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Any change to the grading scheme of a class should be Max(old grade, new grade). One of my profs once offered a re-test opportunity such that you would have had
by foota 7y ago
Any change to the grading scheme of a class should be Max(old grade, new grade). One of my profs once offered a re-test opportunity such that you would have had an incentive to do worse on the exam for certain original scores. Drove me up the wall.
- bobongo 7y agoFrom these, > ... I ended up ... neither a zero-day ... > Realizing everyone in the class would fail, the professor changed the grade of this project to only account for 30% of the grade. > I ... disregarding the rest of the busy work for the class. It sounds like OP could not find a zero day (old_grade=0) and did not do any other homework (new_grade=0), therefore should have received max(0, 0), but received a C.
- snazz 7y agoI also think that just keeping the new grade is a valid retake scheme. Although it's less forgiving for the students, it encourages them to make absolutely certain that they know the content for the retake. Anything with a square root curve where you have to pinpoint your retake score perfectly to maximize the final grade is unfair and encourages the wrong thing.
- foota 7y agoYep, that's also fine by me. Although ideally (and especially if it's required to do a retake!) this would be set out ahead of time. Many profs don't seem to understand the kind of time and grade tradeoffs students need to make. Once had a prof come in to a class with a bunch of seniors with many other high priority classes that wouldn't release the grade weighting at all. They didn't understand that people need to know that kind of thing to know whether they need to do really well on something or if it's the kind of thing that can be dropped or half assed when push comes to shove.