Departures from conventional grading systems at uni

[Aimless]

Eg: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/05/03/grading

When Duke University's Cathy Davidson announced her grading plan for a seminar she would be offering this semester, she attracted attention nationwide. Some professors cheered, others tut-tutted, and others asked "Can she do that?"

Her plan? Turn over grading to the students in the course, and get out of the grading business herself.

Now that the course is finished, Davidson is giving an A+ to the concept. "It was spectacular, far exceeding my expectations," she said. "It would take a lot to get me back to a conventional form of grading ever again."

Davidson is becoming a scholar of grading. She's been observing grading systems at other colleges and in elementary and secondary schools, and she's immersed herself in the history of grading. (If you want to know who invented the multiple choice test, she'll brief you on how Frederick J. Kelly did so at Emporia State University and how he later renounced his technique.)

But it was her own course this semester -- called "Your Brain on the Internet" -- that Davidson used to test her ideas. And she found that it inspired students to do more work, and more creative work than she sees in courses with traditional grading.

Her approach -- first announced on her blog -- works based on contracts and "crowdsourcing." First she announced the standards -- students had to do all of the work and attend class to earn an A. If they didn't complete all the assignments, they could get a B or C or worse, based on how many they finished. Students signed a contract to agree to the terms. But students also determined if the assignments (in this case blog posts that were mini-essays on the week's work) were in fact meeting standards. Each week, two students led a discussion in class on the week's readings and ideas -- and those students determined whether or not their fellow students had met the standards.

So how did it work? Davidson, the Ruth F. Devarney Professor of English, said that of the 16 students in the course, 15 already have earned an A and she expects the remaining student to soon finish an assignment that will earn an A as well. To those who believe in traditional grading, that could of course be evidence that letting students do the grading results in easy As, but Davidson said that she believes students did more work under this system (and that she did as well).

She said that the students each ended up writing about 1,000 words a week, much more than is required for a course to be considered "writing intensive" at Duke (even though her course didn't have that designation). She also said that the writing (she read every word, even while not assigning grades) was better than the norm.

"The writing wasn't using the kind of language you normally see in research papers, with words you only use in research papers," she said. "There was less jargon. I didn't see the thesaurus-itis that I usually see." Further, she said that students took more risks.

For an assignment that dealt with privacy and surveillance in the Internet era, one student secretly filmed fellow students (and Davidson) and played the video in class (before agreeing not to post it elsewhere). For a project dealing in part with attention span, a student flashed images on a screen while also doing a presentation, and then gave a quiz on the presentation, noting that there were many missed questions that correlated with times that interesting images were on display in the background. "I think students were going out on a limb more and being creative and not just thinking about 'What does the teacher want?' " Davidson said.

While the students are ending up with As, many of them are doing so only because they redid assignments that were judged not sufficient to the task on the first try. The students were tough on each other, Davidson said. And this, she believes, encouraged students to work harder on their assignments. "No one wanted to get one of those messages" that an assignment needed to be redone. (But when they did receive such notes, the students didn't complain, as many do about grades they don't like. They reworked their essays, she said.)

Lacey Kim, a Duke senior who took the course, said she thought the alternative approach to grading in the course didn't eliminate the teacher's role, but changed the dynamic from "a single teaching-student interaction to multiple teacher-student/student-student interactions" with students in the roles of both student and teacher. She said she was certainly aware that fellow students would be looking closely at her work, and that "peer pressure is a very influential thing."

But Kim said that what was really important in the class dynamic wasn't pressure, but a sense that "everyone had insightful and varying experiences to share" and that in every way, "everyone participated." In making the transition to this approach to grading, students may have been helped by the Internet as the course's subject matter, Kim said. "A lot of the topics we discussed were contemporary, easily applicable to our lives, but because all of us had different voices, we felt we were on an equal plane."

While Davidson's experiment was in a course at a highly competitive private university, she said she didn't think it was applicable only there. She said that, since going public with her ideas, she has been seeing experiments elsewhere, and in grade schools with students as young as sixth grade. "The kids are amazing" in high schools and middle schools, she said, "if you set it up right and make this a responsibility."

Her responsibility as an instructor didn't evaporate in this system, Davidson stressed, but changed. "I worked like a dog," she said. She added an individual comment on every student essay, reading it along with the students who were determining that it met that week's requirements. All Davidson didn't do was assign a grade.

She said that she noticed a different feeling about her own work as a result. Of the time spent reading and commenting on student work, she said: "I never resented it. I always ended up learning things. I wanted to give the feedback." But reducing the feedback to a letter grade? "It's intellectually stultifying. I can't imagine going back."

Got the article from:

http://forum.malazanempire.com/index...howtopic=18527

Thought this was an interesting point:

I would say I approve of the Prof's method, if only because this is how people work in the non-academic world. Peer review, feedback, gradual improvement via redrafting: all of these methods are par for the course in the working world. why not introduce them early?

And my own thoughts:

I liked the article in the OP, and I can see why this method may have encouraged hard work and creativity in this group of students. Weekly feedback sessions with your entire class where you not only get to present your work and have it scrutinised, but where you also get to scrutinise the work of your peers?? That's a great way to learn. It's a very effective way to teach something well. Even a group of newbies can accomplish very much with a such a setup if they're provided with some guidance (eg. explicit criteria, or the input of a teacher).

Departures from traditional grading methods occur from time to time. A while back, a number of med-schools over the world (including all Swedish med-schools) adopted a pass/fail-system. Turns out there was no significant impact on students' performance, but a huge impact in terms of reducing unnecessary stress. From what I've gathered, Swedish tech-oriented schools offer their students the chance to retake exams for all their courses as many times as they'd like in order to improve results. I like these approaches, because I believe the task of a university is to help students learn as well as they possibly can, rather than to help employers stratify prospective employees.

-- P

Most of you are at uni, or have recently been at uni. My impression is that you've performed admirably in traditional grading systems, and that you've enjoyed doing so But d'you reckon a scheme such as the one described in the article would have had good results in any of your uni classes?

In the thread from which I stole this article, several posters suggested that this sort of system would be unsuitable in the sciences. I can see where they're coming from, but, at the same time, I can see the benefits of implementing a similar system with the aim of improving writing skills, encouraging creative thinking in experiment-design, that sort of thing.

Whatcha reckon? Does the mere thought of this make you puke?

[Dreadnaught]

My main beef is this kind of method encourages groupthink. If your view goes up against the grain, you have no recourse but to accept the slings and arrows of your peers. While this is also the case of peer reviewing outside academia, at least in the "real world" you can also say "fuck you all, my idea is better" and actually go off and apply it on your own.

[Khendraja'aro]

That's just applying a band-aid to a gangrene wound.

As I've already stated, we should do away with numerical grading systems altogether.

[Flixy]

I would say I approve of the Prof's method, if only because this is how people work in the non-academic world. Peer review, feedback, gradual improvement via redrafting: all of these methods are par for the course in the working world. why not introduce them early?

Hmm, we already have that for reports. You hand in a draft to a bunch of people (including the prof), get a lot of feedback, change, maybe do that again, then hand it in. And then you get your grade And we also have various classes where you give feedback (scrutinize, sometimes) eachothers work. But the actual grading was still done by the prof.

That being said, I think the idea is interesting, but I do think it needs a certain 'critical mass' of good, motivated students to work, so it wouldn't work everywhere. And you need a good teacher too, because a lazy one might skip the work the teacher still has to do. And I also see why it wouldn't really be all that good in science, since often the students lack a certain knowledge. Peer review and group discussions are good, but I think it is (at least in science) important that teachers, and other people with more advanced knowledge play a big part in there.

[Nessus]

In the thread from which I stole this article, several posters suggested that this sort of system would be unsuitable in the sciences. I can see where they're coming from, but, at the same time, I can see the benefits of implementing a similar system with the aim of improving writing skills, encouraging creative thinking in experiment-design, that sort of thing.

This is just my personal opinion, and I have very limited teaching experience.

I think learning to plan experiments and write compelling article texts, and so on, should come later in one's studies, around the master's mark. (Obviously this means nothing to the US posters because our scales are so different) The basic studies should still teach, well, the basic foundations. However I am open to a non-numeric grading system or what have you, as long as students meet standards that measure knowledge and acquired skills in a meaningful way (read: that they are prepared for advanced studies and a career). Judging that by yourself, in the sciences, as a first, second, third-year student? That might be asking far too much.

[Loki]

The blind leading the blind. What a great idea. This can only work in the kind of post-modern classes with no inherent standards that's mentioned in the article.

[LittleFuzzy]

Whatcha reckon? Does the mere thought of this make you puke?

I question how much one can generalize from this sample.

[Lewkowski]

That's just applying a band-aid to a gangrene wound.

As I've already stated, we should do away with numerical grading systems altogether.

I would be OK with a binary pass fail system. I think numerical grades provide a better spectrum of results but pass/fail can also be done.

[Loki]

Pass/fail encourages students to do the bare minimum to pass. Not what you want if you're interested in getting them to actually do the work.

[Nessus]

Pass/fail encourages students to do the bare minimum to pass. Not what you want if you're interested in getting them to actually do the work.

Given that US edumacation costs $texas, you could just put the bare minimum ridiculously high, and kick everyone out who didn't pass a certain amount of credits. That's about as right-encouraging you can get without the death penalty.

[Aimless]

My main beef is this kind of method encourages groupthink. If your view goes up against the grain, you have no recourse but to accept the slings and arrows of your peers. While this is also the case of peer reviewing outside academia, at least in the "real world" you can also say "fuck you all, my idea is better" and actually go off and apply it on your own.

At the same time, it seems to have resulted in bolder, more creative work in this particular case. I can see where you're coming from, but at least this way you have a group of people all being encouraged to give good feedback to each other (under the supervision of an authority, the teacher), rather than having every individual be at the mercy of one single teacher. I can see how that kind of a setup could counteract groupthink rather than to encourage it, as long as everything is out in the open and you have guidelines for conduct. Moreover, if the group is aware of the risk of groupthink it may be able to stop itself on many occasions. That in itself would be a useful exercise!

Hmm, we already have that for reports. You hand in a draft to a bunch of people (including the prof), get a lot of feedback, change, maybe do that again, then hand it in. And then you get your grade And we also have various classes where you give feedback (scrutinize, sometimes) eachothers work. But the actual grading was still done by the prof.

That being said, I think the idea is interesting, but I do think it needs a certain 'critical mass' of good, motivated students to work, so it wouldn't work everywhere. And you need a good teacher too, because a lazy one might skip the work the teacher still has to do. And I also see why it wouldn't really be all that good in science, since often the students lack a certain knowledge. Peer review and group discussions are good, but I think it is (at least in science) important that teachers, and other people with more advanced knowledge play a big part in there.

Absolutely, and that would get around the problem of "the blind leading the blind", because there would be a lot of room for the angry Jewish TA in such a setup.

This is just my personal opinion, and I have very limited teaching experience.

I think learning to plan experiments and write compelling article texts, and so on, should come later in one's studies, around the master's mark. (Obviously this means nothing to the US posters because our scales are so different) The basic studies should still teach, well, the basic foundations. However I am open to a non-numeric grading system or what have you, as long as students meet standards that measure knowledge and acquired skills in a meaningful way (read: that they are prepared for advanced studies and a career). Judging that by yourself, in the sciences, as a first, second, third-year student? That might be asking far too much.

This is where the collective knowledge and insight of a group composed of both students and teachers may be useful. That said, I agree that learning science by consensus is not a brilliant idea

Pass/fail encourages students to do the bare minimum to pass. Not what you want if you're interested in getting them to actually do the work.

As Nessie pointed out, you can try to ensure that the minimum requirements are useful and meaningful, rather than the equivalent of a C- or whatever it is you guys have over there. With that said, a pass/fail system is probably more suited to eg. medicine than it is to eg. poli-sci.

I'm aware that programmes at American unis are rather different from those at Swedish unis, and that problems with curriculum overload, stress, disinterested students etc may be different on the other side of the pond

[Flixy]

This is just my personal opinion, and I have very limited teaching experience.

I think learning to plan experiments and write compelling article texts, and so on, should come later in one's studies, around the master's mark. (Obviously this means nothing to the US posters because our scales are so different) The basic studies should still teach, well, the basic foundations. However I am open to a non-numeric grading system or what have you, as long as students meet standards that measure knowledge and acquired skills in a meaningful way (read: that they are prepared for advanced studies and a career). Judging that by yourself, in the sciences, as a first, second, third-year student? That might be asking far too much.

I agree that you require the basic knowledge, but it's also important to start writing reports early and getting professional(ish) feedback on it, since it is one of the important things of working in science later.

Also, discussing eachothers results and giving feedback also teaches critical thinking, which is certainly important.

[Khendraja'aro]

I would be OK with a binary pass fail system. I think numerical grades provide a better spectrum of results but pass/fail can also be done.

Actually, numerical grades are not an improvement over pass/fail. I already stated why in another thread.

[Loki]

As Nessie pointed out, you can try to ensure that the minimum requirements are useful and meaningful, rather than the equivalent of a C- or whatever it is you guys have over there. With that said, a pass/fail system is probably more suited to eg. medicine than it is to eg. poli-sci.

I'm aware that programmes at American unis are rather different from those at Swedish unis, and that problems with curriculum overload, stress, disinterested students etc may be different on the other side of the pond

I thought you were in favor of treating every student with respect to their own abilities? Having a simple pass-fail puts all students into one of two categories. If you put it too low, no one will do any work. If you put it too high, too many people will fail (which means many won't bother trying). Regardless of where you put it, you don't give students any incentives to work hard after they meet the threshold. You also have no way of differentiating between good students and really good students (or borderline students from really bad ones).

Actually, numerical grades are not an improvement over pass/fail. I already stated why in another thread.

You haven't provided a very argument, other than a lame copy/paste job that wasn't even directly relevant to your argument.

[Aimless]

I thought you were in favor of treating every student with respect to their own abilities? Having a simple pass-fail puts all students into one of two categories. If you put it too low, no one will do any work. If you put it too high, too many people will fail (which means many won't bother trying). Regardless of where you put it, you don't give students any incentives to work hard after they meet the threshold.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. I am in favour of making sure that every student passes a course with an acceptable amount of knowledge and an acceptable level of understanding of the course's subjects. Are you referring to the recent discussion on management and education? My position in that thread was primarily that it's an educator's task to make sure his students learn well. It's a separate discussion

Like I said earlier, a pass-fail system was adopted by Swedish med-schools once it was shown that it led to a major reduction in stress without a significant reduction in performance, compared to a conventional graded system. The idea is to try to make sure we all know what we need to know in order to do a good job, before we move on to the next course. Further differentiating between fantastic test-takers and less fantastic test-takers strikes me as being of limited value!

I understand what you're saying, but, in the only implementation I've seen, students still work their asses off. This may be because they need to know a lot just in case, and they can't get their degree without passing all their courses... and they really want to become doctors. Voila, incentives to work hard and learn well even in a pass-fail system. This is in addition to the usual med-student incentives (neuroses, curiosity, drive, whatever).

[Loki]

We already know that you favor mediocrity Minx. Yes, it wouldn't significantly weaken performance, as only the brightest students would put in less work as a result. So everyone will strive for mediocrity. The lower stress might help a few more marginal students pass, but you'd be stifling the potential of the bright students.

You're not seriously trying to generalize from med/pre-med students to the general student population, are you?

[Aimless]

We already know that you favor mediocrity Minx.

Who said anything about mediocrity? I have no interest in differentiating between med-students who have all shown that they can reach a sufficiently high standard on written and practical exams as well as perform well with patients over the course of seven years. Why would I? You should really think twice before saying these things, because we've seen you try to defend your mediocre teaching being mediocre among the mediocre is very different from being "mediocre" among the awesome.

Yes, it wouldn't significantly weaken performance, as only the brightest students would put in less work as a result. So everyone will strive for mediocrity. The lower stress might help a few more marginal students pass, but you'd be stifling the potential of the bright students.

Which is nonsense, because exam-grades are not the only valid incentives for a human being, and bright students (who are frequently bright because they're bright and hard-working regardless of grading system) aren't being discouraged from learning. Furthermore (and we've had this discussion before), healthcare is a system, and you're putting an undue emphasis on just one tiny aspect of that system (the test-taking skills of a given individual doctor).

You're not seriously trying to generalize from med/pre-med students to the general student population, are you?

No, which is why I said

a pass/fail system is probably more suited to eg. medicine than it is to eg. poli-sci.

earlier.

I'm harping on about med-students (in Sweden)because it's really the only example I've come across, that I can think of.

I want to give you full marks for attendance but I also want to mark you down for your failure to read I'm not sure what to do. Perhaps I should mark myself down for not being clearer when I know who I'm dealing with. It is, after all, my responsibility as a manager



PS. Pro tip: most people learn better when they feel good, which can allow for reasonable levels of stress but not unreasonable levels of chronic stress. Chronic stress is not good for your brain. Economy needs to start understanding the brain

[Khendraja'aro]

You haven't provided a very argument, other than a lame copy/paste job that wasn't even directly relevant to your argument.

If a translation of an excerpt of my own paper is "copy/paste" then I pity your students. If a presentation of facts and arguments why numerical grades are unable to deliver an accurate description of a pupil's skills, talents et al. is not relevant to a discussion about the merits of numerical grading, then I'm honestly astound by the sheer stubborn idiocy you continue to exhibit.

And because you're a moronic braindead person who doesn't even adress the issues at hand and is unable to respond to an argument other than "no, that's not right because I'm always right!", I pity your students even more.

You were absolutely unable to comprehend the statistical problems I presented, you were unable to present any credible counterargument other than "nuh-uh, I'm always right! nuh-uh, I'm the sould of objectivity and thus nothing you say applies to me!" and you're pathologically incapable of acknowledging that sometimes viewpoints other than your own might have at least partial merits, especially when you haven't even looked at the specialty in question.

I mean, I tried to discuss with you and you simply said: "No, I'm right." and then promptly sat on your high horse and showed yourself unable once again to engage in a discussion. It's probably due to your virtual non-knowledge of matters psychological/paedagogical other than being somewhat able to interpret graphs and statistics but not the mechanics involved.

In short: As soon as we enter the lands behind your precious statistics, you're hopelessly out of your league and you continue to show it with willful ignorance.

Grades on tests only show reliably that the person is able to take a test. Other than that, every other interpretation of what the test grade means is highly suspect.

[Loki]

Which is nonsense, because exam-grades are not the only valid incentives for a human being, and bright students (who are frequently bright because they're bright and hard-working regardless of grading system) aren't being discouraged from learning. Furthermore (and we've had this discussion before), healthcare is a system, and you're putting an undue emphasis on just one tiny aspect of that system (the test-taking skills of a given individual doctor).

Nice strawman there. Grades aren't the only incentive students need, but it sure as hell an important one. There are some students who are self-motivated, and the percentage increases at higher levels of education, but you can't expect secondary school students to all want an education for the sake of an education.

I'm harping on about med-students (in Sweden)because it's really the only example I've come across, that I can think of.

So you're talking about a group that's known for being highly motivated and highly intelligent. Who'd think that such people wouldn't need additional motivation.

PS. Pro tip: most people learn better when they feel good, which can allow for reasonable levels of stress but not unreasonable levels of chronic stress. Chronic stress is not good for your brain. Economy needs to start understanding the brain

You don't have to get rid of grades just to reduce student stress levels. A far more reasonable solution is to have many different types of assignments. That way, people don't have to worry about doing poorly on one of them (or on one category). The stress isn't caused so much by grades as it is by the knowledge that screwing up once or twice can have huge consequences.

And because you're a moronic braindead person who doesn't even adress the issues at hand and is unable to respond to an argument other than "no, that's not right because I'm always right!", I pity your students even more.

I hope you don't treat students who disagree with you in the same manner. Then again, hope is the denial of reality and all that.

[Khendraja'aro]

Intelligence is not correlated to motivation, Loki.

[Loki]

Do you even read what other people write? I said med students are both motivated and intelligent...

[Khendraja'aro]

Do you even read what other people write? I said med students are both motivated and intelligent...

Then why mention it while talking about motivation?

[Loki]

Because they're likely to meet high standards with or without a grading system...

[Khendraja'aro]

Because they're likely to meet high standards with or without a grading system...

Riiiiight. Intelligence is also not a very reliable measurement of academial success

[Loki]

Riiiiight. Intelligence is also not a very reliable measurement of academial success

Ceteris paribus, it is. Are you seriously suggesting that people who are better able to grasp complex information and are more motivated to learn it won't do better academically than other people? Are you basing this on another one-case study? Coincidentally, all of your arguments about grades were not only incredibly vague, but attack relatively minor problems, while making no attempt to justify the alternatives.

[Khendraja'aro]

Ceteris paribus, it is. Are you seriously suggesting that people who are better able to grasp complex information and are more motivated to learn it won't do better academically than other people? Are you basing this on another one-case study? Coincidentally, all of your arguments about grades were not only incredibly vague, but attack relatively minor problems, while making no attempt to justify the alternatives.

No, there are a multitude of studies which say that intelligence alone is not a very reliable method of predicting success. Furthermore, with the problems inherent to grading it is thus not actually the percentage with the highest IQ which makes it to med school. Let's see, here are some studies which show that intelligence alone is not the answer:
http://www.psych.ut.ee/~jyri/en/Laid...k_PAID2006.pdf
http://www.eurojournals.com/ejss_7_2_17.pdf
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...8/ai_n9770166/

I mean, when I supervised the physics practical course for medical students, I found some of them to be severely lacking in the IQ department.
For instance, one pair calculated the flow rate through a tube and got a result which essentially meant that the water inside the tube flowed one picometer during the whole lifetime of our universe.
Another one asked me for the result of 120*40 - others were not able to do such simple calculations without the help of a calculator.

Vague? Right. I did not include, for example, an excerpt where several teachers were handed identical tests and asked to grade them. On a scale of 1 to 6, their grades showed a deviation of up to 2(!) grades around the average grade for that test. The deviations got even more distinct if the teachers were told: "This is a good class" or "This is a bad class".
And the function of overloading grades is a "minor" problem? Using grades in statistics when the same statistics forbid grades being used in such a way is "minor"?

I'm astounded.

[Loki]

No, there are a multitude of studies which say that intelligence alone is not a very reliable method of predicting success. Furthermore, with the problems inherent to grading it is thus not actually the percentage with the highest IQ which makes it to med school. Let's see, here are some studies which show that intelligence alone is not the answer:
http://www.psych.ut.ee/~jyri/en/Laid...k_PAID2006.pdf
http://www.eurojournals.com/ejss_7_2_17.pdf
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...8/ai_n9770166/

FFS, can you read? At which point did I say intelligence alone predicts success? I said all other things being equal, people who are more intelligent will succeed more frequently. Similarly, there is no reason to expect people with the highest IQs to make it to med school, because many other factors are in play. Seriously, do you get taught causal inference at all? You never cease to surprise me.

I mean, when I supervised the physics practical course for medical students, I found some of them to be severely lacking in the IQ department.
For instance, one pair calculated the flow rate through a tube and got a result which essentially meant that the water inside the tube flowed one picometer during the whole lifetime of our universe.
Another one asked me for the result of 120*40 - others were not able to do such simple calculations without the help of a calculator.

See above. Of course there will be dumb people in every field. Do you think you're more likely to find them in chemistry or at a McDonald's?

Vague? Right. I did not include, for example, an excerpt where several teachers were handed identical tests and asked to grade them. On a scale of 1 to 6, their grades showed a deviation of up to 2(!) grades around the average grade for that test. The deviations got even more distinct if the teachers were told: "This is a good class" or "This is a bad class".

Good thing that people who grade standardized tests first have to spend time learning the standards and applying them. As for normal tests, there's nothing wrong with teachers emphasizing different things, as long as they make it clear what it is they are looking for. Just because teachers give the same test different grades doesn't mean there's something wrong with the grading; it means teachers look for different things.

And the function of overloading grades is a "minor" problem? Using grades in statistics when the same statistics forbid grades being used in such a way is "minor"?

Get back to me when you can actually make some sense.

[Khendraja'aro]

Good thing that people who grade standardized tests first have to spend time learning the standards and applying them. As for normal tests, there's nothing wrong with teachers emphasizing different things, as long as they make it clear what it is they are looking for. Just because teachers give the same test different grades doesn't mean there's something wrong with the grading; it means teachers look for different things.

How do you standardize a test in English or Geography, or an open answer question in Physics or Math? There's always room for deviations, in some cases more than others, and treating "standardized tests" as the end-it-all is a pretty serious fallacy, my dear. There are standards and standards - and I doubt that you know the difference between them.

In order to be a good teacher, you have to know about the limitations first - and as of yet, you show absolutely no sign of being interested in learning anything. What I'm telling you here is not some knowledge just fallen from the sky. It's pretty much established for more than fourty years that numerical grades have pretty serious limitations. And the fact that you didn't understand what I meant by "function overload" just showed me that you actually don't read anything I write other than to find some nice tidbit you can scoff at and dismiss the rest.

Moron.

[Loki]

How do you standardize a test in English or Geography, or an open answer question in Physics or Math? There's always room for deviations, in some cases more than others, and treating "standardized tests" as the end-it-all is a pretty serious fallacy, my dear. There are standards and standards - and I doubt that you know the difference between them.

In order to be a good teacher, you have to know about the limitations first - and as of yet, you show absolutely no sign of being interested in learning anything. What I'm telling you here is not some knowledge just fallen from the sky. It's pretty much established for more than fourty years that numerical grades have pretty serious limitations. And the fact that you didn't understand what I meant by "function overload" just showed me that you actually don't read anything I write other than to find some nice tidbit you can scoff at and dismiss the rest.

Moron.

You know, I don't think highly of my own social skills, but you without a doubt have the worst social skills of anyone I've ever come across. If you value humanity, please move to some island and stay there for the rest of your life. That is all.

[Nessus]

I agree that you require the basic knowledge, but it's also important to start writing reports early and getting professional(ish) feedback on it, since it is one of the important things of working in science later.

Also, discussing eachothers results and giving feedback also teaches critical thinking, which is certainly important.

Reports are a very early part of learning to write article level text, and as such definitely belongs in the basic studies. However, I would discourage "out of the box" thinking for these writing exercises, that comes later. You have to know the basics before you can develop your own style.