The grading thread

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

I'm almost done grading my last final exam. A student just sent me an email suggesting that I use a different grading system for stu.

Really?

Well, don't leave us in suspense! What creative grading system was proposed? If I use it, will it make my life easier? Maybe your student is proposing the grading system that will solve my grade submission problem. Where there emojis involved?

You would think that I'd at least get some emojis. Nope.

Stu suggested that I not drop the lowest hw and test for stu because it would make the grade a "C." Yeah, I bet it would!

Student is adamant that my system 'makes the grade go down too much.'

[ergative]

Reading bright student's undergraduate capstone project. Student is very fond of expressions such as 'former' and 'latter'; and also likes to us 'but' to mean 'only', e.g: 'This is but one example of [phenomenon]'.

Student is also not terribly skilled at these writing styles, and it's getting on my nerves a bit. Like, I get it, student: you feel this is important and want your writing to puff up to match the pomposity of the situation. But I had to read that paragraph three times to figure out the intended antecedent of 'former'. Methinks you have overproofed the sourdough.

[EdnaMode]

Turned in grades about an hour ago, already received an "I only need five points for a C" email. No, son, you don't need five points for a C, you need five PERCENTAGE points for a C. This explains a lot about your D. Fingers crossed that emails of this sort will be few and far between this semester.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

Turned in grades about an hour ago, already received an "I only need five points for a C" email. No, son, you don't need five points for a C, you need five PERCENTAGE points for a C. This explains a lot about your D. Fingers crossed that emails of this sort will be few and far between this semester.

Unfortunately, I get that a lot too.

[lightning]

Turned in grades about an hour ago, already received an "I only need five points for a C" email. No, son, you don't need five points for a C, you need five PERCENTAGE points for a C. This explains a lot about your D. Fingers crossed that emails of this sort will be few and far between this semester.

Unfortunately, I get that a lot too.

I got one of these emails, last week. Since then, I sometimes only check email every 48 hours, in the later afternoons, to keep me from going insane. Commencement, the symbolic end of the academic year at my university, can't come soon enough.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

And I got my first grade appeal. Stu 'forgot' to turn in a formal lab report and let me know 2 weeks after it was due (which was outside the time frame that I would even accept it). Stu would probably get a C if I accepted it. We'll see how this goes...

[ergative]

Student is writing a paper about work X, and then out of the blue mentions a character from work Y. I highlight the character and say in a marginal note, 'Who?' Student requests a regrade because the grader obviously didn't have sufficient knowledge to mark the text.

In the future, I will write in my marginal notes, 'For goodness sake, introduce your characters properly by saying where they come from and why you're drawing this comparison, so that I don't get rhetorical whiplash trying to follow your reasoning!' But then they would submit a complain that I made them feel bad.

Argh.

[Caracal]

Student is writing a paper about work X, and then out of the blue mentions a character from work Y. I highlight the character and say in a marginal note, 'Who?' Student requests a regrade because the grader obviously didn't have sufficient knowledge to mark the text.

In the future, I will write in my marginal notes, 'For goodness sake, introduce your characters properly by saying where they come from and why you're drawing this comparison, so that I don't get rhetorical whiplash trying to follow your reasoning!' But then they would submit a complain that I made them feel bad.

Argh.

Is this a course with multiple graders, or are they just telling you that you don't know enough to grade their paper?

[ergative]

Student is writing a paper about work X, and then out of the blue mentions a character from work Y. I highlight the character and say in a marginal note, 'Who?' Student requests a regrade because the grader obviously didn't have sufficient knowledge to mark the text.

In the future, I will write in my marginal notes, 'For goodness sake, introduce your characters properly by saying where they come from and why you're drawing this comparison, so that I don't get rhetorical whiplash trying to follow your reasoning!' But then they would submit a complain that I made them feel bad.

Argh.

Is this a course with multiple graders, or are they just telling you that you don't know enough to grade their paper?

Actually, they aren't wrong about that! This is a Year 1 survey course of the entirety of our extremely broadly construed field, with multiple graders. I organize it, but don't do any of the teaching myself, and only a small handful of the grading for the one discussion section I lead, so I'm just the point person for students to complain to. And the student is in fact entirely correct in identifying that my subdiscipline does not align with their paper topic. I don't begrudge them that.

The student does not even know that I was the one who graded the paper. It was originally allotted to one of our TAs, but because the TA didn't grade it (or four fifths of her other allotment of papers) and didn't tell me until it was far too late to find other TAs to do it, I had to step in and do it myself, in addition to the papers for my own discussion section. The upshot of this whole mess is that there is no record that I was ever the person to grade the paper.

Anyway, I just sent the whole correspondence off to the subject specialist who taught that part of the course and assigned that essay topic, and blandly commented that a student had requested a regrade, please take a look. I guess we'll see if the subject specialist agrees with me, but I am not letting myself care one way or the other.

The grade in question, by the way, was a B.

[Mobius]

Turned in grades about an hour ago, already received an "I only need five points for a C" email. No, son, you don't need five points for a C, you need five PERCENTAGE points for a C. This explains a lot about your D. Fingers crossed that emails of this sort will be few and far between this semester.

Unfortunately, I get that a lot too.

Got one today wanting a B, but nine percentage points away from that. Turning in a few missed quizzes won't make up that gap. Student was begging for a C just yesterday.

[Caracal]

Student is writing a paper about work X, and then out of the blue mentions a character from work Y. I highlight the character and say in a marginal note, 'Who?' Student requests a regrade because the grader obviously didn't have sufficient knowledge to mark the text.

In the future, I will write in my marginal notes, 'For goodness sake, introduce your characters properly by saying where they come from and why you're drawing this comparison, so that I don't get rhetorical whiplash trying to follow your reasoning!' But then they would submit a complain that I made them feel bad.

Argh.

Is this a course with multiple graders, or are they just telling you that you don't know enough to grade their paper?

Actually, they aren't wrong about that! This is a Year 1 survey course of the entirety of our extremely broadly construed field, with multiple graders. I organize it, but don't do any of the teaching myself, and only a small handful of the grading for the one discussion section I lead, so I'm just the point person for students to complain to. And the student is in fact entirely correct in identifying that my subdiscipline does not align with their paper topic. I don't begrudge them that.

The student does not even know that I was the one who graded the paper. It was originally allotted to one of our TAs, but because the TA didn't grade it (or four fifths of her other allotment of papers) and didn't tell me until it was far too late to find other TAs to do it, I had to step in and do it myself, in addition to the papers for my own discussion section. The upshot of this whole mess is that there is no record that I was ever the person to grade the paper.

Anyway, I just sent the whole correspondence off to the subject specialist who taught that part of the course and assigned that essay topic, and blandly commented that a student had requested a regrade, please take a look. I guess we'll see if the subject specialist agrees with me, but I am not letting myself care one way or the other.

The grade in question, by the way, was a B.

Ah, I see. Honestly, I wish there was an easy way to do this for other classes. If a student really is convinced that their grade is unfair, it would be easier to just have someone else regrade it, with the stipulation that if the regrade is lower than the original grade, the student is stuck with it. My guess is that most of the time the grade would be lower. When I'm grading one crummy paper in the context of all the other crummy papers I'm grading, I tend to be a bit more generous.

I can't really see it working on a large scale, however, unless the re-grader was anonymous and there wasn't a sense that it could be a black mark if something was regraded higher.

[mamselle]

You could just say, "OK, I'll grade it..."

M.

[Aster]

Turned in grades about an hour ago, already received an "I only need five points for a C" email. No, son, you don't need five points for a C, you need five PERCENTAGE points for a C.

Heh. Unless the grading system has more than 500 points to it, even "five points" is still not a borderline grade.

[ergative]

You could just say, "OK, I'll grade it..."

M.

The thought did cross my mind! But it's easier just to forward it all off to someone else than to pretend to 'regrade' it and have to come up with a whole new set of comments that explain why my previous comments were justified.

[Mobius]

I wish there was a way students could understand why their grades increase or decrease. They don't see to understand how weighted averages work, and why a 93 (for example) could lower their grade since they had a 100% in that grade category before I graded the assignment they got a 93% on.