All Posts Tagged With: "grades"

You have to think like a prof.

There has never been a shortage of advice for university students, some of it good, most of it obvious. Keep up with your readings, get plenty of sleep, and so on.

One bit of advice that you hear less often, however, might be the most valuable of all.

Understand how professors think.

For the most part, after all, professors don’t think like you, because you are a normal person and they are intellectuals, driven by the need to argue, and discover, and innovate, finding joy in exploring the tiniest reaches of the most obscure subject. And as such they want to be valued for their intellect, because there aren’t that many places where intellect is valued.

Now, I am not advocating outright sucking up, but seeing the prof’s side of things might change your academic approach. For instance:

1. If you have to skip class, never skip the last class of the week. Professors tend to plan their courses by week and so as the week draws to a close, they will try to fit everything they can into that class.

2. Unless you are scheduled to do some kind of presentation, never tell your prof that you won’t be in class for whatever reason. Similarly, don’t explain your absences. To you, it seems respectful and open, but most professors take pride in not being high school teachers and not having to deal with attendance and other similar vulgarities. By providing an explanation, you are implying the professor would want one, and this will offend his sense of laissez-faire academics. He wants to be able to say, “My students are adults, and it is not up to me to keep track of their comings and goings,” and you up in his face about your son’s soccer game is cramping his style.

3. See your prof in person. Email is convenient and sending an email message might seem like it would make the professor’s life easier. And you probably are. But what you don’t realize is that professors are generally contractually required to be in their offices for so many hours a week, and it is discouraging when no one ever shows up. Getting there in person shows you really care about the subject matter and makes the professor feel like she’s changing your life. We love to feel like we are changing your life.

4. Never tell your prof that you are willing to settle for a middling grade. To you this might sound like you are being reasonable and that you are putting your prof at ease by showing you are not going to be too demanding. But remember that nearly all your professors were straight A students when they were students, and not wanting an A will seem like laziness, apathy, or a sad lack of ambition to them. Better to stroll your way to a  C and let them think you were doing your best.

5. Never ask more than two questions per hour in class. Professors like a certain number of questions because it shows enthusiasm and interest, but too many questions from one person makes other students tune out and your prof will become annoyed by the growing restlessness in the room.

Of course, you will have to adjust the particular approach depending on the kind of program you are in and the kinds of instructors you have. But the basic idea is the same. Try to see it from their side. Doing so may not convince your instructor to give you an A you didn’t deserve, but it will build good will and good will can give you a benefit of the doubt here, and extra helpful tip there. And it all adds up.

Related: Having trouble? Talk to your profs

Universities aim to improve retention rates

A grade of C+. It’s enough to shake up a first-year student and spell the end of university career, say some school officials. As mid-term marks begin to pour in for university freshmen over the next few weeks, Ontario schools say they’re on hand to help curb dropout rates across the province.

“We’re dealing with students who are overachievers in high school. They often have never had anything worse then an A,” said Deanne Fisher, director of student life for the St. George campus at the University of Toronto. “So, when they come to U of T and find they might have got a C +, or worse, on their first mid-term that can have quite an emotional impact on them,” Fisher added.

Related: Your grades will drop

While most students continue with their studies after first year — retention rates are steadily improving for many universities– there are still a small number of students deciding to pack it all in. The reasons are varied, from a crisis at home, to poor marks, financial struggles to a program that just doesn’t deliver.

Adam Miceli, 24 — an affable, bright young man — laughs sheepishly as he describes the years he spent meandering through different schools, unsure about his programs, uncertain about his future. Miceli, now a music student at the University of Toronto, began at York University in biology five years ago. By the time second semester had rolled around, he knew he was ready to leave the school. “I was coming right out of high school. I was thrown into things,” said Miceli, who said he had been overwhelmed by classes the size of stadiums.

Miceli was under pressure to succeed after receiving a scholarship. “I was pushed into the university because of that and plus, my parents were looking at me to perform.”

According to the Canadian Federation of Students there is a patchwork of information regarding retention rates across the county, but nothing on a national scope.

At most universities in Ontario, the retention rates are high. For example, at Ryerson University in Toronto, 89 per cent of the students from first year continued on to their second year in 2008. At the St. George campus at U of T, the retention rate for students coming back to school in 2008 was 90.3 per cent, at McMaster University in Hamilton it was 86.2 and at the University of Windsor it was 80.1 per cent.

But there are those who slip through the cracks. “We do know from our surveys that the primary barrier to success for our first-year students is not financial, it’s their own academic performance,” said Fisher. “You can feel you’re in over your head and it’s a palpable feeling for them, ‘wow, this is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done,’ ” said Fisher, as she described some of the feedback she’s heard from students.

Clayton Smith, vice-provost for students at the University of Windsor, said often students lose their way because they fail to “academically connect to their major.”

“This is a very different place than high school. They should commit to doing well. It sounds like daddy kind of talk, but the reality is just making the decision, ‘I’m going to do well,’ ” said Smith.

But not every first-year student is the same, and retention rates can vary, he added. “An aboriginal student who is away from home is in a different culture now, if they haven’t found a way to keep their values alive and be well supported, they often will go home and not finish university,” said Smith.

Smith also pointed out that if a school doesn’t make accommodations, such as providing a Muslim prayer room on campus, it could risk alienating a student.

Universities have taken aggressive steps to keep retention rates high. At Ryerson University, transition activities on campus help to integrate new students into the community by offering information on time management, writing and research. U of T addressed a problem with retaining its first-year engineering students a few years ago by creating an office solely dedicated to new students in the faculty.

It has also launched a pilot program for its life science students by offering organized study groups for students in large classes. Fisher said while university can be daunting for many, students need to reach out for help or else they will get lost in the shuffle. “We are tough and we expect a lot but we have to match that with the amount of support,” she said.

The Canadian Press

Power outage erases hundreds of student marks

The advice that students should always save a copy of their assignments has never been more relevant for students at Fleming College. After a series of power outages, caused by construction at the Peterborough school, hundreds of student grades were lost when the learning management system had, at one point, gone offline. The problem came to the attention of the college on July 16 when students began reporting that they were unable to access their grades through the system.

Students were officially informed of the data loss last week. At least 1100 full and part-time students are attending the college this summer, but it is not yet clear exactly how many grades have been lost. In most cases backup copies, such as spreadsheets of grades submitted by instructors, exist. In cases where there are no backups available, faculty have been left scrambling to dig up old graded assignments. IT staff are investigating the direct cause of the data loss, and chief information officer Jim Angel says a full report on the malfunction will be made public.

How universities and high schools are setting students up for disappointment

Scott Penner was a model high school student. With a grade 12 average of 93 per cent, and with math and science as his strongest subjects, he was poised to be a successful engineering student. That is, until he started at the University of Manitoba. Penner was not expecting to glide through university, though he “was still expecting to do fairly well.” Even by these lowered standards, his first year was less than encouraging. Not only was he receiving an uncharacteristic assortment of Bs and Cs, he failed first-year calculus, a prerequisite to continue on in engineering. “It was a bit of a shock,” he says.

Penner is not alone. The vast majority of students see their grades fall, often dramatically, once they get to university. What is sometimes called “grade shock” can have devastating consequences for students, as they struggle to cope with the fact that they are no longer at the top of the class.

Within the course of a semester dreams can be easily whisked away. “The business program or engineering program that they thought they were going to pursue [is] not an option for them anymore,” says Brock University economist Felice Martinello who recently co-authored a study on the changes in grades between high school and first-year university.

There are also financial repercussions. In 2008, Maclean’s surveyed the rate at which students who received entrance scholarships kept the requisite grades to maintain their funding going into second year. At York University, where fully 60 per cent of incoming students received an entrance scholarship, only 10 per cent kept their funding. At McMaster the rate was 21 per cent. At Ryerson, seven per cent.

As grades have long been known to predict whether students will complete their program, significant grade drops may be contributing to dropout rates, suggesting that students coming in, even with an A+ average, may become discouraged and simply give up. In fact, the best evidence we have suggests that it is the highest achieving students that are most at risk for being disappointed in university.

In his paper, Martinello, and coauthor Ross Finnie, find–consistent with previous research–that on average students see a 10-point drop in their grades once they are in university. Using data from Statistics Canada’s Youth In Transition Survey, the study concludes that nearly half of all students surveyed saw their marks decline by one letter grade. About 23 per cent saw their grades plummet by two letters or more. Only 2.5 per cent of students saw their grades improve, and about a quarter maintained averages consistent with their high school marks.

But, what is novel about Finnie and Martinello’s paper, and pertinent for high school academic stars like Penner, is that the economists determined that “the highest achieving group (in high school) has the largest decrease in grades.” Students entering university with a 90 per cent or higher experienced a drop of 11.9 points. Students with high school marks in the 60-79 per cent range had only a 4.4-point drop. Prior studies tended to assume that even with a drop, that there was a linear relationship between high school and university grades. Finnie and Martinello’s research challenges that assumption.

“You’d think that maybe, oh, it’s the weaker students, that once they go to university, they’re really going to get killed, but it turns out that’s it’s the 90 plus group,” Martinello says.

Recent trends suggest that the challenges of grade shock are only going to become more widespread. That’s because students with average entering grades, in the B or B+ range, are slowly disappearing. And when all, or most, of the students come in with an A or A+ average, many will have nowhere to go but down.

At the University of British Columbia average entrance grades across the university are expected to be 87 per cent this year, a two per cent increase from last year, and up from 80 per cent ten years ago, and 70 per cent twenty years ago. Andrew Arida, UBC’s associate director of enrolment says higher entering grades are simply a matter of supply and demand. “Because students are presenting higher grades, we’ve had to raise our admission averages to avoid over-enrolling,” he explains.

Only a few years ago, UBC was admitting around 15 per cent of students with grades below 80. That number is dwindling fast. Although Arida didn’t have final figures for the fall, he says only a “small number” of students will get in with less than an A. Students entering the two largest faculties, science and arts, will need a minimum high school average of 86 and 85 per cent respectively.

Similarly, the University of Waterloo increased by seven per cent this year over last, the number of entering students with an average of at least 85 per cent.

Schools like Waterloo and UBC, already considered prestigious, are joining an elite club of universities that are inaccessible to all but the highest achieving students. With an average entering grade of 88.9 per cent, Queen’s University rarely admits students with less than an A average. At McGill, the median average entrance grade for Canadian students is 92 per cent.

If you need better marks, some private schools are happy to oblige—for a fee

One afternoon in the spring of 2007, teacher Peter Hill was recording marks when he confided to a colleague that one of his Grade 12 English students was in danger of failing. In fact, Hill explained, he’d been concerned about the grades of several of his English 12 students at University Hill Secondary School in Vancouver, and he thought it strange that none of them had come to him for extra help.

“I was used to handing back essays to kids and if they weren’t doing well they’d come to me after school and they’d want to know how they could improve,” says Hill. “But in this case I handed back the essays and they’d just sort of grin at me, throw the essay away or whatever. And I was like, ‘God, that’s different.’ ” His colleague, a guidance counsellor, told Hill not to worry: the student would likely get a good mark anyway because she was taking the same course after-hours at a nearby independent school. Hill was stunned: “I just said, ‘Huh? What other school?’ ”

It turned out that five of Hill’s students had been taking Grade 12 English at Century High, an independent school that catered largely to international students hoping to attend a prestigious university in Canada or the United States. The students would regularly attend Hill’s class during the day, then take the same class at Century in the evening or on Saturday. “The weird thing is that kids were enrolled here [at University Hill] taking English with me and they were going to Century High, and if they decided they wanted the Century High mark, then it would go on their transcript and it would appear as if the mark came from this school,” says Hill. In British Columbia, that was made possible a few years ago when the province introduced a new policy allowing students to take courses from different institutions. The change was intended to provide choice for rural students, who could take online courses not offered in their home schools and then choose their “best mark” to appear on their transcript. But the policy has led to so-called credit shopping, too.

It bothered Hill considerably that a student could be taking the same class at two schools at the same time, then use the higher marks on her application to university—so much so that he decided to do a bit of sleuthing. He found a B.C. government website that lists class marks and provincial exam results for every school—private and public—in the province. And he found some disturbing information: for the year 2006-2007, 101 Century High students (60 per cent of the class) received a B grade or higher in Grade 12 English; just three failed. When he looked at how the same group of 138 students performed on standardized provincial exams, the results were just the opposite: 108 had failed the exam and only eight students got a B grade or higher. He found similar differences dating back to 2003-2004, when the online records begin. And Century wasn’t the only independent school showing a large difference between marks awarded by teachers and provincial exam results.

Hill decided to blow the whistle. He reported his findings to the local media, and a few days later then-minister of education Shirley Bond ordered an inspection of Century and any other school—public or private—that had big discrepancies between class marks and standardized exam results. In March 2007, the B.C. government issued warnings to five independent high schools in Vancouver — Century, Kingston, Royal Canadian College, Pattison and St. John’s International— insisting they move quickly to address concerns about large disparities between English 12 marks on provincial exams and the marks awarded students for class work.

Most grades are reasonable and well-explained. What do you do when one isn’t?

One of my many duties as chair of an academic department is dealing with student appeals. I’ve been dealing with such an appeal over the last couple of weeks, and it brought to mind a question that most students face at one time or another. What do I do when I think the grade I received is unfair?

The first thing to do is nothing. Do not go racing into your instructor’s office waving your paper with tears of rage in your eyes. Take at least 24 hours to consider the grade you received and to reflect on whether or not it was reasonable. If the instructor has included comments, read them carefully and, as honestly as you can, ask yourself whether the problems pointed out are genuine.

Even professional scholars face this kind of criticism. When I sent a draft of my book to my publisher, I received comments to the effect that the book was good but something must be done about chapter five. I had thought chapter five was quite good, and at first I was angry that these numskulls had pissed on my work. But that was just a bruised ego on my part. After I cooled down, and looked at chapter five again, I had to admit that it wasn’t as good as I thought it was. When it comes to intellectual work, intelligence is less important than humility.

If after some time, you still feel that your grade is unfair, you should see your instructor. At my university students are actually obliged to contact their instructors directly before they take further steps. And, in fact, most student concerns are handled at this preliminary stage. An instructor may have made an error in calculating or submitting a grade; the student, on hearing a fuller explanation of a mark may realize it was fair after all; or, the instructor, on further thought, might think a higher grade is justified after all.

Approach this conversation as a conversation, not a presentation of demands. If you take the position, even by implication, that you know you’re brilliant and if your prof can’t see it, he must be a moron, then your instructor will only dig in his heels further. Do not say that you did much better than this in high school, or that you are getting higher marks in other classes — no professor in the history of the university has ever been convinced by those arguments. Instead, ask your instructor to explain comments and problems in more detail; ask what you might have done differently; ask whether your instructor allows students to rewrite papers. If these answers seem unsatisfactory, ask if the instructor would mind looking over it once more, just to be sure that’s the correct grade.

Study fails to find “any robust relationship” between Facebook use and lower grades

To the collective relief of thousands of procrastinating university students, a new preliminary study at Northwestern University has failed to find “any robust relationship” between Facebook use and lower grades.

This announcement was made after Northwestern researchers tried to replicate the results of a highly publicized Ohio State University study from last April that correlated students who earned lower marks and studied less with Facebook usage.

“We found no evidence of Facebook use correlating with lower academic achievement,” said Eszter Hargittai, associate professor of communication at the school, in a news release late last week.

According to the release, the researchers used information from three existing data sets – including more than 1,000 undergrads at the University of Illinois, Chicago,  a national cross-section of 14- to 22-year-olds, and a national panel of American youth aged 14 to 23. No significant negative relationship between grade point averages and Facebook use was found.

More: Concordia unblocks Facebook

“I suspect that basic Facebook use…simply doesn’t have generalizable consequences for grades,” said Hargittai. According to researchers, the doubt cast on the use of social networking sites and their effects on students is reminiscent of suspicions cast on earlier new media, including TV and motion pictures, and their effect on children.

However, Hargittai does concede that Facebook use isn’t necessarily the best thing to being doing if a student wants an A.

“If somebody’s spending an inordinate amount of time on Facebook at the expense of studying, his or her academic performance may suffer,” she said. “ We need more research with more nuanced data to better understand how social networking site usage may relate to academic performance.”

A new study correlates lower marks, less studying with Facebook use

The time students spend “poking” friends, posting photos and updating their status on Facebook may bear some relationship to how they’re faring academically, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that students who use the popular networking site spend less time studying and have lower grade point averages compared to those not on Facebook.

Study co-author Aryn Karpinski, a doctoral student and graduate teaching associate at Ohio State University, said the researchers wanted to look at demographic differences of student Facebook users and non-users and to investigate their typical profiles.

Karpinski and Adam Duberstein of Ohio Dominican University are presenting their research Thursday in San Diego at the annual meeting of the American Education Research Foundation.

The researchers surveyed 219 students at Ohio State – 102 undergraduates and 117 graduates – in the summer and fall quarters of 2008. Of that total, 148 said they had Facebook accounts.

Facebook users were typically younger, full-time students majoring in statistics, technology, math, engineering and medicine, Karpinski said.

When it came to academic achievement, Facebook users surveyed had GPAs between 3.0 and 3.5, a B, compared to non-users with GPAs between 3.5 and 4.0 – an A, said Karpinski.

What’s more, researchers found those on Facebook spent one-to-five hours a week studying compared to their non-Facebook-using counterparts who devoted between 11 and 15 hours weekly to hitting the books.

When asked whether Facebook had an impact on their academic performance, 79 per cent of Facebook users said it didn’t. Students also said it was not having an impact on their grades because they weren’t using it frequently enough – even though nearly 65 per cent said they use their account daily or multiple times daily, Karpinski said.

While not drawing a direct causal link between Facebook and academic achievement, researchers found the disconnect between qualitative and quantitative findings are “cause for concern.”

“I totally agree you cannot say Facebook causes lower GPA or less time spent studying, but there is some kind of relationship there,” Karpinski said. “I hope that the more people that research this area will tease apart the intricacies of this relationship.”

Controversial prof gave all students an A+ after his request for pass/fail class denied

The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting that a series of clashes between the University of Ottawa and a senior tenured professor who was suspended last month and barred from the campus are now under investigation by the country’s main faculty association.

The suspension apparently stems from a spring 2008 grading dispute in which veteran professor Denis Rancourt gave all students in a class an A+ after he was denied permission to make the course pass/fail.

Rancourt is a noted physicist who has worked at the university for 22 years. According to the Chronicle, he is also an activist blogger, particularly on issues of pedagogical reform and university governance.  He says his advocacy of “greater democracy in the institution,” could be the real reason why the university is trying to push him out.

More details from the Chronicle:

Mr. Rancourt says he met with administration officials on December 10 and was given two letters, one placing him on administrative suspension and the other notifying him that his dean was recommending that the Board of Governors dismiss him. After he met with his union representative, the university police escorted him off campus.

“How can a disagreement about grading possibly justify ordering the university police to remove a tenured professor from campus, banning him from campus, assigning his graduate students to other faculty, firing his postdoctoral research fellow, and asking the Board of Governors to approve his firing?” he wrote in a letter to the board this week.

Andrée Dumulon, director of the university’s communications office, said the university could not comment on the move to fire Mr. Rancourt because Canadian privacy laws prohibit it from giving any details of its relationship with professors and also because of the collective agreement with the faculty.

The Canadian Association of University Teachers, the country’s main faculty association, formed its investigative committee shortly before the university placed Mr. Rancourt on suspension. The panel will also look at whether Mr. Rancourt’s academic freedom was breached or threatened. Over the years, according to the association, Mr. Rancourt has been involved in 18 grievances.

“We created the independent panel because this situation is so complex with claims and counterclaims, there’s no other way to sort through the forest of detail and make some recommendations,” said James Turk, the association’s executive director. Firing a tenured professor in Canada is very rare, he added, because 90 percent of Canadian universities are unionized, with collective agreements that strongly entrench academic freedom.

He never studies or buys textbooks, but aces every test. Don’t let him drive you nuts

Got a great question by mail about a week ago. I’ve been saving it for a proper reply.

I just finished my first semester at [university], and I worked my ass off; I studied hard for the tests and assignments, I got good grades and stayed home on nights I would have dearly loved to have gone out partying. It paid off; I still ended up with an 84% average.

One of my fellow classmates, who I’ve become pretty good friends with, never shows up to school, never studies and never opens his textbooks. He actually didn’t even buy half the textbooks he should have. The days he does come to school, he doesn’t even go to class but instead sits in the caf all day drinking coffee. And yet, he still ended up with a 98% average this semester!

How does someone like myself deal with this sort of person?? He drives me nuts. It’s not fair that he can do that so easily and the rest of us have to work like slaves, and still not do as well as him.

This question brings a lot of things to mind, and none of them are straight-up solutions. I’ll just throw everything I can think of at the issue and hope something helps.

First off, when dealing with someone who seems to have everything come too easy, don’t be too quick to take everything you hear about it on faith. Sometimes students flat out lie about their grades. Why I can’t guess, when there’s no obligation to talk about it in the first place, but some do anyway. Even more commonly students exaggerate and tell stories about their work habits that aren’t really true. Some students seem to be studying all the time when it isn’t genuine and some are just the opposite. Someone who is trying to portray and preserve a slacker image may claim to throw his papers together at the last minute, but are you sure it’s true? Maybe he stays up all night working and simply doesn’t admit to it. It’s hard to be sure.

None of this is to say your information in this case isn’t accurate. It may well be true, and in fact I’ll assume it is for the rest of my answer. But it’s good to remember that you can’t really guess, in the majority of cases, what’s going on with other students. It’s just like the classic story where the family next door seems to be perfect but once you know what’s really going on you realize how good you have it.

This leads me around to a thought or two on the subject of “fair.” Wow, what a terrifying subject. Somewhere in the world right now there are 12-year-old soldiers who simply dream of the chance to even see the inside of a classroom again. I don’t mean to belittle your concerns by pointing this out, but the idea of fair and unfair is something I barely know how to talk about. Which one of us has it better than the next person, anyway?

The kind of math it would take to add it all up, and to balance all of my advantages and challenges against those of another person, is just too much. So I try not to do it at all. I try to be thankful for my blessings and remember those who are clearly less fortunate but I sure don’t stay awake at night worrying about those who have it “better” than I do. I think about all the things I can’t know about them instead. Sometimes it’s tempting to look at just one thing and pretend that’s all that matters, and the concept of “fair” can be focused just on this one point alone, but obviously that’s untrue. Remembering this helps keep me balanced.