A few years ago, I was TAing for a standard large lecture survey course. Every semester, the students in this course have to give a group presentation. The year I was TAing, the lecturers decided to attach a contest to the presentations. To encourage the flakes to give halfway decent presentations (or at least ones they would be awake and sober while giving), whichever group in each discussion section gave the best presentation would win an automatic A+ in the course. The presentations would be given throughout the semester, so winners wouldn't be announced until the end.
I think it is unfair for some students to be rewarded with a course grade that reflected their performance on only one task. After all, shouldn't we offer automatic A+s to the students who did best on each exam or each homework assignment? Or perhaps for the best dressed students? The contest unhinged grades from mastery of the course material. A few students complained to me. What could I say to them? The grading policy was not under my control, and I couldn't undermine the lecturer. I did encourage them to express their opinions to the lecturer, but I knew the policy wouldn't change.
In the end, those who won were, predictably, keeners who would have gotten As anyway. The contest didn't serve as a opportunity for students typically uninspired by classroom drudgery to become impassioned and excel. But it sure did create bitterness in those who felt that the As they achieved through sustained effort throughout the semester were cheapened by As earned by others for one mere moment of theatricality.
Policies like this one seem to me to be the perfect ground for breeding snowflakery. When good grades can be handed out seemingly at the whim of the instructor (though, of course, the winners really did give presentations that were well-researched and thorough as well as flashy) for a flash-in-the pan performance, it makes sense that students will demand the grades they want and justify their requests with excuses like "I didn't think that would count against me."
What ridiculous grading policies have you seen that encourage snowflakery?
Obviously this strategy is unfair, and is a slap in the face to any genuinely hard working student. However, I completely understand why the instructor would have done this. It's very disheartening, day after day, to stand at the bottom of a lecture hall, facing a bunch of spoiled, bored, unmotivated 20 year olds, and short of rolling out a three ring circus and promising free beer to anyone who has done the reading, there's very little that seems to get the room engaged.
ReplyDeleteOf course, I sympathize with doing just about anything to get the students not giving presentations like zombies. Perhaps even an extra credit award for the best presentations. But automatic As?
ReplyDelete