Reading Responses

[Caracal]

Well, I was thinking more along the lines of 10 assignments x 75 minutes, for 24% of the final grade.

All right, at the risk of identifying myself as either ridiculously petty or OCDish, why 24 percent? Even though I use spreadsheets myself, so I could in theory have individual components worth 7.3% if I wanted, I still tend to stick with multiples of 5%, so that the weights of various things are easily compared.

(FWIW, I've seen this lots of times here, with people talking about things worth "3%" of the final grade, or whatever, But since 24 is SO CLOSE to 25, it really stands out.)

Yes, I probably should look into treatment for this.......

I have reading and responses both count for 7.5 percent of the grade.  Five seems like too little and 10 seems like too much.

[dr_codex]

Well, I was thinking more along the lines of 10 assignments x 75 minutes, for 24% of the final grade.

All right, at the risk of identifying myself as either ridiculously petty or OCDish, why 24 percent? Even though I use spreadsheets myself, so I could in theory have individual components worth 7.3% if I wanted, I still tend to stick with multiples of 5%, so that the weights of various things are easily compared.

(FWIW, I've seen this lots of times here, with people talking about things worth "3%" of the final grade, or whatever, But since 24 is SO CLOSE to 25, it really stands out.)

Yes, I probably should look into treatment for this.......

No special reason, but the fact that it comes very close to a quarter is deliberate. It signals to the students that the responses, collectively, matter, and passing the course without doing most of them, and doing them well, will result in failure. Another quarter (and a smidge) is for what they do inside the classroom, and the remaining half is how they do on essays and exams.

Also, 3% is about a third of a letter grade. So, each one that is blown off is 1/3 of the final letter grade, with the corresponding GPA hit. Some people apply this for excessive absences, for the same reason. I'll admit that I evaluate better when I'm thinking in terms of letters rather than numbers, in part because the percentages seem pretty arbitrary in my field, whereas mastery/adeptness/adequacy/inadequacy are much easier to define, describe, and defend.

[pepsi_alum]

I switched to automated CMS quizzes in my intro/survey-level courses a few years ago and never looked back. Yes, it leads to students reading for the test rather than overall comprehension, but the auto-grading vastly simplified my life. In-class discussions are not fantastic, but I can sense that students are less confused than when they don't do the reading at all.

I still assign reading responses in upper-division classes and grade them on what is really pass/fail basis (though I don't tell the dtudents that). I find that the key to keeping up with the grading is to resist the urge to make comments on them. For submissions that are obviously balderdashed, I will write something very brief, like "not grounded in evidence" or "this is not what the reading says," assign 25% credit for turning in something, and move on.

[Dismal]

Also, to eliminate issues with absences, computer failures, etc., have the grade based on only 12 out of 15 possible quizzes (if they are weekly.) Let them decide which weeks they can skip.