1 / 8

Motivation to Examine Grading at Rice

Motivation to Examine Grading at Rice. 2009 Comments from faculty in final plenary meeting discussion leads to formation of first senate WG on grade inflation Findings: pattern of GPA increases over the years and differences among schools

willis
Download Presentation

Motivation to Examine Grading at Rice

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Motivation to Examine Grading at Rice • 2009 Comments from faculty in final plenary meeting discussion leads to formation of first senate WG on grade inflation • Findings: pattern of GPA increases over the years and differences among schools • Eventually result in redistribution of Latin Honors among schools • 2012 Discussions about how cutoff for summa cum laude remains >4.0 in many schools leads to second WG on grade inflation

  2. Committee and Charge Co-Chairs:  Jane Grande-Allen (Engineering) and Evan Siemann (Natural Sciences) Members:  Richard Stoll (Social Sciences)                     Peter Loewen (Shepherd School of Music)                     Rebecca Goetz (Humanities) – Spring 2013 Julie Fette (Humanities) – Fall 2013 Joshua Eyler, ex officio (Center for Teaching Excellence) – Fall 2013                     David Tenney, ex officio (Registrar)                     Chynna Foucek (Student Association)  Staff Assistant: Sharon Mathews • Charge: enumerate possible changes in policies and procedures that would work against grade inflation, and to evaluate the potential costs and benefits of such changes

  3. Latin Honors Cutoffs • Prior to 2012: • http://registrar.rice.edu/students/latin_honors_old/ • 2012-2013: • http://registrar.rice.edu/students/aca_honors/

  4. Majors differ in the proportion of the Latin honors awarded that are summa cum laude Expected: Summa ~ 1/6 Magna ~ 1/3 Cum ~ 1/2

  5. What are other schools doing?Yale’s Recent Experience “Approved by the faculty with no controversy: • Encourage discussion about grading policies in each department by requiring chairs to report to the Yale College annually about those policies.” (dept chairs supposed to discuss cases of grading extremes with instructors) • “Distribute data to the faculty every year on the average grades in every department.” Yale Alumni Magazine, Sept 2013

  6. Tabled at Yale • Convert from letter grades to 0-100 numerical scale (passing is 60 and above) • Establish non-mandatory guidelines for departments to follow, i.e., a grade collar/ distribution system. 35% 90-100 40% 80-89 20% 70-79 4-5% 60-69 0-1% failing

  7. Awarding of A+ Among Rice’s Peers

  8. Working Group Activities • Spring 2013 Met with all Deans • May 2013 Interim report to Senate • Emailed preliminary recommendations to all faculty via sen-fac at the end of the Spring 2013 semester. Data analysis in wiki. • Fall 2013 Presentations to faculty Chairs (Engi, NS, Music) Town Halls (all schools)* *Most poorly attended Presentation to Student Association • Dec 2013 Report to Senate

More Related