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Another factor is in the USA, at the undergraduate level, there is a strong incentive for "professors" (more assistant and adjunct than tenured) to grade in a m
by xkcd-sucks 4y ago
Another factor is in the USA, at the undergraduate level, there is a strong incentive for "professors" (more assistant and adjunct than tenured) to grade in a manner which is totally rationalizable and consistent between students. Administrators call students "customers" who are buying a degree; if a student doesn't like their grade they will complain about it, and if the teacher hasn't explicitly formalized their grading process they will be in hot water. So for example asking different probing questions of different students might lead to accusations of arbitrary and capricious grading. It encourages checklist-style rubrics for grading. Obviously one could formalize a decision tree for more loosely structured oral exams but that's significant effort.
- flipcoder 4y ago> asking different probing questions of different students might lead to accusations of arbitrary and capricious grading But what if AI conducts it?
- frumper 4y agoA rubric is as easy to apply to oral exams as a written one and that is generally all that administrators would like to see. Any interpretive exam is going to run into accusations of arbitrary and capricious grading.
- earthling8118 4y agoI'm not disputing your point at all, but an interesting thing that happened at my school was that we weren't called "customers" but rather the president of the school would refer to students as "commodities". For a long time they'd treated us as such but hearing this was the blatant example of it.