Comment on Anon studies Organic Chemistry
protist@mander.xyz 2 weeks ago
This probably didn’t actually happen, but I did have a physics class in college where we had an exam where the highest score was 35%, so it was graded on an absurd curve
Grading on a curve is always absurd to me: it’s a cop out for teachers who don’t know how to set curriculum/exams properly and demeans the education process.
Should just be
While I mostly agree with you, the grading on a curve idea comes from two factors On one hand, the idea that knowing some topics very well can absolve you from knowing other topics at a sufficient level. On the other, people making the exercises for the exams are experts and can easily overlook the hidden difficulties of an exercise. So it happens way too often that a professor would think “this exercise is super easy” and miss that it uses concepts from other courses the students are not super familiar yet.
A lot of professors are overworked with classes and programs too. One of my girlfriends uas a professor for anatomy who teaches two full college courses before going to her massage school to teach anatomy. She says you can tell that the professor isn’t really there mentally. Sge never actually prepares for the courses she’s supposed to be teaching, but you can tell us just from exhaustion. I wonder how many are like that and just forget what coursework they’re currently preparing for others.
In my uni, professors are expected to teach almost 220h/years of in person teaching (correcting doesn’t count, nor preparing), on top of “being a team playing” and doing quite some extra bureaucratic work. Obviously on top of doing their own research. Good teachers (professors that care about teaching quality) look like ghosts by the end of the academic year…
On the first point I agree. In my country, 40-50% is a pass usually and that seems crazy for its own reasons. But a curve can make that worse just as easily as it can make it better. The education system I work in is now introducing the idea that not only do you need to hit 50% to pass, you also have to show a competency with every learning outcome on the curriculum. We’ll see how it goes. My subject areas haven’t been hit yet.
The second point is essentially what I said, it’s a cop out for a teacher who is bad at setting exams. Easily fixed by some QA and/or collaboration. At least run it by a TA. Also they should read the curriculum before writing an assessment.
Add to this that exams need to be different each year to prevent cheating and you can easily get a few bad questions.
Had a similar thing happen in an intro geology course. Highest grade on the final was 41%, my grade. I got an A in class. I do not understand why anyone would make an intro to geology course that difficult. Very few are going into the field. Most just needed an extra science course, like myself.
That seems so low that it makes the benefit of the class dubious. Can you really say you’re making good use of the students’ time when it’s clear none of them are understanding the material? Maybe the material needs to be broken up into more digestible chunks.
It’s also possible to just write a bad question/exam and recognize you need to do better as a professor.
I had a physics professor who graded himself on whether or not he wrote/taught well by the grade distribution. He was always transparent about it and had benchmarks of how it went previous years. He was also one of the most sought after professors.
I also had s philosophy class where the best grade over the entire semester was a 30 and the professor was like yeah this is just expected. You get an A. This guy obviously derived enjoyment from not being a good teacher and for humiliating his students that they really knew nothing about philosophy. That guy sucked.
I had this one teacher in university (not yet a PhD but was working on it) that I ended up taking like 4 different classes from in university. Although he was brilliant and experienced having worked in the industry for 30 years or so, and was naturally a very good teacher and very passionate about what he taught, it’s a simple fact was he was new, but he was very humble and transparent about that. The first course I took from him was only his second time teaching that course (or any course), and the other three were each his first. All these courses he built the curriculum himself. Again, he’s an excellent teacher, one of the best I ever had, but he was still working out the kinks in his tests. He was being very transparent with us students about his process of choosing to award partial or full credit for questions and problems he decided weren’t fair, or were worded ambiguously, always taking feedback during class after getting our graded tests back.
I had a few other courses like that too, and I feel like that system (decreasing the weight of problems that aren’t fair to students) is generally a better system than simply grading on a curve. The former is more granular, differentiating poor grades due to lack of study from poor grades to a faulty test. It also provides a clear direction for improving the curriculum next semester. Grading on a curve often feels like a copout to avoid the labor involved in improving the curriculum. BUT on the other hand, if the class really went so poorly that nobody understood the material or if the test was almost totally unfair, then imo grading on a curve could be the fairest solution for the students. There’s no perfect solution there, the students time is already wasted, better to give them the benefit of the doubt in that case.
Eh, I had a physics class like this and the test questions had so many moving pieces that missing one would give you the wrong answer, even if you remembered all the formulas and otherwise did the problem correctly. So getting 1/4 right was actually pretty good in the stressful environment of the testing center. And there were only like 4 problems anyway, and you’d get partial credit, so a 30-40% meant you probably got one right and had the right approach on the others. You also don’t get full credit unless you show all your work, so even a savant probably wouldn’t get 100%.
I knew someone who had to pass a class where the failure rate was 85%. The worst part is this was only one of a few of these classes. She was studying physics, and even though I really don’t want anything to do with her now for unrelated reasons, I still feel bad for her.
It would never happen as described in this post, but things like this are way more common than people think.
I still remember teaching >3 people a subject, because they asked me to, and then we all did the exam and I was the one who failed it. Now I’m, not error-proof but that’s kind of ridiculous. I have experienced a truckload of these things but that one illustrates very well how random and/or unfit for purpose most exams are. It’s like a coin flip +/- 5% depending on the depths of your studies beforehand.
I was a physics major, and the whole department was famous for this. I think it’s just lazy. They don’t make the test for what they actually taught, they just throw shit against the wall and see what sticks.
That’s pretty common for math heavy classes, the tests are ridiculous and they grade on a curve.
My 3 terms of intro to o physics were like this. The mechanical engineers that suffered through statics couldn't even bring the curve up too much.
Even with that, it I didn't have two friends in those classes I never would have passed.
I had a Chem class where the prof opened with “my goal is to fail as many Engineers as possible”. The average on the final was 27%. Luckly some important admistrator in the Eng department’s kid was in one of those classes and they got the tenured professor fired.
snooggums@piefed.world 2 weeks ago
My calc I class in college had a 23% average on the first exam. Later ones made it into the high 30%s. The professor was terrible, but since I had already taken calc in high school and he graded on a curve it was a breeze.
The main problem was that he would test for the stuff we had not covered yet because he "wanted people to work ahead."
burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Now that’s an asshole move.
kautau@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Ah yes “not fucking doing my job that people are taking loans out for and pay off for years to come”
Fuck that “professor.” A college degree is an overpriced commodity and they are falsely charging students by not teaching them the course
abbadon420@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
It’s fine to give points for “extra work”, but the regular work should give you a passing grade at least. The extra work should maybe give you the difference between a 6 or an 8.