Why do they feel compelled to give the A- ?

[Averroes MD]

Why !?!?

[menge]

2 hours ago, Averroes MD said:

Why !?!?

At least your school gives an A-. Mine goes from A to B/A, whatever the hell a B/A is supposed to be. They claim it's better for the students, but I call BS because a B/A translates to a 3.5 whereas an A- is typically translated as a 3.75. I mean, what the hell is an admissions committee supposed to do when they see "B/A"? I've fought to maintain a 4.0 just to avoid having to find out. *end rant*

[xypathos]

I know, it's such a let down especially when you get grades back that have been so high. My final G-GPA will be somewhere around 3.8, which while still good, it wasn't where I was hoping to end up but without A-'s I'd be somewhere closer to 3.5.

[rising_star]

Why? Because the work wasn't A-quality work. Because, to retain some sort of distinction between students of different quality, you don't want to give everyone an A because there's a big difference in a student who got a 97% and one who got a 91% in the course. Because you didn't demonstrate A-level mastery of the material.

But I'm going to guess you're asking because you're mad and think the professor is out to get you.

[Eigen]

23 hours ago, rising_star said:

Why? Because the work wasn't A-quality work. Because, to retain some sort of distinction between students of different quality, you don't want to give everyone an A because there's a big difference in a student who got a 97% and one who got a 91% in the course. Because you didn't demonstrate A-level mastery of the material.

But I'm going to guess you're asking because you're mad and think the professor is out to get you.

So much this. I give an A- when there's a significant difference between the work shown and what I'd look for as an A, but the student hasn't dropped to B. I also give it when the student oscillates consistently between A and B work.

[Need Coffee in an IV]

I recieved two A- this semester and one A. I agree with @Eigen about the work consistently ranging from B-A quality may affect the final grade. That's what happened to me. Overall, you shouldn't be worried since grad school cares more about your development/output than grades. At my school though a A- is still a 4.0 so I guess it ranges from school to school. I guess take this as a lesson on what your professors expect of you.

[TakeruK]

In the classes I've TA'ed, we just add up the number of points earned throughout the semester as per the syllabus and if it's in the A- range, then you get an A-. It's not personal. We don't look at each student's grade and think deeply about whether or not they get an A or A- or B+, so it's not like we purposely decided that a student should only get an A- instead of A. The only exceptions are when the final score is very close to the cutoff and we're concerned about previous rounding errors influencing the grade. For example, if the cutoff for an A is, e.g. 94.0, and a student scores 93.8, then the prof makes a judgement call on A vs. A-. But those two grades are so similar that it doesn't really matter anyways.

[Perique69]

Ask yourself why you feel so compelled to be gratified by some silly professor?  99.9% of them are little more than ventriloquists who spend their careers idolizing their favorite thinkers.       

[Averroes MD]

On 12/30/2016 at 11:05 AM, rising_star said:

 

But I'm going to guess you're asking because you're mad and think the professor is out to get you.

I'm not mad nor do I think the professor is out to get to me. The post was half in jest. 

I certainly don't think the professor is out to get me. That's the thing. I think it often seems arbitrary.

[rising_star]

1 hour ago, Averroes MD said:

I certainly don't think the professor is out to get me. That's the thing. I think it often seems arbitrary.

There's nothing arbitrary about my grading. I would be offended if a student ever told me that the grades they earn are arbitrary. Typically, I'm looking to see where natural breaks in quality and performance are. So, for example, though my syllabus says an A- is a 90-92.49%, this semester I gave a student with a final grade of 89.2% an A- because their performance was substantially better than those who got an 86% but not as good as the student with a 94%. Does that make sense?

[xypathos]

Doesn't that prove his point though, about grades being arbitrary? We say *this* equals an A-, yet when the student produces B+ work, we'll shift the goalpost that benefits that student, yet doesn't benefit others. Did you also give the other students a .8 increase in their grade?

In the Humanities, from my sole experience of having conversations with professors in Religious Studies and History - the distinction from A to B is easily discernible. Yet, the distinction between A and A- isn't always agreed upon between professors and even professors and their TAs.

[Averroes MD]

55 minutes ago, rising_star said:

There's nothing arbitrary about my grading. I would be offended if a student ever told me that the grades they earn are arbitrary. Typically, I'm looking to see where natural breaks in quality and performance are. So, for example, though my syllabus says an A- is a 90-92.49%, this semester I gave a student with a final grade of 89.2% an A- because their performance was substantially better than those who got an 86% but not as good as the student with a 94%. Does that make sense?

Sure, but I'm not in your class.

[Eigen]

23 minutes ago, xypathos said:

Doesn't that prove his point though, about grades being arbitrary? We say *this* equals an A-, yet when the student produces B+ work, we'll shift the goalpost that benefits that student, yet doesn't benefit others. Did you also give the other students a .8 increase in their grade?

In the Humanities, from my sole experience of having conversations with professors in Religious Studies and History - the distinction from A to B is easily discernible. Yet, the distinction between A and A- isn't always agreed upon between professors and even professors and their TAs.

Why should it be agreed on between professors?

Each professor will have a syllabus stating what they consider the breakpoint in work. No need for a standard agreement, that's not really how grading works. 

I see you're jumping on assuming unfairness in grades from RS, assuming they didn't bump other students within that range rather than that they did. 

That said, the focus on points to letter grades is largely absurd, imo. Final grade assignment is based on what the instructor feels is an accurate representation of the students work. Points and assignment grades through the semester provide a framework, but don't cover everything. 

Was a student sick on the day of a particular test, and that score is way out of the normal range for them? Might bump them up if they're close. A student that started out weak and got better as the semester went on? Same thing. 

It's why my syllabus, and many others, say I reserve the right to adjust final grades and that my point range is a guideline and not absolute. 

I personally always bump up not down, and I generally consider hat the same bump would have on the other students in the class. 

[TakeruK]

On 1/3/2017 at 5:22 PM, rising_star said:

There's nothing arbitrary about my grading. I would be offended if a student ever told me that the grades they earn are arbitrary. Typically, I'm looking to see where natural breaks in quality and performance are. So, for example, though my syllabus says an A- is a 90-92.49%, this semester I gave a student with a final grade of 89.2% an A- because their performance was substantially better than those who got an 86% but not as good as the student with a 94%. Does that make sense?

 

On 1/3/2017 at 6:40 PM, Eigen said:

Why should it be agreed on between professors?

Each professor will have a syllabus stating what they consider the breakpoint in work. No need for a standard agreement, that's not really how grading works. 

I see you're jumping on assuming unfairness in grades from RS, assuming they didn't bump other students within that range rather than that they did. 

That said, the focus on points to letter grades is largely absurd, imo. Final grade assignment is based on what the instructor feels is an accurate representation of the students work. Points and assignment grades through the semester provide a framework, but don't cover everything. 

These are interesting to read and I have seen some of this at my school too. It's very different in other countries, e.g. Canada, where there are often department or university-wide policies that forces professors to (somewhat) agree on what a letter grade means. In most Canadian schools, all grades within a "faculty" (e.g. Faculty of Science covering all science departments) agree on a strict conversion from points/percentage to letter grade. A- there is almost always 80%-84%. Professors do have leeway in setting what quality of work will be awarded 80%, 85%, etc. but there are policies to discourage grading by looking for natural breakpoints. But this is just a different grading philosophy than what many US schools do (for what it's worth, different profs in my dept use very different philosophies!).

[Eigen]

16 minutes ago, TakeruK said:

 

These are interesting to read and I have seen some of this at my school too. It's very different in other countries, e.g. Canada, where there are often department or university-wide policies that forces professors to (somewhat) agree on what a letter grade means. In most Canadian schools, all grades within a "faculty" (e.g. Faculty of Science covering all science departments) agree on a strict conversion from points/percentage to letter grade. A- there is almost always 80%-84%. Professors do have leeway in setting what quality of work will be awarded 80%, 85%, etc. but there are policies to discourage grading by looking for natural breakpoints. But this is just a different grading philosophy than what many US schools do (for what it's worth, different profs in my dept use very different philosophies!).

In my experience, policies that tie percentages to letter grades just mean you playa round with the percentages to get them to match the letter grades you think are appropriate. Tacitly, my school has a general understanding of what percentages tie to what letter grades, but a professor can at their discretion put wider ranges in the syllabi. As an example, my A range is 10 points, B range is 12, C range is 13, and D range 15.

For purely "subjective" work like problem sets and exams, scores work well, but I find they don't work as well (for me) with paper and project heavy courses. Extensive rubrics help, but only with very rigidly defined projects. And, say, a 93 vs 94 vs 92 on a research proposal? Very hard to differentiate. 

[TakeruK]

4 minutes ago, Eigen said:

For purely "subjective" work like problem sets and exams, scores work well, but I find they don't work as well (for me) with paper and project heavy courses. Extensive rubrics help, but only with very rigidly defined projects. And, say, a 93 vs 94 vs 92 on a research proposal? Very hard to differentiate. 

I agree. The way I have been handling this is to set up the rubric where points are only awarded at the level where each choice I make actually means something different. So I likely would not grade a research proposal out of 100, because I can't distinguish a 92 vs 94. I might grade it out of 15, with a rubric to help enforce whatever weighting I want (maybe 2/3 weight on scientific content and 1/3 weight on writing quality for example).

The rubric I use for most writing assignments (pretty common for me since I am grading grad classes) is something like:

5/5: Meets all requirements.
4/5: Meets all major requirements, but lacking a few minor requirements.
3/5: Missing one major requirement, or lacking most of the minor requirements
2/5: Missing more than one major requirement
1/5: Minimal achievement
0/5: Incomplete or not enough completed for a grade

and I would decide ahead of time what the requirements are, and tag 2-3 of them as "major" while the rest are minor. Of course, depending on the nature of the task, there may not be any "minor" requirements, or the numbers might vary.

I try to avoid awarding half-points because that destroys the "every point awarded is a significant difference in achievement level" philosophy. This scale from 0 to 5 would be for one criteria and each criteria might be multiplied by a different number to change the weighting. And there is more than one criteria, so it's not like my students only get 100%, 80%, 60%, 40%, 20% or 0%. 

But this allows me to avoid having to decide 92 vs. 94 or 81 vs. 83, and it smoothes over small differences between students. Because my philosophy is that small differences are not significant, I don't distinguish this in grading either. 

[Eigen]

I do something similar. I just assign out of 100 points (say), then grade based on letter distinctions, then give points accordingly. So an A- gets a 90, an A+ a 98, etc.

 

[rising_star]

See the only time I deal with letter grades at all is at the end of the semester because I can't submit numerical final grades. But, during the semester, everything is graded based on points, with assignments varying between 25 and 125 points depending on the complexity of the assignment and the depth of analysis/synthesis expected. When I add up the total points, I typically look for natural breaks in the grades (that is, I take all the point totals, copy them as a column into a separate sheet in the workbook, and then sort of ascending to descending) and use those to figure out where the breaks should be between various point totals. I then go back and match these grades to each student, which gives me the chance to do some of the things @Eigen describes above by taking into consideration whether a student had issues with one assignment, if they improved over the course of the semester (not uncommon as some students struggle to understand how they're being graded early in the semester even when you give them rubrics), or other factors. The advantage of this is that I'm not playing favorites with any students when I'm figuring out the letter grade. And, if there is one student with a 89.1% and another with an 89.4%, they're going to get the same grade even if one was a pain in my side all semester. Whether that ends up being a B+ or an A- depends on the semester. But mathematically and per my syllabus, it's a B+ so anyone who gets an A- will be happy. I find this method doesn't lead to (m)any complaints.

P.S. If you really want to understand the plus/minus grading system, here's an interesting PDF where a philosophy professor worked out a conversion from a system without to plus/minus grades to a system with them.

[Averroes MD]

Rising_star, I realize my reply to you was unnecessarily snarky. Sorry about that!