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I think you're running under the assumption that all students making the request are doing it for the right reasons. I could be wrong, but my intuition goes th

I think you're running under the assumption that all students making the request are doing it for the right reasons. I could be wrong, but my intuition goes the other way and I'm assuming most students do it to get a better grade, not learn more.

SilasX 8y ago
>I think you're running under the assumption that all students making the request are doing it for the right reasons. No, that's what the "albeit selectively" clause was referring to. >I could be wrong, but my intuition goes the other way and I'm assuming most students do it to get a better grade, not learn more. As in my comment, it doesn't matter. Their job is to be an expert on this material. Failing to correctly label an answer is failing at their job. Punishing someone for pointing out a failure at your job is unprofessional.
solveit 8y ago
Yeah no, you don't get to say students should care more about learning than grades when jobs, opportunities, and scholarships given by the very university that claims learning is more important are riding on grades. It is the professor's responsibility to grade accurately, and honestly if there is so much inconsistency in grading that there's a significant probability that the student will lose marks despite having pointed out a reason they should gain marks, the professor is screwing up very badly[1]. Don't pin that on the student not having noble intentions or whatever. [1]:Or at least that's the case in STEM. My humanities friends tell me that grading is much more subjective there which is a bit disturbing but I'm hardly qualified to make such judgments.
- SilasX 8y ago
  Exactly. It's ridiculous that teachers are fine with such inconsistent grading on something they (and their graders) are supposed to be experts at -- let alone that they take such joy in leveraging such unhelpful inconsistency against students who objected to them propagating falsehoods! It reminds me of those "drunk driving costs you $15k" ads, where most of that comes from the expense of navigating the court system (bail, attorney's fees), and the state is somehow proud of this fact.
- andrewflnr 8y ago
  As long as we're getting all realpolitik about it, the reason is that lots of students are assholes who will run roughshod over any professor who shows weakness. Source: was a student, watched it happen routinely. Meanwhile, in a less politically charged situation, it's pretty normal, or at least smart, to go back over any area where you messed up with a fine-toothed comb. If, and this is a rather pessimistic assumption, if the student is likely to lower their grade on a re-test, in my experience it's more likely to be because the original grader was being generous in the face of ambiguity, rather than systemic random errors. That's because the graders are mostly nice people. If that's not good enough for someone, they damn well better have a good reason for it. I have no problem with policy that enforces this. The politics are a distraction from the ethical question.
  - SilasX 8y ago
    That policy would make sense, but that involves major caveats that aren't clear from the original description. That works because it's specifically written with "generosity buffer" that (by design) only benefits your grade, and thus doesn't indicate the teacher was falsely labeling the answers as correct when they weren't. That's not the same thing as the original, which implied "my grading is so random, hope you're lucky on the rescore". Edit: I had a high school teacher with a policy where she’d add X points to every score from the get go, and you’dlose those if you objected to grading, so you’d only object for misgrades by more than X. But that’s not the same as the original “okay, let’s roll my truth-recognizer dice again!”

SilasX 8y ago

>I think you're running under the assumption that all students making the request are doing it for the right reasons. No, that's what the "albeit selectively" clause was referring to. >I could be wrong, but my intuition goes the other way and I'm assuming most students do it to get a better grade, not learn more. As in my comment, it doesn't matter. Their job is to be an expert on this material. Failing to correctly label an answer is failing at their job. Punishing someone for pointing out a failure at your job is unprofessional.

solveit 8y ago

Yeah no, you don't get to say students should care more about learning than grades when jobs, opportunities, and scholarships given by the very university that claims learning is more important are riding on grades. It is the professor's responsibility to grade accurately, and honestly if there is so much inconsistency in grading that there's a significant probability that the student will lose marks despite having pointed out a reason they should gain marks, the professor is screwing up very badly[1]. Don't pin that on the student not having noble intentions or whatever. [1]:Or at least that's the case in STEM. My humanities friends tell me that grading is much more subjective there which is a bit disturbing but I'm hardly qualified to make such judgments.

SilasX 8y ago
Exactly. It's ridiculous that teachers are fine with such inconsistent grading on something they (and their graders) are supposed to be experts at -- let alone that they take such joy in leveraging such unhelpful inconsistency against students who objected to them propagating falsehoods! It reminds me of those "drunk driving costs you $15k" ads, where most of that comes from the expense of navigating the court system (bail, attorney's fees), and the state is somehow proud of this fact.
andrewflnr 8y ago
As long as we're getting all realpolitik about it, the reason is that lots of students are assholes who will run roughshod over any professor who shows weakness. Source: was a student, watched it happen routinely. Meanwhile, in a less politically charged situation, it's pretty normal, or at least smart, to go back over any area where you messed up with a fine-toothed comb. If, and this is a rather pessimistic assumption, if the student is likely to lower their grade on a re-test, in my experience it's more likely to be because the original grader was being generous in the face of ambiguity, rather than systemic random errors. That's because the graders are mostly nice people. If that's not good enough for someone, they damn well better have a good reason for it. I have no problem with policy that enforces this. The politics are a distraction from the ethical question.
- SilasX 8y ago
  That policy would make sense, but that involves major caveats that aren't clear from the original description. That works because it's specifically written with "generosity buffer" that (by design) only benefits your grade, and thus doesn't indicate the teacher was falsely labeling the answers as correct when they weren't. That's not the same thing as the original, which implied "my grading is so random, hope you're lucky on the rescore". Edit: I had a high school teacher with a policy where she’d add X points to every score from the get go, and you’dlose those if you objected to grading, so you’d only object for misgrades by more than X. But that’s not the same as the original “okay, let’s roll my truth-recognizer dice again!”