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This writer seems more concerned with not being blamed than improving students' success rates. Why have homework grades? Well, if you don't, "they will blame y

This writer seems more concerned with not being blamed than improving students' success rates. Why have homework grades? Well, if you don't, "they will blame you for not forcing them to do the homework." Why have deadlines? If you don't, they "blame you for not imposing deadlines on them." I get why someone would want to avoid blame or conflict, but it shouldn't influence what you're grading people on. His reasoning for participation grades is bogus. 1. Classes are not better if everyone is talking and asking questions. Often, this actually causes class to move more slowly and cover less ground and questions would be better after class one on one. 2. He doesn't want kids to act up and is punishing the kids that do by removing their future opportunities, which is not great because the kids most likely to act up are the ones most likely to have learning difficulties or hard home lives. So this makes things worse for kids that need the most help. 3. Participation grades are arbitrary and a tool for control. The initial arguments for other grades about how they can't be arbitrary and you need to be rigid are thrown out the window with participation grades. 4. You don't really have a major freeloader problem in classes, in part because it's not a commons. It's managed and controlled by one person or an administration. It is my opinion that it is unnecessary to punish what freeloading exists, which is what participation grades do. 5. Participation grades are not really an incentive, they are a penalty. If you make participation worth something you are forcing people to participate if they want the same grade they would have previously gotten without participation. You are penalizing non-participation by lowering their grade. For it to be a pure incentive, they would need to get extra points or something for participation, but they don't.

plandis 5y ago
> 1. Classes are not better if everyone is talking and asking questions. Often, this actually causes class to move more slowly and cover less ground and questions would be better after class one on one. Covering more material isn’t necessarily a good thing if students are not really understanding the material that’s already been presented. I personally and benefitted greatly from others asking questions. Sometimes the questions asked were not even things I considered. In my college classes that were purely lecture based where the prof didn’t allow interruptions, I certainly got more value out of studying with others because of the questions.
- ameister14 5y ago
  >Covering more material isn’t necessarily a good thing if students are not really understanding the material that’s already been presented. I personally and benefited greatly from others asking questions. Sometimes the questions asked were not even things I considered. In my college classes that were purely lecture based where the prof didn’t allow interruptions, I certainly got more value out of studying with others because of the questions. Sure, that can also happen. I've had multiple lectures though where the questions caused pacing issues and where the questions were unique to the questioner. It's a catch 22 because the teacher asked for this but still wants to cover the required material, and they need to balance it better to avoid losing control of the class. If in a college or grad school environment, a professor has office hours. If there are multiple students with similar questions, I have found that email or later lecture clarifications work well. I'd say I got a lot of value out of studying with others regardless of whether questions were allowed. It's a necessity where a professor yells at you for asking a question as did my college statistics professor; unfortunately he was also the head of his department so nothing we could do about it but learn on our own. That's not the trade-off without penalties for non-participation though. It's not 'no questions at all' or 'all questions, all the time.' It's some people ask questions, most people don't, the grades aren't impacted by your own introverted nature. Here's the kicker - most of the time, if participation is graded it doesn't massively increase the actual participation in discussion. It just gives the professor more control over the grading, something they desire especially if it's blind grading numbers. It's a penalty system for people that the professor doesn't like or behavior they don't like, and sometimes a way to reward favorites. That's all.

plandis 5y ago

> 1. Classes are not better if everyone is talking and asking questions. Often, this actually causes class to move more slowly and cover less ground and questions would be better after class one on one. Covering more material isn’t necessarily a good thing if students are not really understanding the material that’s already been presented. I personally and benefitted greatly from others asking questions. Sometimes the questions asked were not even things I considered. In my college classes that were purely lecture based where the prof didn’t allow interruptions, I certainly got more value out of studying with others because of the questions.

ameister14 5y ago
>Covering more material isn’t necessarily a good thing if students are not really understanding the material that’s already been presented. I personally and benefited greatly from others asking questions. Sometimes the questions asked were not even things I considered. In my college classes that were purely lecture based where the prof didn’t allow interruptions, I certainly got more value out of studying with others because of the questions. Sure, that can also happen. I've had multiple lectures though where the questions caused pacing issues and where the questions were unique to the questioner. It's a catch 22 because the teacher asked for this but still wants to cover the required material, and they need to balance it better to avoid losing control of the class. If in a college or grad school environment, a professor has office hours. If there are multiple students with similar questions, I have found that email or later lecture clarifications work well. I'd say I got a lot of value out of studying with others regardless of whether questions were allowed. It's a necessity where a professor yells at you for asking a question as did my college statistics professor; unfortunately he was also the head of his department so nothing we could do about it but learn on our own. That's not the trade-off without penalties for non-participation though. It's not 'no questions at all' or 'all questions, all the time.' It's some people ask questions, most people don't, the grades aren't impacted by your own introverted nature. Here's the kicker - most of the time, if participation is graded it doesn't massively increase the actual participation in discussion. It just gives the professor more control over the grading, something they desire especially if it's blind grading numbers. It's a penalty system for people that the professor doesn't like or behavior they don't like, and sometimes a way to reward favorites. That's all.