Topic: Bang Your Head on Your Desk - the thread of teaching despair!

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

Lord, have mercy! A student wants to know what 'g' is. We are more than halfway through our intro Physics course. You should know that g is the acceleration due to gravity!

Sigh...

[mamselle]

Maybe they're worried it's the grade after "f"...

M.

[Harlow2]

Maybe they're worried it's the grade after "f"...

M.

Ha!  Poor E P W!

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

Maybe they're worried it's the grade after "f"...

M.

Ha!  Poor E P W!

Yeah. No comment.

[the_geneticist]

Maybe they're worried it's the grade after "f"...

M.

I'm just glad that anything below a D- is an F.  My last job has F+ as a possible grade.  Why??  It's still failing.  Does the plus sign make students feel slightly better?

[marshwiggle]

Maybe they're worried it's the grade after "f"...

M.

I'm just glad that anything below a D- is an F.  My last job has F+ as a possible grade.  Why??  It's still failing.  Does the plus sign make students feel slightly better?

It sounds depressingly like an invitation to grade grub and/or appeal. "I was REALLY close to passing!!!!! Can't you just bump me up?????"

[ergative]

Maybe they're worried it's the grade after "f"...

M.

I'm just glad that anything below a D- is an F.  My last job has F+ as a possible grade.  Why??  It's still failing.  Does the plus sign make students feel slightly better?

My current institution has four grade bands that count as failing, complete with + and - variants on them. In a way, it's satisfying not only to flunk and assignment, but to give a grade that shows the student just how badly they flunked. But on the other hand, it really does seem excessive. Once I've decided an assignment does not merit a passing grade, I don't want to have to continue evaluating it!

[secundem_artem]

Maybe they're worried it's the grade after "f"...

M.

I'm just glad that anything below a D- is an F.  My last job has F+ as a possible grade.  Why??  It's still failing.  Does the plus sign make students feel slightly better?

My current institution has four grade bands that count as failing, complete with + and - variants on them. In a way, it's satisfying not only to flunk and assignment, but to give a grade that shows the student just how badly they flunked. But on the other hand, it really does seem excessive. Once I've decided an assignment does not merit a passing grade, I don't want to have to continue evaluating it!

I did my masters in a place that used a 1 - 7 scale.  1,2,3 were 3 different kinds of failing.  After that, 4 through 7 were roughly the same as a US A B C D scale but there were no +/- grades.

[downer]

Now I'm intrigued. Are these the categories?

a. Failing because the work handed in was unsatisfactory.

b. Failing because not enough work was handed in, but the work handed in was satisfactory.

c. Failing due to non-attendance.

b and c could overlap though.

I am not sure I can think of other ways.

I generally only see the regular F and then something like c. (Unofficial withdrawal.) I generally just give F grades for all fails, unless the student asks or I see some reason to use the other version of fail. No one really tells me what implications have for the student, so I assume there is none.

[onthefringe]

Now I'm intrigued. Are these the categories?

a. Failing because the work handed in was unsatisfactory.

b. Failing because not enough work was handed in, but the work handed in was satisfactory.

c. Failing due to non-attendance.

b and c could overlap though.

I am not sure I can think of other ways.

I generally only see the regular F and then something like c. (Unofficial withdrawal.) I generally just give F grades for all fails, unless the student asks or I see some reason to use the other version of fail. No one really tells me what implications have for the student, so I assume there is none.

We have regular fail and fail for nonattendance. For nonattendance fails we have to indicate the last week of attendance, which has financial aid implications, so it's not hugely uncommon for students who ghost to come back and "take" the final in order to get a "regular" fail.

[Ruralguy]

Our non attendance fail generally has to happen at the  request of the Prof, and well before the final.
In fact, if withdrawn for this reason with a failing grade, he or she may not take the final.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

Maybe they're worried it's the grade after "f"...

M.

I'm just glad that anything below a D- is an F.  My last job has F+ as a possible grade.  Why??  It's still failing.  Does the plus sign make students feel slightly better?

It sounds depressingly like an invitation to grade grub and/or appeal. "I was REALLY close to passing!!!!! Can't you just bump me up?????"

That's what I would expect.

[ergative]

Now I'm intrigued. Are these the categories?

a. Failing because the work handed in was unsatisfactory.

b. Failing because not enough work was handed in, but the work handed in was satisfactory.

c. Failing due to non-attendance.

b and c could overlap though.

I am not sure I can think of other ways.

I generally only see the regular F and then something like c. (Unofficial withdrawal.) I generally just give F grades for all fails, unless the student asks or I see some reason to use the other version of fail. No one really tells me what implications have for the student, so I assume there is none.

The final grade is always a straightforward weighted average of the individual course components, so the degrees of failing are awarded to individual assignments.

The lowest level is 'didn't hand it in' or 'plagiarized so badly it's a 0' or 'turned it in so late that late penalties ate all the credit you earned'.

One level up is for things like 'answered a different question' or 'wrote a couple of lines to restate the prompt and then gibberish'.

Above that we have 'answered the question--or at least read the question and tried to answer it, but was wildly wrong and bad.'

Then the highest level of fail is 'engaged with the question in good faith, but showed insufficient evidence of understanding for a passing grade.'


Because of the weighted average of the final grade, someone who has a few of the high-fails can still manage to pass the class with a reasonable exam or final essay score, but someone who has low-fails might not be able to recover with a good final essay or exam. I think this philosophy works pretty well, in the end. Even if an individual effort doesn't pass muster, we want to reward it in some way at the end of term, and treated zero-assed gibberish the same as good-faith-but-half-assed not-quite-gibberish seems unfair.

[marshwiggle]

Because of the weighted average of the final grade, someone who has a few of the high-fails can still manage to pass the class with a reasonable exam or final essay score, but someone who has low-fails might not be able to recover with a good final essay or exam. I think this philosophy works pretty well, in the end. Even if an individual effort doesn't pass muster, we want to reward it in some way at the end of term, and treated zero-assed gibberish the same as good-faith-but-half-assed not-quite-gibberish seems unfair.

So basically it's just doing with letter grades what would happen automatically with percentages; i.e. 45% on a test is still better than 20% since it gets averaged with other things.

[spork]

Lord, have mercy! A student wants to know what 'g' is. We are more than halfway through our intro Physics course. You should know that g is the acceleration due to gravity!

Sigh...

I first encountered F_g = (Gm₁m₂)/r² in 10th grade high school physics class. This is now considered optional knowledge for taking Intro Physics in college?