Personally, I'm perfectly fine with the current GPA approach. The problem I have is with comparisons of grades across different classes, not in figuring out which grades to give within a class.
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Personally, I'm perfectly fine with the current GPA approach. The problem I have is with comparisons of grades across different classes, not in figuring out which grades to give within a class.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nessus
As far as I can tell, that's plainly not true. Also doesn't make much logical sense. A swastika is damn hard to sign.Quote:
Originally Posted by GGT
This is a Wikifist, but it looks like ISL is based on German Sign Language. Which presumably/hopefully doesn't have a swastika as a self-identifier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-German_sentiment
Quote:
In the first decades of Israel's existence, anti-German feelings were strong and dominant in Israeli society. There was a widespread cultural and commercial boycott of all things German (and often, Austrian as well) and a determination "never to set foot on German soil."[citation needed] German Jews in Israel, themselves refugees from the Nazi persecutions, came under strong social pressure to cease using German, their mother language.
At the time, the words "German" and "Nazi" were used interchangeably. (Until the late 1990s the sign language of Israeli deaf communities used the Swastika as the sign for "German".)
All of this is unsourced. I don't think any of us has any reliable information on this. Though it's believable that people use the words German and Nazi interchangeably. My grandparents occasionally did that.
I'm not "obsessed". I'm just massively unwilling to use a "tool" which does not do what it says, has massive flaws and is actually quite useless.Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
Are you seriously telling me that there's something fundamentally wrong with giving a student a B when he receives an A on one assignment and a C on another (assume they're both worth 50% of the grade)? And before you use the "one student might get an A and then a C and another the reverse" line, you should remember that the point of grades is to quantify someone's overall mastery of the material. It's unfair to penalize someone who does worse on the second assignment, as they would have demonstrated the same amount of mastery as someone who does worse on the first assignment. If the second assignment is cumulative (i.e. it incorporates material from the first assignment), then that should be reflected in how heavily that grade is weighed (i.e. it should be responsible for a larger portion of the final grade).
On the one hand, information is lost. On the other hand, no-one really seems to care about the information being lost. If information is lost in the forest and no-one is there to care about it... er
A person takes about 40 classes for their undergraduate degree. You honestly expect a grad school or employer to have the time to look at anything beyond the average grade (or perhaps class rank)? A grade is an indicator; it's not meant to perfectly explain something. To get the letter, people ask for letters of recommendation.
Actually, that is YOUR idea of what the "point" of grades is. As I said before (something you obviously ignored, how many times do I have to write it before you acknowledge that?), there are several competing ideas of what grades are. Could be punishment. Could be diagnosis. Could be ananmesis. Could be prognosis. Could be reward. And so on.Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
Do you honestly think that a single number can encompass the complete past, present and future of a person?
If you go into a hospital because you are ill, does your doctor write an "F" into your chart instead of "Pancreatic cancer, metastatic, terminal, 5 months left"?
It's not meant to. :bored: It's meant to serve as one indicator among many of a person's skills. Your point isn't helped by the fact that barring law schools, no one really cares what someone's GPA is as long as it's above a certain level. So no expects grades to be a precise measure of anything.
Riiiight. That's why someone with, say, 3.49 is allowed to attend and a 3.5 isn't. Because it's not precise.Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
And don't tell me that kind of rounding madness does not happen.
Besides, you're obviously utterly incapable of grasping the concepts here. YOUR idea you just stated. There are OTHER ideas of what grades mean. Those are IN CONFLICT.
And you still don't see the problem. I think that's part of why I think you're not suited for teaching.
Let me be crystal clear: I don't expect you to start a revolution. I expect you to ACKNOWLEDGE the problem. That, yes, there actually is this big, fat elephant in the room. If you don't do that, then frankly you don't have any place grading someone.
Going to follow GGT's line about arbitrariness? Welcome to the real world, where arbitrary distinctions need to be drawn. The thresholds for grades are minimum ones. If one can't pass that threshold, they really can't complain about not being given the opportunity to do x.Quote:
Originally Posted by Khendraja'aro
OMG, different academics disagree what grades mean. Good for them. I know how grades are given, accepted, and interpreted in my field. The point of reference for everyone in the field is much closer than between education scholars and people in other fields.
*shrugs* there are a lot of possible approaches. no-one wants to look at grades for 40 classes, so for the most part employers here seem to be most interested in thesis papers, projects, work experience and the like. Those students to whom GPAs matter (eg. law, engineering) can improve their grades in different ways (law students can take exams at later dates when they feel more confident, engineering students can take exams as many times as they like). We usually take one or at most two courses at a time, and have to pass our courses to be allowed to continue and to get the degree, so it's no great loss to only focus on major papers and projects etc. Interest--esp. when demonstrated by relevant experience--counts for a great deal. So you see, there are many ways to do it, and scrutinising the individual grades from 40 classes is only one alternative to looking at a GPA.Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
I fail to see how those methods are any better than the one used here. I'm not saying the one here is better, but I don't see why the opposite is true. All this means is that there are multiple ways to accomplish the same objective.
i'm not saying that the opposite is true. if i were really attacking you or mocking your posts i'd make it clear eg. by appending "you jerk" :o
http://www.easternct.edu/~adams/Resources/Grannies.pdf I think this is relevant here. :o
You continue to fail to see the point. I'm astounded that you were able to make it into university at all with this kind of stubborn ignorance.Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
And those thresholds are not even arbitrary. They're random. As in: Throw a pair of dice.
And your moronic "granny pdf" even proves my point further. You just don't get it.
And then people like you are allowed to grade stuff.
Question: How do you grade someone, who's ignorant of stuff he's using in your class, using it in a wrong way, doesn't care that he's using it in a wrong way and makes no effort to educate himself? Even when it's pointed out to him that he's doing it wrong?
If you're forced to play this unpleasant and dirty game then i think it's good if you at least make sure you're aware of the problems. this wouldn't be the first time people find themselves doing things that may or may not be fantastic. for example there's the whole business with measuring research production and the like through number of publications and citations. every single accomplished scientist probably knows of the problems with this and someone who employs scientists likely takes other factors into consideration in order to mitigate those problems.
re. the grannies, I can't believe you americans... all this talk of merits and fairly measuring performance and then it turns out your obsession with GPAs, pressure and expensive education is all about reducing medicare costs :mad: if you want to save grandmas then make unis less stressful. find better examination schemes. curb curriculum overload. make it cheap. develop a supportive environment where everyone works together to learn things properly rather than to obsess about the curve :p
Your standardized test would be your best option, the others assume that these kids were all taught by republican or democratic professors their whole lives. As for what's more fair, i don't think i can say... grading and teaching are two different things really. Good teachers can have dumb grading methods and vice versa, and ultimately what matters is the teaching ability, and your test would probably best capture that, for their grading, just hope those who got A's in the class score higher, by in large, than those who got C, and D's.Quote:
And wow what a lazy study. I mean come on give us some metric that we can determine which is more accurate. Post college employment? A standardized test they could give? Income level after college? Compare to non-ideological professors?
Edit: On what Grade measures issue, for me there are onyl really two relevant schools of thought:
Grades measure knowledge/mastery of material or two Grades are measuring both knowledge/mastery of the material + Work Ethic. The distinction is generally how much weight is placed on home work verse tests. Lastly, I'd like to point out most grades aren't measuring mastery well, they instead are measuring regurgitation, this isn't a flaw in the grading scale but the nature of the assignments/tests if the tests were written differently, and the assignments give done differently we could grade in a similar fashion and gain much more meaning to the letter.