Compiling final grades for students in Sharon Thoma’s Zoology 101 course is fairly simple.
Students take three multiple-choice exams, plus a final, during the semester. The grading scale is spelled out at the start of the year in the syllabus, which also notes there is no way to earn extra credit.
“So it’s solely objective and it’s pretty clear where you fall,” says Thoma, a University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty associate who co-teaches the huge lecture with two professors.
And yet, over the past two years Thoma has observed a surprising uptick in the number of students who e-mail her at the end of the semester, asking if she’d reconsider the grade she awarded them “because they worked so hard.”
Thoma estimates she received 20 such e-mails this spring out of some 850 students. “They’ll typically say, ‘I know you said there won’t be any grade adjustments, but I worked really hard and I don’t feel that the grade reflects the effort I put into the class,'” says Thoma, who stresses most students work hard in class and understand the ground rules. “And so I have a new standard reply: ‘I can’t quantitate your effort.'”
e = get, head
Dive into said
Todd Finkelmeyer’s July 8th article on university students asking for higher grades was interesting, but he missed the solution to this problem which the Curriculum and Instruction Department at UW Madison has used to minimize the problem. The average grade given to undergraduates taking their courses this spring was 3.915, up from 3.908 the previous fall.
Maybe I have suggested the wrong reason why their grades are so high.
Could it be a desire not to hurt the self-esteem of their students? It would be useful if an explanation were given for these very high grades.
I have asked but never gotten an answer. Maybe a reporter can do better.