurd to make whole bunch of general observation (e.g. XXX language is a SOV language), instead of following the prompt of the question to list words and state their meanings. 

I just checked out with another colleague in my class, he got the exactly same score with me, and experienced the exactly same problem. It looks like I am not the only one in class having this problem. But certainly I somewhat feel worse than my colleague. There is one extra thing I forgot to point out in the previous post. He required me to submit the solution of my problem set at the beginning of the class, while allowing all other students to revise during class and submit the revised version for grading. The bottom line is, my colleagues at least have some chances to revise their solution during class as he goes over the problem set, but I don't! This was another thing I feel really uncomfortable, and I was trying to talk to him in person to make some suggestion for change, because this also adversely affect my grade. But again, as said in previous paragraph, he was not in office during his office hour. He asked me to email him, so I did, but heard back nothing from him yet. 

 

 

Edited September 3, 2016 by historicallinguist

[historicallinguist]

One quick follow up: Another student in class got an even worse grade for the same reason! 

[rising_star]

@historicallinguist, unless there are only three people in the class, this is only somewhat helpful information. What it sounds like is that the professor has a broader expectation that you all will provide some context/observations with whatever answers you have and that you and the two others you've spoken with didn't do that. If you all lost points for the same reason, then it should be pretty clear that you all are not doing something he's expecting you to do.

[TakeruK]

The number of problem sets can vary in grad classes, that's normal. 45 is a lot of sets!!! But that means each individual set doesn't really matter. Even if it drops to 40 sets, worth a total of 40%, then each set is only worth 1%. Losing 25% on this first one (and maybe the second one) means you lose 0.5% of your total grade. Not a big deal.

It sounds like you and your classmates are losing points for similar reasons to why students in my class lose points---not knowing when and where to develop your analysis further. This is a skill that comes with practice. I still suggest you come to your professor in office hours soon, now that you have the problem set graded and ask for specific examples of one or two cases where you could have developed your ideas further. Then, try again next time. See if you still lose points. Repeat until you learn the right way of doing it.

It also sounds like to me that you are more used to a different style of teaching and this class follows a different pedagogical style. You may not believe it, but withholding points is an effective and valid method of motivating students to learn more. It's okay for a professor to design a problem set where people aren't going to get 100% so that the lost points become guidance on where to improve for next time. 

When I grade problem sets, I set the standard for 100% to be pretty high. I give out my "rubric" (which is a list of expectations) in the first week and make it clear that I am expecting deep and through analysis, but that the questions themselves won't tell you exactly when to do this. It's up to the student to determine which parts require deeper analysis than others. So, typically, very few students get 100% in the first few problem sets. The average score is around 70% to 80%. Eventually, as students learn from where they lose points, they develop better ability to discern whether an observation is trivial or worth expanding upon. People start scoring higher. Average grades rise to around 85% to 90% and a few people even get 100%. It's really hard to get 100% and honestly, it probably takes a student an extra 3 hours (problem sets should be finished in about 6 hours) to go from 90% to 100% and I don't really expect students to get 100% unless they are personally motivated to learn that material. 

If this style of teaching and learning is different from what you have been used to then it could be a shock. I know that some people are used to classes where the criteria is set and if you meet it, then you should score 100%. That is, anything less than 100% means you are deficient in some way. However, in many grad classes, the goal score is probably more like 80% to 90% because there are other priorities and you can't just get 100% in everything.

This is because there are at least two types of grading: one that is meant for a "final" evaluation of skills and one that is meant for "feedback". To me, it sounds like you are treating your homework grade as an evaluation/test of your skills. However, I feel that your professor is using your homework grades as feedback and it's meant for you to identify places for improvement and work on them. (**I'm not saying the professor is blame-free, generally it is a good idea for an instructor to be clear and transparent in what they are doing, but oh well).

Finally, I do recommend that you take your professor's word that your grades won't matter. I don't know what your professor has in mind for sure, but one reason the syllabus doesn't list the ranges for A, B, C etc. is because they might arise naturally out of the distribution. For example, if the majority of students score between 80% and 90% then that might be the range for A. In addition, the general advice i get in my grad programs is that you want to aim for a B+/A- grade average (maybe more like A-). I also think you should take the professor's advice and instead of worrying about whether you were wronged in the grading scheme (again, does it really matter since it's less than 1% difference) and instead focus on learning and using the feedback to identify what you need to improve.

[historicallinguist]

@fuzzylogician@TakeruK@rising_star

 

Just got a deal. He is going to summarily drop the grade for this assignment for the whole class.

[fuzzylogician]

26 minutes ago, historicallinguist said:

@fuzzylogician@TakeruK@rising_star

 

Just got a deal. He is going to summarily drop the grade for this assignment for the whole class.

Good. But I would really suggest concentrating less on this grade that's worth less than 1% of your final grade and more on understanding your department's culture and expectations. 

[historicallinguist]

5 hours ago, fuzzylogician said:

Good. But I would really suggest concentrating less on this grade that's worth less than 1% of your final grade and more on understanding your department's culture and expectations. 

You know. I was kind of expecting some kind of problems when I registered for this class. His previous students gave him quite a lot of negative reviews on ratemyprofessor.com, specifically taking issue with his ambiguity and, of course, tough grading. Although I admit some reviews on this website are off base and unreasonable, I have to say that, if an instructor consistently receives negative reviews over years on this website, it does say something about this instructor at least in terms of his performance in a class setting. Although the website says nothing about whether an instructor is a good thesis advisor, it does say a lot about grading, clarity/unclarity of requirements, effectiveness/ineffectiveness of lecturing, willingness/unwillingness to teach/help students, and things of these kinds. Some instructors consistently receive positive ratings on this website over years, while some others consistently receive negative ratings. If we summarily dismiss it as unworthy, it would be hard to explain why some consistently get reviewed positively while others negatively. My undergraduate advisor (he got very positive ratings over years on the website, obviously, and this was part of the reasons why I picked him), when I was graduating, even confessed to me that ratemyprofessor is more accurately reflecting student satisfaction/dissatisfaction than end-of-semester satisfaction surveys do. I am a TA now, and I may eventually become an instructor, and thus be rated on this website someday. But I do think it is important to hear what students have to say about instructors rather than simply dismiss their opinions as "anger lashed out because of bad grades", noting that their opinions written on this site are not summarily negative toward every instructor. Summarily dismissing would miss the point to explain the discrepancy of ratings among different instructors, some having high ratings while some others having low ratings. 

Edited September 12, 2016 by historicallinguist

[TakeruK]

I'm glad that you were able to get a solution that satisfies you and your classmates for that one problem set. And although I'm not 100% sure your intention in your most recent post about the professor's ratings, I do agree with you that transparent grading schemes are important and student evaluation are important.

However, our time and effort are not unlimited. You do value advice/thoughts from other students (e.g. thoughts from others on ratemyprof) so I will say this again, one more time, as advice from another student:

If you think about how much energy and time you have already put into this one assignment worth less than 1% of your grade, do you think it was worth it? It is very hard to change people and I doubt this action (not counting this particular assignment) is representative of a bigger change for future problem sets in this semester and future semesters. This is a personal decision---if you felt this was good use of your time, then great, I'm happy for you. The advice part is not meant to put judgement on your use of time in this case, but to advise you to keep the balance of cost/benefit in mind for future decisions in grad school.

The second part of the advice is to also think about managing expectations. Your most recent post seems to read like you really care whether or not the professor really is a "good" professor or not. But sometimes, it just doesn't matter who is right and who is wrong. While actions like filing complaints may be justified (i.e. there is a legitimate complaint) or may sound satisfying/appealing (who doesn't like it when justice is served?), it comes back to the cost/benefit analysis. Filing a formal complaint usually leads to very few benefits but comes at a high cost. On the other hand, writing a constructive review or talking to the professor directly is usually something that is much more likely to result in a change. Exactly how to do this second thing depends on your department's culture. At my department, the most effective way to give constructive criticism of a professor or a course is to fill out the department-internal course review pages at the end of each semester. The profs here take the department-internal reviews much more seriously than the university-wide reviews. They don't take ratemyprof seriously at all. 

On a related note, it's also important to consider the audience/purpose of your reviews. For example, even if your profs don't take ratemyprof seriously, but if other students do, then it's still worthwhile to write an (anonymous?) review for other students to see. At my dept, although the internal reviews are publicly available, students mostly use the university-wide reviews to choose electives etc. So, I spend my time writing with professors in mind for the internal reviews and with classmates in mind when writing the university-wide review. 

[Eigen]

This hasn't been specifically brought up, but the way he structures problems sets (40+ sets worth less than 1% each), it seems like these are formative rather than summative assessments. 

As such, at the graduate level, it's perfectly appropriate to have the feedback (and some reduction in points) used as a valid teaching method. 

Give an open-ended question that might be a bit beyond your students. See how they do. Provide feedback that they can use for the next assignment. 

In this case, he told you all that you need to include general observations. So the next problem set, include general observations. This is an iterative process that helps you develop into the norms of your field. 

You seem to be looking for things in a class structure that, as people have said, are not common in graduate level classes, and certainly not universally expected. You are focusing on small grades (when grades don't really matter, as your instructor/advisor told you) rather than learning, and are using ratemyprofessors (a site with so many issues of response bias it's not worth getting into) to judge his teaching. RMP, if anything, is dominantly a site for undergraduates upset about grades to rant. You should not be using it as a graduate student to judge the efficacy of one of your graduate instructors.