From a piece by Alicia C. Shepard, journalist-in-residence at American University:
It was the end of my first semester teaching journalism at American University. The students had left for winter break. As a rookie professor, I sat with trepidation in my office on a December day to electronically post my final grades.You can read the rest by clicking here.
My concern was more about completing the process correctly than anything else. It took an hour to compute and type in the grades for three classes, and then I hit "enter." That's when the trouble started.
In less than an hour, two students challenged me. Mind you, there had been no preset posting time. They had just been religiously checking the electronic bulletin board that many colleges now use.
"Why was I given a B as my final grade?" demanded a reporting student via e-mail. "Please respond ASAP, as I have never received a B during my career here at AU and it will surely lower my GPA."
comments: 2
Thanks for the comment, Stefan. I think you're right that depersonalizing technology and a service-employee model help create this mania for grade appeals.
Something in Shepard's piece that stood out for me is the weird subjectivity that seems to prompt many of these appeals. Consider the student who says "While other students may have outdone me with quiz grades, I made up for it with participation and enthusiasm." Says who?! Does enthusiasm play a part in calculating semester grades? Is there some percentage of the semester grade that it counts for?
I wonder whether some students see grades as things doled out simply by whim--as in the familiar phrasing "He [or she] gave me a [letter grade]." Having clearly stated percentages on a syllabus (what work counts for what percentage of the semester grade) at least gives a prof a pretty soild basis for justifying semester grades.
I can still remember, by the way, the first non-A semester grade I got in a college course (a B+, second semester, freshman year, 20th-century American history). I was crushed, esp. after doing a 20-page research paper on Al Smith and the 1928 presidential election, with much consultation of primary and secondary sources. Did it ever occur to me to challenge my prof, or to plead and wheedle my way to a higher grade? No way.
Oops--that should've read "Having clearly stated percentages on a syllabus (what work counts for what percentage of the semester grade) at least gives a prof a pretty solid basis for justifying semester grades."
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