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The Karmanator
Picture of Chance
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My intro to psych course was run this way in college. There were a certain number of points assigned for tasks. You knew how many points you needed to get each grade. All the assignments that got you points were essentially pass - fail. But if you failed you could try again until you passed.

So you could choose to go for an A but there was no guarantee you would get one. And it sounds like that is the case here.

Getting an A was a lot of work. But if you did that work successfully you got an A. You really had to develop competency across a wide variety of areas.

I thought it worked really well, and I found it really motivating.

Much better than the speech professor that told me to my face that he was giving me Cs, not because of the quality of my work - which was A material, but because he didn't like my attitude (I was a punk)
 
Posts: 3276 | Registered: December 12, 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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My organization recently started a summer intern program.

I was granted my own intern.

I had to interview 12 19-21 year old college students before I could find one that had some grip on reality and a resume I could understand. Fortunately I found a good one that is going to stay on part-time this fall! There are still some kids that have great potential - but that number is dwindling rapidly.
 
Posts: 4979 | Registered: April 20, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Picture of sig sailor
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Way back in the early 70's I had a college History professor that told us on the first day of class that there would be no home work, no tests, no requirement to attend class, and we would tell him what grade we should get. I got an A in that class, but learned almost nothing.
Rod


"Do not approach a bull from the front, a horse from the rear, or a fool from any direction." John Deacon, Author
 
Posts: 1673 | Location: Between Rock & Hard Place (Pontiac & Detroit) | Registered: December 22, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Big Stack
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Much in a way that various publications rank colleges on various desirability characteristics for review by potential students, some organization should publish reviews of colleges by use by potential employers, objectively and numerically ranking them by the rigorousness of the education provided, and the legitimacy of the grades provided.

If this is done, HR staff could review these rankings, and use them to rank applicants by both the GPA the applicant received, and the legitimacy of how GPAs are determined by the college from which it was received. It would think HR organizations would find this very useful, and it would be interesting to see the effect it would have on college desirability by students. It would also be interesting to see how may universities current reputations would compare to objective rankings.
 
Posts: 21240 | Registered: November 05, 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Little ray
of sunshine
Picture of jhe888
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I had a professor who did something similar in law school. But he asked if this was something the class would go for, and would have graded conventionally if we had wanted it.

I asked him about it later, and he said that he had done it before, and that the self-evaluation generated grades that were remarkably consistent with an actual grade curve (bell shaped) and also consistent with his own informal evaluation of the student's performance.

It wouldn't work for very large classes, but he was convinced it worked for smaller classes.




The fish is mute, expressionless. The fish doesn't think because the fish knows everything.
 
Posts: 53118 | Location: Texas | Registered: February 10, 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Picture of konata88
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I think that as long as the final grade is based on merit, knowing up front what the cost is for a particular grade is valuable. What eludes me is how grade curves would factor into this. But that’s a common lex discussion in itself.




"Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it." L.Tolstoy
"A government is just a body of people, usually, notably, ungoverned." Shepherd Book
 
Posts: 12683 | Location: In the gilded cage | Registered: December 09, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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When I went to Technical school, we did a quarter long project. We picked our project and the instructor told us what grade we would earn if we did it to his satisfaction. We could then switch to one that was harder for a better grade.

It was easy to see who his pets were as they did simple projects and got and A.


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Tri-State Gun collectors Life Member
 
Posts: 2794 | Location: Ohio | Registered: December 18, 2014Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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