Ivory Basement's post on rounding up an 89 made me think of my own experience with the University grading system in the UK. Like the US system, the UK system is based on a 0 to 100 metric. Except it's not. In the US the scale is fairly straightforward; 90 and above is an A, 80 to 90 is a B, and so on. The UK system feels a little bit more like tennis scoring -- it only makes sense to people who are already familiar with the system. A through F grades are typically not used (at least in my experience), instead grades are based on the degree classification system; first-class, upper second class -- also known as a 2.1, lower second class -- also known as a 2.2, and a third class. (As an aside, most of these degrees have cockney rhyming slang names -- a first-class degree is known as a "Damien" after Damien Hirst = first, a lower second is often known as a "Desmond" after Desmond Tutu.) Here's where it gets confusing; although the scale is 1 to 100, the grades actually given tend to fall into a fairly narrow band -- between 45 and 75. First-class degree work is graded 70 or above, with exceptional work getting 75. While 80 and above is not unheard-of, it is very very rare. 2.1 work is in the range of 60 to 70, 2.2 work is in the range of 50 to 60, third class work is anything below that. This overly long preface brings me to my point: not only is the UK system on a different metric in the US, certain marks in the UK system have meanings that have no corollary in the US. For example, you rarely see grades of 49, 59 and especially 69, and it's quite common to see grades ending in eight, especially 68. And the reason for this is to prevent exactly the kind of situation Ivory Basement writes about -- 69 is sooooooo close to 70. Except it's not. There is a subtext to a grade of 68; "this is very good work, but it is not first-class". So while it is common to see a 68 and 70, you rarely see the no man's land of the 69. I don't know what point or insight this makes, but I always found it interesting. As an aside, I will never forget the time I called my dad in the US excited about getting a 75 on a final project and him consoling me and telling me that it was okay, I could do better next time...
The artist formerly known as Lawrence from Linlithgow
Love the UK insight. I will henceforth never give a grading ending in a 9! Anything to avoid a spot of bother.
ReplyDeleteI use the mean and standard deviations in converting numeric grades to letter grades.
ReplyDeleteAt my university, the profs would all get together after final exams in the last year to discuss all cases which were borderline in overall classification.
ReplyDeleteCompletely unworkable in the US system where the course structures are far less rigid, though.
I hate the 70-90% boundaries here. It forces you to examine almost entirely on the mundane content that would only be 40-50% on a UK exam and consequently there is no challenge for the best students beyond what they set themselves. I did try teaching a course in more of a UK style, but the kids just got so demotivated by being unable to do half the questions properly that it ended up being a bit of a disaster.
I had a professor once who was an American but Oxbridge-trained. He always graded "along the British style." Imagine how freaked out this straight-A undergrad was to receive a 73 on my papers! And this was a 6-credit class, my god, what did I get myself into????
ReplyDeleteHowever, the prof's grading only applied to freaking us out and making us work harder and harder... I killed myself after getting each grade. Then when it came for final grades, he made the mathematic jump and gave us the American grades we had earned. But only after my semester-long anxiety attack.
*killed myself working harder on the next paper, not sank into suicidal depression, in case that was unclear....
ReplyDeleteI never round up -9 grades any longer--my university does not give minus grades for the final course grade. That means that if I round up an 89, I am equating that student's almost-squeaking-to-an-A work with the student who made a solid A -- just not fair. (Of course, the student who barely made a 90 or 91 is benefitting from the university's policy, but I have to draw the line somewhere.
ReplyDeleteMost American students cannot comprehend any other grading scale than the 90=A (or A-) kind.
ReplyDeleteThat includes the 4.0 scale used for their GPAs.
They want a letter, and that letter better be an A, dammit!
Thanks for the post and comments on this. I've always wondered how those UK grades of 2.1, etc, actually work.
ReplyDeleteI'm beginning to seriously reconsider my policy of rounding grades.
To be honest, I'm not even sure I know why I've always done it.
And since I'm working on my fall syllabi as I lay here on the beach, there's no time like the present. (J/K - there's no beach. I wish!)
My first job was in the UK. To my mind the main distinguishing factor is not the metric itself--which I grasped quickly enough--but what mattered to the students. In the US the students care about the distinction between a B+ and an A. In the UK, by contrast, Firsts were understood to be nearly impossible to achieve, and I never once had a student come in and say he or she should have had a first instead of a 2.1. What UK students care deeply about is the 2.1 2.2 distinction, because a lot of employers there want to see a 2.1 degree. So while I never got a complaint about a 2.1, I did see quite a few tears shed over 2.2 marks.
ReplyDeleteWe have a certain degree of freedom here in how we assign grades. In my department we use a much lower grading scale than students are used to seeing. It freaks out our general-education students.
ReplyDeleteI tell my students at the beginning of the semester, that the grading scale we use allows us to challenge the good students without unduly penalizing the average ones.
But it's still disconcerting to them when they get a score that would be a flat F anywhere else, and my scale tells them it's a B. They're not happy with the number; they don't care that we're using a different scale.
Innumeracy in action, I suppose.
At my high school, if a student ends up with a 69 according to the grading software, we are required to manipulate his/her grades so that he/she either passes with a 70 or fails worse with a 68.
ReplyDeleteFor 79/89/99 - students will complain about those grades, wanting to know why "you didn't give me that extra point." I don't generally round those grades, but I will look at each of them to see if maybe they need to be "adjusted."
At the place where I used to teach, a course grade of 50% was considered a pass. Those students who got 47 - 49% were a special case. The instructors could, at their own discretion, round those marks up to 50% and, at first, I did that. But after a few years, I submitted the course results to my department head as they were and let him decide what to do.
ReplyDeleteThe last head almost always rounded up the grades but, then again, nobody ever failed his courses, even if they dropped out part-way through.
Those students whose grades were from between 40 - 46% could write supplemental exams in order to get a final result of 50%, but they had to specifically request to do so with the instructor in question. Usually that was no problem.
One year, I had two students who marginally failed one of my courses. One of them came to see me just after exams finished and I lent him some textbooks, telling him to study the material over the summer.
Just before lectures began in August of that year, he gleefully returned my books, saying that he didn't need them after all. Somehow, he managed to get 50% in the course, though he earned something close to 40%. Apparently, the other chap had the same thing happen.
I knew very well what grade I submitted to my department head, but this incident confirmed rumours I'd heard that he soemtimes rounded up course grades in the marginal fail range.
A scary example of grade inflation, isn't it?
I know it's bad form to comment on the comments to your own post, but there is a couple of things that could use further comment/explaining. Angry Archie; you are so right about the 2.1/2.2 distinction being the important one. First-class degrees are considered to be for the swots (hard studiers). Likewise, third class degrees are almost just as rare on the other end of the scale. Although I think Oxford is known to give out an inordinate amount of first-class honours degrees (but of course that's because the student population there is generally of a higher calibre...), and likewise, they abolished their third class degree some years ago. Full disclosure here, I did get a first-class honours degree, but just barely (and how barely would actually make a very interesting story, and I mean a very interesting story). One of my former lecturers once told me that, if the university is getting it right, ALL first-class degrees should be just barely over the mark -- if too many people are getting too many high marks, the coursework is at fault. At least where I was, they take the idea of grade inflation very seriously. Following on from that, Stew; likewise at my universities, there was an end of year meeting where all of the major work of the third and fourth years was examined and the final degree classifications determined. Not only was all the work internally examined, but there was an external examiner, a lecturer from another university, who also examined all the work and was authorised to make adjustments to the grades if he or she thought they were too high. I have heard of a classes entire year's work being lowered by 10 to 15% by an external examiner, and also of an external examiner reprimanding a board for generally grading too harshly -- but not raising any grades, interestingly enough. Penultimate comment; when assigning the final degree classifications something that I've seen to be true but is not generally acknowledged in the UK system is that there is a decidedly non-academic, nonempirical element to the final classifications, especially in regards to the giving of firsts. Not only do your grades have to add up to get the first, but it generally has to be felt that you are in some way "first-class material" and worthy of the honour. This works both going up and down, but seems to be more typically applied when the students grades average out to a first, but fall short in some significant way, for example, getting a significantly lower grade than would be expected on important paper or test, especially in the final year. Last comment; one reason is this weird numbering system works is that there seems to be less reliance on multiple-choice/scantron type tests selectors have more freedom to assign those 68/70 type grades.
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