U of A eliminates bell curved grading

[MarchHare]

So does doing away with the bell curve make things harder on students who will now be faced with impossibly difficult exams in which the entire class fails, or does it make university degrees so trivially easy that anyone can earn one just for showing up to class?

Based solely on the comments in this thread, I have absolutely no idea what the result of this decision will be.

(For the record, my university did not grade using a curve. In a few rare cases where the entire class did much more poorly on an exam than the prof anticipated, everyone might have received a small bump on their grade or something. I don't recall taking any easy classes where everyone received an A).

[Kybosh]

Originally Posted by OffsideSpecialist

At my school I believe all profs teaching the same course have the collaborate and give the same exam to all the students across the different sections. Is this not the case there?

This is the case there (and most places) as well. The problem usually results when there is a group of profs and one is very experienced (ie. old) and refuses to change anything they do to match the group.

Put me in the much ado about nothing camp regarding this announcement.

[HELPNEEDED]

Profs will be readusting their assignment of letter grades now. It will screw over the kids who did good on most of the class but bad on a single submittable and help the opposite.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by fotze

I'm kidding. This is probably much ado about nothing for the most part.

For starters, the marks in school are pretty damn irrelevant after the first job. And for that first job they are only kinda irrelevant.

Marks are definitely irrelevant in the real world (my degree is on my resume, but not my marks). But during university they do matter for things like scholarships and that first job.

Basically I wouldn't trust many of the profs I had at U of A to effectively manage their own grading. While it doesn't affect me anymore, I'm always disappointed when my alma mater screws something up that was working perfectly well.

[Rathji]

Who cares?

I assume most of my classes has some sort of curving, like making the occasional exam out of less than they were to bring up class average, but never was I in a class where it was curved in a strict sense.

[blankall]

A lot of over-reaction here.

Just because there is no curve, that doesn't mean things are easier. It also doesn't stop a prof from scaling marks. I'm sure profs are going to still have to have a class average within a specific range.

In fact, if anything, the removal of the curve makes things more competitive. Now if you fail a class, you fail. If you get an A+, you get an A+. Not everyone gets curved into the C-B range with a few outliers.

[Yeah_Baby]

The curve is lame. Unless you're in a class of 200 people, the distribution wasn't every accurate. I was curved in a curriculum class of 17 people. So lame. I didn't even know the U of A was looking at doing this. But I've been done for a year. So whatever, It doesn't change anything for me.

[Lt.Spears]

Originally Posted by calf

For a class like this, could a prof not make the marking key be:
A - >50%
B - >40%
C - >30%
etc. You just change the marking key as a work-around, instead of fitting everyone into a curve, where if you get punished for being in an abnormally smart class (or rewarded if in an abnormally dumb class). I can remember many classes in university where a standard for an A was different percentage-wise...not sure why that can't be the case for the extremely hard classes (other than the fact that the student doesn't know half the material).

That is exactly what marking on a curve is...

What they are doing is that, if you get a 50%, that means you knew 50% of the work required, so you get 50%... not an A, not a B, you get a D-.

Marking on a curve is smart, this idea is stupid.

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by Lt.Spears

That is exactly what marking on a curve is...

No, that's not what marking on a curve is; that's adjusting the percentage required to achieve a certain letter grade.

Using a bell curve to assign grades means that class rank is statistically modeled using normal distribution and letter grades are assigned accordingly based on how you perform on an exam in comparison to your peers, not based on your absolute test score.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_curve_grading

[Sidney Crosby's Hat]

When I went to the U of A not every course was graded on a curve anyway. Some were, some weren't. I graduated in 2002 so maybe things changed since then.

[rd_aaron]

Originally Posted by calf

For a class like this, could a prof not make the marking key be:
A - >50%
B - >40%
C - >30%
etc. You just change the marking key as a work-around, instead of fitting everyone into a curve, where if you get punished for being in an abnormally smart class (or rewarded if in an abnormally dumb class). I can remember many classes in university where a standard for an A was different percentage-wise...not sure why that can't be the case for the extremely hard classes (other than the fact that the student doesn't know half the material).

As said above, this is still curving. I took engineering at a school that doesn't do letter grades, so my transcripts show the actual mark I got. If it wasn't for the curve in some classes, I would have a bunch of failing marks. It wouldn't be because I didn't know the material. It would be because some professors made the finals so long that you could only finish like 3 of the 8 questions in a 3 hour test. Generally your mark would reflect where in the class you stood compared to your peers.

It's not necessarily the best way of doing it, but it puts all classes on an even playing field. Some classes, due to material, are easier than others. Some professors are better teachers than others. In the end, the curve puts the best students at the top of the class, and worst students at the bottom of the class.

[rd_aaron]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

No, that's not what marking on a curve is; that's adjusting the percentage required to achieve a certain letter grade.

Using a bell curve to assign grades means that class rank is statistically modeled using normal distribution and letter grades are assigned accordingly based on how you perform on an exam in comparison to your peers, not based on your absolute test score.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_curve_grading

You're right. The official definition of curving relates to the bell curve. I believe this happened with standardized tests in high school. We always referred to professors bumping up marks by a certain percentage as "curving the marks" but really they were just bumping everyone's mark up to get a certain class average.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure if my university marks were ever bell curved.

[The Yen Man]

I never understood some of those Engineering classes where the highest mark was around 50%. That tells me the class didn't learn half the stuff the prof taught, or the exam did not reflect what was being taught in the class. Either case, there's no way to tell what the student learned, so the test itself was irrelevant and pretty useless.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by Lt.Spears

That is exactly what marking on a curve is...

What they are doing is that, if you get a 50%, that means you knew 50% of the work required, so you get 50%... not an A, not a B, you get a D-.

Marking on a curve is smart, this idea is stupid.

Originally Posted by The Yen Man

I never understood some of those Engineering classes where the highest mark was around 50%. That tells me the class didn't learn half the stuff the prof taught, or the exam did not reflect what was being taught in the class. Either case, there's no way to tell what the student learned, so the test itself was irrelevant and pretty useless.

I don't know if this is related to curves or not, but this made me think that I once heard from a prof that most people who got an A, only knew 50% of the total material that was taught in the class. Expecting any more than that in a typical 13 week course was borderline super human, since there is so much material covered, that you couldn't retain everything.

Anyone else ever heard of statistics relating to this kind of thing?

[flamesfan6]

i didn't know it before I came to UVic, but UVic doesn't grade on the bell curve (Except some weird system for their Math courses, that's not quite a bell curve) but I actually liked the fact that the grade you get, is the grade you get.

I would of hated the bell curve, and yea sure there are some advantages, but really, what grade you get should be what grade you get, screw the bell curve and trying to fit it. If everyone does really good on their assignments, no one should get a fail if they were above 50% etc

[The Yen Man]

Yeah, when I was in Haskayne a the U of C, I don't think any of my courses were graded on a curve. It's nice to know that the mark I get is the mark I end up with, and that it is not influenced by how other people in my class did.

[rd_aaron]

Originally Posted by The Yen Man

I never understood some of those Engineering classes where the highest mark was around 50%. That tells me the class didn't learn half the stuff the prof taught, or the exam did not reflect what was being taught in the class. Either case, there's no way to tell what the student learned, so the test itself was irrelevant and pretty useless.

There's lots of reasons for lower marks.

My class once had 6 finals in 7 days (and it was only a few days into the start of exams). Pretty tough to properly study for everything when you only have one night to study per exam.

Sometimes, as Rathji said, the amount of material covered in a course is beyond what you can learn in a single semester.

[Phanuthier]

I went to UofA engg... I think they said 1st year, marks were curved. After that, I don't think any of my coarses were graded on a curve. But the tests were drawn up to fit a bell curve, but if the whole class did well, lots of A's. Lots things determine the bell curve, some were set by time.

One of my classes in grad school, the teacher even said the test was set based on how fast you could crunch through numbers. Rather then crunch through, I learned how to program my calculator so in the test, I'd just write a quick program on my calculator to iterate through.

And yeah... exams... I think it was 3rd year, I had 5 exams in 3 days. That sucked. I also had one semester where I had 5 exams in 5 days, a 4 day break, then the 4th exam. I did very well in the 5 in 5, bombed the 6th. Funny that.

[KOgear]

I had a class where all 4 profs teaching that class did a terrible job. If they didn't curve that class probably only 8-12 people out of the entire 2nd year group would of failed. This would look horrible for the univeristy to have over 90% of the group failing the class and not being able to move on to 3rd year.

Some of the questions were ridicolous like, how long would it take to cool a cup of coffee in a vacuum. When would you ever need to know this!!

[Phanuthier]

Originally Posted by KOgear

I had a class where all 4 profs teaching that class did a terrible job. If they didn't curve that class probably only 8-12 people out of the entire 2nd year group would of failed. This would look horrible for the univeristy to have over 90% of the group failing the class and not being able to move on to 3rd year.

Some of the questions were ridicolous like, how long would it take to cool a cup of coffee in a vacuum. When would you ever need to know this!!

In an interview?

In one of my interviews, I was asked "If you were to put a donut in a microwave, and microwave it for a long period of time (i.e. 30 minutes), what shape would it take on?"

PS : I'm going to use that one if I get a chance to interview a new grad sucker