Do you think assignments graded relative to other students is fair?

[sdifox]

So, bell curving? That is almost as old as universities.

 

[alkemyst]

I think curves should be 100% in all classes. You suck you fail...go be a garbage man or something.

 

[lurk3r]

The only time its appropriate to grade on a curve is when you screw up and under estimate the amount of time it will take the kids to finish. If you have 5 hours worth of work on a 2 hour test and the best score is 35% break out the bell, if not let the dumbasses fail and nerds all get 99.

If you have a class full of morons and the highest grade is 45%, screw it fail em all.

 

[sdifox]

Here in Ontario anyway, college/university teachers aren't supposed to bell curve. I think some of them secretly do though because bad marks across the board make them look bad.

I agree that bell curving is absolutely not fair. You don't get bell curved in the real world. If you get a 90%, you should get that 90. If you get a 0, you probably deserved it. Other people's performance shouldn't reflect on you, unless of course your the leader on a group assignment or something.

hahahahhaa, right, no bell curving...

At least when I was in school, bell curve was the rule.

 

[sdifox]

This isn't grading on a curve. Could you imagine if all University courses were graded linearly from 0-100%? Exactly half of people fail every test?

I'm assuming this idea is from a HS (do I ever hope it is at least), and I would hope the teacher has the good judgement to at least grade this over multiple classes, as even bell curves (which have shown again and again to work out to be a good distribution of grades) don't work over a class of 30 kids.

I remember my first year intro comp sci course... 80% of the kids did not make it to the final exam. They dropped the course

Probably a good chunk of them thought it would be good to have CSC as their breadth req but took the wrong course.

 

[nageov3t]

the only scenario in which I find grading on a curve to be really justifiable is when your professor fails to do his job and designs tests that over half the class fails.

 

[actuarial]

I remember my first year intro comp sci course... 80% of the kids did not make it to the final exam. They dropped the course

Probably a good chunk of them thought it would be good to have CSC as their breadth req but took the wrong course.

I though you were for bell curving? A bell curve shouldn't fail 80% of kids!

I should have clarified my earlier point: bell curves good, this current system presented in the OP, bad (and NOT a bell curve).

 

[sdifox]

I though you were for bell curving? A bell curve shouldn't fail 80% of kids!

I should have clarified my earlier point: bell curves good, this current system presented in the OP, bad (and NOT a bell curve).

They can't be bell curved if they don't write the final

Our courses tended to have a bi-modal distribution , the passing pile and the failing pile.

 

[novasatori]

no, I don't think its fair, and the only reason I say this is because of cheating

lots of people got access to materials 90% of the class couldn't, either it was stolen, or gotten some other way (old tests copied by TAs) mostly frats were responsible for the cheating though

 

[gorcorps]

It makes sense for this particular grade. If one student used 'minimal resources' and got all 30 then that makes sense to make that a standard. There's no set goal for 'minimal resources' so the only way to grade it is to find out how close you are to the minimum another classmate could get.

 

[Hacp]

Only if its curved against the nation like the ACS.

 

[gorcorps]

no, I don't think its fair, and the only reason I say this is because of cheating

lots of people got access to materials 90% of the class couldn't, either it was stolen, or gotten some other way (old tests copied by TAs) mostly frats were responsible for the cheating though

How are old tests cheating? It's just more study material.

 

[actuarial]

It makes sense for this particular grade. If one student used 'minimal resources' and got all 30 then that makes sense to make that a standard. There's no set goal for 'minimal resources' so the only way to grade it is to find out how close you are to the minimum another classmate could get.

That would be well and good, depending on the system of distribution. What makes this system so bad is a linear distribution of grades. You could set the median resources used to a mark of 65, and then line people up and assign them marks based on a regular bell curve. That would mean you're not guaranteeing 50% of people to fail that section.

 

[TecHNooB]

that would be well and good, depending on the system of distribution. What makes this system so bad is a linear distribution of grades. You could set the median resources used to a mark of 65, and then line people up and assign them marks based on a regular bell curve. That would mean you're not guaranteeing 50% of people to fail that section.

qft

 

[darkxshade]

Horrible system

 

[nageov3t]

How are old tests cheating? It's just more study material.

having access to study material that 90% of the class doesn't feels like cheating to me. it's not like writing a crib sheet, but it gives you an unfair advantage over your classmates.

if the professor wanted old tests to be used as study material, wouldn't he have made them publicly available?

 

[Cattlegod]

judging by the engineers i work with and have worked with in the past, they should just fail the bottom 80% every time.

 

[novasatori]

How are old tests cheating? It's just more study material.

because you weren't allowed access to old tests because of how easy it would be to just memorize certain scenarios

the tests were copied by TAs and then only few (as mentioned, usually frat members) had access to these tests to study from.

to clarify, if the tests were provided by the professor there would be no problem, but when you ask the professor for a sample test and he says no there are no sample tests, and my old tests aren't available to study from because I keep them secret.

then you find out people are getting access to these tests because they've been copied by TAs, I'd say that's cheating.

 

[Kirby]

Sounds crappy to me. The only way grades should be affected by other students is in a case where they are totally offset, then they will do a bell curve. Basically if everyone fails, they make the best person have close to 100% and rearrange the rest of the grades accordingly, so more people pass. I have never, ever seen or heard of this happening though, it's more or less a myth.

In my last statistics class, I made a 70 and 75 on the exams, and was absolutely sure I failed my final. I ended up making a B in the class. Half the class dropped after the first exam, and it was probably 85% graduate students. I was one of the few undergrads, so maybe that's why he scaled the hell out of it.

 

[kalrith]

In this case, I think the worst student getting 0% is a bit ridiculous.

I agree completely. What if there's not much difference between the student who used the most and the least resources? For example, if this were a 100-problem test that was graded on a curve, and the worst student got 80 questions right and the best student got 90 questions right, which should the 80-question student get 0% while the 90-question student gets 100%.

I hate grading on a curve. In most instances I've seen, grading on a curve promotes mediocrity. I've never personally seen grading on a curve mean giving someone a lower grade than they earned. It usually bumps everyone's scores up a letter grade. I had one class in which I got over 100% on every test, because the teacher had to adjust the test scores so much to keep half the class from failing. In my opinion they should've been given the score they earned, because most of them passed the class while still being incompetent in the subject (English grammar).

 

[Key West]

I never complained when I studied an extra hour and got 89, but after the curve, it was bumped to 93 for the A

 

[Jeff7]

It happens a lot in engineering. Tests are unbelievably hard, are virtually impossible to finish on time, and nobody gets higher than 50%. The reason for making the test impossible is that it doesn't set an artificial limit of 100%; the smartest person in the world will always score slightly higher than the second smartest person. The curve can then be applied in such a way that a certain quota move on to the next level of training. If the university only has enough capacity for 100 second year students, they can get away with accepting 200 first year students and applying a curve that will fail half of them.

It sucks, but that's life. Applying for jobs is on a curve. You can be a very qualified candidate, but you still won't get the job if someone else is better.

Huh, my experience was different; the tests seemed to have been well-crafted, such that the average grade was usually in the 70-75% range, kind of like the curve was built-in. Only once during my 4 years was a test curved outright; I think the average was in the 55-60% range. In another case, the grades were quite low, so everyone was given a chance to make corrections on the missed questions. The corrections would be all-or-nothing though, no partial credit. Take it home, do the work, prove that you can at least work it through all the way, and entirely correct, or else you get no additional points.
Other than that, the grades were pretty consistent in their distributions.

Different college, different experience.

 

[TuxDave]

Isn't that the same as using this year's data as the metric?

Uhhh, no. In the context of your VLSI class, learning how to do things optimally is a very important lesson so I think there SHOULD be a metric based on the area consumed in the design. What I hate about the current grading structure is that the student has no idea when to stop obsessing over the design.

If they know that getting it in X um^2 will get them 30/30 and it'll scale down based on how much larger you are from it, then it gives the student a metric that they can work with and know when to stop. That's why I say use last year's data as a metric because then they have a number to work with. If they use this year's number, they won't know when to stop because that number won't be known until after everyone turns in their design.

 

[IEC]

Guess which methodology they use for raise and performance reviews...

 

[Leros]

Exactly how?

Say that most students are getting areas between 200 - 300. If one student gets an area of 1000 (really bad), then everybody makes high grades. On the other hand, if one students gets an area of 50 (really good), then everybody will get really low grades.