8 ms·

Yeah, I'm in high school right now and they have this system. They also had the same in middle school. There's no way this instant feedback system is mentally h

Yeah, I'm in high school right now and they have this system. They also had the same in middle school. There's no way this instant feedback system is mentally healthy. Also, a lot of times, teachers push a 0 as a placeholder grade and parents aren't in the classroom, so they see that and flip out. Also, with the notification system, both parents and students see each assignment grade in a bubble, so it affects them a lot more than if they saw the whole semester grade (i.e getting an F on a homework assignment isn't a big deal)

skandl 8y ago
this sounds terrible :(
Hello71 8y ago
wouldn't it make more sense to use 1 as a placeholder
- yogeshlor 8y ago
  how about hyphen -
  - tatami 8y ago
    Which is not an Integer and the whole view crashes after the ConversionError. You know it
    - saagarjha 8y ago
      My high school system used to convert those to zeroes, just FYI. Anything that was nonnumeric and not a fixed set of "aliases" (for example, "pass" might mean 100% if the teacher set it up that way) became a zero.
  - nailer 8y ago
    How about using an integer where an integer is needed and false where no grade has been produced, with the teacher and student UI showing 'Not yet graded [x]' rather than using magic numbers?
- gpvos 8y ago
  Where I live, 1 looks more like an actual grade (the lowest one) than a 0, so that would be a very bad idea.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
gre 8y ago
Opt out
freeflight 8y ago
> Also, with the notification system, both parents and students see each assignment grade in a bubble, so it affects them a lot more than if they saw the whole semester grade (i.e getting an F on a homework assignment isn't a big deal) Could also show the average grade of the class for each assignment, to give students, parents, and teachers a reference for how well they are actually doing?
- chrismeller 8y ago
  That's a possible partial fix, but I recall plenty of classes in high school and college that had a weighted grading scale. Done every homework assignment and aced every test all semester but then bomb the midterm or final? You're still in trouble. Also vice versa - if you didn't do any homework all year, but the midterm is going to be worth 90% of your grade anyway. And of course we all know there are teachers that are just notoriously harder than anyone else where no one is going to get an A in the class, so there's also an aspect of how well other people have done on the assignment/in the class as a whole. None of that is new at all, though. The problem is that technology has now calculated out a number and displayed it and we as humans add more importance to that hard number. To me it's similar to the whole "fake news" thing - we're too inclined to glance at what the app on our phone says and not think any further.
- JeanMarcS 8y ago
  The average grade could be an idea, but being the worse in a upper high good class doesn’t mean you’re bad. And I personally think that grades should show how you progress. If you get better with time it’s good. And also we all agree that one grade out of any context should’nt mean anything
ceautery 8y ago
The system should prevent 0 from being pushed as a notification. Each teacher or school should be forced to deal with 0 in some other way, preferably erring on the side of helping students, rather than punishing them.
- antsar 8y ago
  Teachers already seem overworked. Wouldn’t they just invent a new magic number, maybe “1”?
  - kijin 8y ago
    101 would be a relatively safe number to use as a placeholder. Since these people aren't programmers, trying to use NULL or NaN or -1 will probably backfire.
    - sethammons 8y ago
      Sentry values are a nope. Have the assignment have a is_published check box / flag. An option to select all as published and the ability to toggle/select individual's assignments as published.
    - hnuser355 8y ago
      No, there could be extra credit
  - FakeComments 8y ago
    It wouldn’t stop a 0 from being entered as a grade — just not push that notification. This would actually makes teaching easier, as they can use a 0 as a placeholder without having to decide about accidentally pushing a notification. I don’t think the teacher’s goal is to cause a panic with a transient 0 that’s later replaced — so I don’t see why they’d stop using something that better accomplished their goals.
- Tempest1981 8y ago
  How about a system where grades are published online. If the parent and student don't acknowledge the grade within 7 days, a reminder text is sent. Then later the actual grade. A related issue is that many parents struggle with school website logins/passwords. I bet a significant percentage never log in, all year. But they can't ignore their phones.
sroya 8y ago
Which SIS are you using?
paganel 8y ago
But why send the grades (real or invented, it doesn’t matter) to students’ and parents’ phones? Who does that help? Does it help the students? Apparently not, because it looks like it makes them more anxious. Does it help the parents? It probably only helps those “tiger” moms and dads who are toxic anyway, I honestely think a parent shouldn’t care about the intrinsic details of his kids grades and day-to-day activity at school, it only causes more anxiety for said kids as it makes them even more nervous and risk-averse. And on a more general note, how did we manage to screw this up? (I’m talking about people in my generation, late-20s, 30s, early 40s). Why are our kids anxious? Why do they kill themselves? Why do I hear of a close friend’s niece cutting herself when she’s only 12? We weren’t like that, at least not at this magnitude/level, so the screw-up is on us.
- legionof7 8y ago
  I think schools just wanted to hop on the latest technology and the easiest way for companies to push that was "instant feedback" or something. They didn't foresee the unintended mental health consequences.
- idrios 8y ago
  >how did we manage to screw this up? I was a teacher last year and while I can't answer this question fully, I do know that it's a result of perverse incentives and group pressure. Where I taught at school (a private English school in China) we also had an app that shows parents how their student is doing. They'd see test scores as soon as I uploaded the grades, and I'd get complaints from some of the parents if I was more than a day late in uploading those scores. In the case of my school, we were competing with other private English schools. If we stopped or had never started using this app, we would get a few parents complaining "why can't I see my son's grade? [school z] does it, so I'm going to switch to their school!" We would lose some parents -- and for our student-retention team, losing too many parents means a pay for cut the following year. They would do anything to keep those parents so promises get made, and ultimately the school would certainly go back to using the app. Meanwhile the group who built the app gets fabulously wealthy because they've built a (albeit harmful) service that their clients can't possibly get rid of. Depressingly, the only way I see it turning back would be a force of equally-upset parents who removed their students from the school while asking "why do you use this at all? It's fostering anxiety and depression for my kid". People vote with their wallets.

skandl 8y ago

this sounds terrible :(

Hello71 8y ago

wouldn't it make more sense to use 1 as a placeholder

yogeshlor 8y ago
how about hyphen -
- tatami 8y ago
  Which is not an Integer and the whole view crashes after the ConversionError. You know it
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    My high school system used to convert those to zeroes, just FYI. Anything that was nonnumeric and not a fixed set of "aliases" (for example, "pass" might mean 100% if the teacher set it up that way) became a zero.
- nailer 8y ago
  How about using an integer where an integer is needed and false where no grade has been produced, with the teacher and student UI showing 'Not yet graded [x]' rather than using magic numbers?
gpvos 8y ago
Where I live, 1 looks more like an actual grade (the lowest one) than a 0, so that would be a very bad idea.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

gre 8y ago

Opt out

freeflight 8y ago

> Also, with the notification system, both parents and students see each assignment grade in a bubble, so it affects them a lot more than if they saw the whole semester grade (i.e getting an F on a homework assignment isn't a big deal) Could also show the average grade of the class for each assignment, to give students, parents, and teachers a reference for how well they are actually doing?

chrismeller 8y ago
That's a possible partial fix, but I recall plenty of classes in high school and college that had a weighted grading scale. Done every homework assignment and aced every test all semester but then bomb the midterm or final? You're still in trouble. Also vice versa - if you didn't do any homework all year, but the midterm is going to be worth 90% of your grade anyway. And of course we all know there are teachers that are just notoriously harder than anyone else where no one is going to get an A in the class, so there's also an aspect of how well other people have done on the assignment/in the class as a whole. None of that is new at all, though. The problem is that technology has now calculated out a number and displayed it and we as humans add more importance to that hard number. To me it's similar to the whole "fake news" thing - we're too inclined to glance at what the app on our phone says and not think any further.
JeanMarcS 8y ago
The average grade could be an idea, but being the worse in a upper high good class doesn’t mean you’re bad. And I personally think that grades should show how you progress. If you get better with time it’s good. And also we all agree that one grade out of any context should’nt mean anything

ceautery 8y ago

The system should prevent 0 from being pushed as a notification. Each teacher or school should be forced to deal with 0 in some other way, preferably erring on the side of helping students, rather than punishing them.

antsar 8y ago
Teachers already seem overworked. Wouldn’t they just invent a new magic number, maybe “1”?
- kijin 8y ago
  101 would be a relatively safe number to use as a placeholder. Since these people aren't programmers, trying to use NULL or NaN or -1 will probably backfire.
  - sethammons 8y ago
    Sentry values are a nope. Have the assignment have a is_published check box / flag. An option to select all as published and the ability to toggle/select individual's assignments as published.
  - hnuser355 8y ago
    No, there could be extra credit
- FakeComments 8y ago
  It wouldn’t stop a 0 from being entered as a grade — just not push that notification. This would actually makes teaching easier, as they can use a 0 as a placeholder without having to decide about accidentally pushing a notification. I don’t think the teacher’s goal is to cause a panic with a transient 0 that’s later replaced — so I don’t see why they’d stop using something that better accomplished their goals.
Tempest1981 8y ago
How about a system where grades are published online. If the parent and student don't acknowledge the grade within 7 days, a reminder text is sent. Then later the actual grade. A related issue is that many parents struggle with school website logins/passwords. I bet a significant percentage never log in, all year. But they can't ignore their phones.

sroya 8y ago

Which SIS are you using?

paganel 8y ago

But why send the grades (real or invented, it doesn’t matter) to students’ and parents’ phones? Who does that help? Does it help the students? Apparently not, because it looks like it makes them more anxious. Does it help the parents? It probably only helps those “tiger” moms and dads who are toxic anyway, I honestely think a parent shouldn’t care about the intrinsic details of his kids grades and day-to-day activity at school, it only causes more anxiety for said kids as it makes them even more nervous and risk-averse. And on a more general note, how did we manage to screw this up? (I’m talking about people in my generation, late-20s, 30s, early 40s). Why are our kids anxious? Why do they kill themselves? Why do I hear of a close friend’s niece cutting herself when she’s only 12? We weren’t like that, at least not at this magnitude/level, so the screw-up is on us.

legionof7 8y ago
I think schools just wanted to hop on the latest technology and the easiest way for companies to push that was "instant feedback" or something. They didn't foresee the unintended mental health consequences.
idrios 8y ago
>how did we manage to screw this up? I was a teacher last year and while I can't answer this question fully, I do know that it's a result of perverse incentives and group pressure. Where I taught at school (a private English school in China) we also had an app that shows parents how their student is doing. They'd see test scores as soon as I uploaded the grades, and I'd get complaints from some of the parents if I was more than a day late in uploading those scores. In the case of my school, we were competing with other private English schools. If we stopped or had never started using this app, we would get a few parents complaining "why can't I see my son's grade? [school z] does it, so I'm going to switch to their school!" We would lose some parents -- and for our student-retention team, losing too many parents means a pay for cut the following year. They would do anything to keep those parents so promises get made, and ultimately the school would certainly go back to using the app. Meanwhile the group who built the app gets fabulously wealthy because they've built a (albeit harmful) service that their clients can't possibly get rid of. Depressingly, the only way I see it turning back would be a force of equally-upset parents who removed their students from the school while asking "why do you use this at all? It's fostering anxiety and depression for my kid". People vote with their wallets.