How do we assign the final grade?

1. How do we assign the final grade? Dheeraj Sanghi IIT Kanpur

2. Agenda • Why grades and not marks • How many distinct grades • Different ways of grading • Conclusions Indo-US Workshop: Effective Teaching

3. Why grades, not marks • From a student’s perspective • Reduced stress • Performance metrics are extremely important for students • If slightly more work can result in better performance metric, the student is under pressure • If a lot of hard work is needed to improve performance metric, then student is not likely to attempt it • Assumption: • Student has an estimate of what value of performance metric she is going to get at a certain level of work • Therefore: • Grading system works better when there is continuous evaluation Indo-US Workshop: Effective Teaching

4. Why grades, not marks • From a teacher’s perspective • Reduced stress • It is extremely difficult to have the complete evaluation in a very objective and consistent fashion • Consistency here means that the result would not be very different, if a different set of questions were asked • If the performance metrics to be assigned is continuous, any two students with a small difference, a different test could have resulted in a different ordering • For a broad performance metrics, several students with small differences will get the same metric, and consistency will be an issue only with borderline cases Indo-US Workshop: Effective Teaching

5. Are marks useful in any scenario? • Marks (or performance metrics which take a large number of different values) are important in following situations: • When the need to order students is very important • For example, in admission tests like JEE • Having only grades in 12th class exams would necessitate another exam for admission to programs where currently only marks are considered • Would be nice to have standardized, objective tests to ensure reliability of evaluation • When the evaluation is not for external consumption, but is being given as a feedback • On an assignment, a student is not interested in just an overall grade, but where the marks are being deducted Indo-US Workshop: Effective Teaching

6. Should we only have Pass/Fail grades • P/F grades will minimize stress both for students and teachers • But lack of stress also means lack of incentive to learn • Best learning takes place in an environment of moderate stress • High stress causes exclusive focus on exams and not on learning • Lack of stress encourages students to not take the course seriously • Students won’t even participate in learning • Teachers won’t get enough opportunity to instill the joy of learning that course. Indo-US Workshop: Effective Teaching

7. How many grades? • Researchers in this aspect of assessment primarily study reliability of reporting • How many students get the grades they “deserve” • What is the average error in reporting performance • Large number of grades: • Would cause a higher mis-reporting, i.e., more students get a different grade than they deserve • This affects credibility of the performance reporting system • But the error in reporting performance would also be less for an average student • Appears to be more fair • If eventually reporting has to be done for a large number of examinations/courses • The error will even out irrespective of the number of grades used • Hence fairness is less important than credibility Indo-US Workshop: Effective Teaching

8. How many grades? • If we further consider the impact of stress induced by the number of grades • Less number of grades is to be preferred • Except that the number should not be so small that it gives no incentive to learn • Suggestion: • Start with a small number of grades • If students are not performing because there is too little stress, increase the number of grades • If the students are not performing because there is too much stress, decrease the number of grades Indo-US Workshop: Effective Teaching

9. Different ways of assigning grades • Mapping from marks to grades • A pre-set mapping, for example: • 90% and more get an “A” grade • 75-90% get a “B” grade, etc. • Gives no comparative information for a student across batches • Gives no indication of broad rank within the class • One can only compare two students of the same class with different grades Indo-US Workshop: Effective Teaching

10. Different ways of assigning grades • Mapping from percentile to grades • Again, a pre-set mapping, but not of specific marks, for example • Top 25% get an “A” grade • Next 25% get a “B” grade, etc. • Gives some information about relative position of a student • Someone with a “B” grade is behind at least 25% students in the batch • If all courses employ a similar mapping then CGPA can give a good estimate of rank in the batch Indo-US Workshop: Effective Teaching

11. Different ways of assigning grades • Find mean and standard deviation of the marks obtained by the entire class • Use some mathematical functions to create a mapping from a range of marks to a specific grade, for example: • Marks more than mean + SD get an “A” grade • Marks between mean and (mean + SD) get a “B” grade Indo-US Workshop: Effective Teaching

12. Different ways of assigning grades • To improve reliability (and credibility) of the grade • Use one of the methods to first come up with rough grade boundaries • Look in the neighborhood of that point, if there is a gap in the marks obtained by the candidates • Larger the gap at the grade boundaries, better is the grade assignment from reliability perspective • Chose the largest gap in the neighborhood and make this as the grade boundary • Relative grading reduces the mis-reporting and further enhances reliability of the reported grade Indo-US Workshop: Effective Teaching

13. Who fails the course • Assigning “F” grade is somewhat different from assigning other grades • It should not be purely a relative grade • At the beginning of the course, the instructor should articulate the minimum expectation from the course • The evaluation throughout the course should be such that it allows to find out if that minimum learning has happened • Grade “F” is to be assigned only if that minimum is not achieved Indo-US Workshop: Effective Teaching

14. Who fails the course • However, there is a relative aspect of failure • The minimum expectation should be established in such a way that not everyone is able to achieve that (assuming large class) • If everyone meets that expectation, it shows that the expectations were low • Good students would have been bored in the course • The course could have been offered at a higher level • Therefore, the instructor has been unfair to good students Indo-US Workshop: Effective Teaching

15. Conclusions • Research in the area of grading tells what are the issues and how they relate to each other • Generally there are no unique “answers” since the situation in different universities, cultures, classes, and disciplines is different • But knowing the research, instructors, disciplines or university could come up with guidelines for improved assessment in their courses Indo-US Workshop: Effective Teaching