All Posts Tagged With: "marks"

Some activities may lead to lower marks

Photo by Spencer E Holtaway on Flickr

It’s common to use Facebook as a scapegoat for poor academic performance. That’s because a few small studies have shown that grades are lower among students who spend more time on the social media site. The assumption has always been that more time spent on Facebook translates to less time spent studying, which leads to lower grades.

But a newer, bigger U.S. study has found that Facebook time and study time are only weakly related. It takes many extra hours of posting and chatting before grades start to slip. What’s more, although the new study found negative relationships between grades and certain types of Facebook activities, other types of activities appear to be a associated with higher grades.

Continue reading Can you blame Facebook for your bad grades? Maybe.

Here’s what you need to know

If you’re in high school and thinking about one day applying to med school, here’s what you need to know right now.

It all starts with choosing your undergraduate degree. The first thing to consider: you don’t necessarily have to go into the sciences. Although a degree in the health sciences is the traditional route to med school , it’s certainly not your only option. Most med schools across Canada treat every undergraduate degree equally, and embrace “well-rounded applicants.” Meaning, a degree in music or sociology might actually give you an advantage in terms of standing out from the crowd.

However, there’s a huge barrier facing non-science students: the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT), an exam that assesses problem solving, critical thinking, writing skills, and scientific knowledge. In order to score well on the MCAT, med school hopefuls should have at least a basic background in the sciences, something that a music or sociology degree doesn’t exactly cover. Further, many med schools have prerequisite science courses, such as organic chemistry or physics.  A more traditional pre-med program- such as the Biomedical Sciences- has the prerequisite science courses automatically built-in, which also has the helpful side-effect of preparing you for the MCAT.

Of course, a music or sociology student can still take these science courses as electives and prepare for the MCAT. Not to mention, some med schools don’t require the MCAT, such as the Faculty of Medicine at McGill and the Northern Ontario School of Medicine. The bottom line: although there is no “right” undergraduate degree, when pursuing a non-traditional degree, you have to chase down those science prerequisites and keep the MCAT in mind.

Secondly, pay attention to the details. Specific admissions requirements vary between particular schools, and you don’t want to ruin your chances by missing something minor. For instance, to be considered at the University of Western Ontario’s Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, each year of undergraduate study must contain at least 3 full course equivalents whose published academic level is at or above the year of study. This means in your second year of study, 3 of 5 full course equivalents must be at the second year or above, and in your third year of study, 3 of 5 full course equivalents must be at the third year or above (in your fourth year, a mix of third and fourth year courses is acceptable).

There are plenty of other details that vary from school to school: Western considers an applicant’s two best years of study (the whole “3 full course equivalents” rule only applies to these two years), whereas McMaster’s Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine considers every single undergraduate course ever taken. Other med schools consider your two most recent years of study, while others let you drop a certain number of low marks.

Most importantly: although high marks will help your chances of success at any med school, they’re only one part of your application. Most med schools consider extracurricular experience and hobbies, volunteer work, medically-related experience, research experience, and so on.

-Photo courtesy of The National Guard

When a professor holds your marks hostage

During my first semester of university, I met with one of my professors to discuss a mark. It wasn’t anything official. The midterm had been handed back to the class, and I was surprised and disappointed by my mark.

The last page of the test had been an open-ended, essay kind of question. I’d expected my answer to earn a higher mark, and I wanted to understand where I went wrong.

After re-reading my answer, the professor explained where I should have elaborated more. The meeting was very short, and my mark didn’t change in the end, but I thanked the professor for taking the time to meet with me. I now knew how I could do better on the final exam.

What I didn’t know at the time: I was lucky to leave that meeting with my marks unscathed.

It was only after the fact that I suddenly remembered that section in the course syllabus. The part that explains how, if a student asks for a mark to be reconsidered, the professor reserves the right to assign an even lower grade than the one you started with.

I’m not just talking about a university’s formal appeal procedure, where a student requests (through a department chair or a dean) a review of their grade. Many of the classes I’ve taken include an individual course policy, something along the lines of, “If you request for a paper or test to be re-graded, you can end up with an even lower grade than you started with.” Right. So in other words, “Buzz off.”

It just seems wrong. If someone believes they’ve been assigned an unfair mark, and they ask for their paper to get a second look, why should the professor be sneakily taking hostages?

I’m sure that most of the time, the professor can give a perfectly fair, logical defense for the mark they assigned. But what if they made a mistake? What if they’re wrong? What if you deserve a higher mark? If someone thinks their paper deserves a better mark, why should their marks be held at gunpoint?

If I tell a cashier in a store that I think they accidentally charged me too much, and then I turn out to be wrong, should they have a license to then punish me for being wrong? You know, grab my wallet and take a couple bucks?

After all, if the cashier turns out to be wrong, I don’t get to penalize them for their mistake. I don’t get an extra five dollars back in change.

Maybe some students aren’t reasonable when they challenge a mark. Or maybe the fear is that without the threat of a negative consequence for burdening the professor and/or TA with having to take a second look, there would be a flood of second-guessers.

But why create a policy that treats every student as a potential time-wasting cry ass?

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.

Repeat plagiarists and cheaters would get an “FD” grade, could lose their degree

The senate and board of governors of Simon Fraser University say they have approved “significant and extensive” changes to the school’s policies concerning dishonesty and student misconduct.

Included in the changes is a new mark – FD – which will indicate that a student was failed for reasons of academic dishonesty. This means that a plagiarized essay or serious case of cheating could follow students around throughout the rest of their academic careers.

“The FD grade will be available to department chairs who feel that a student’s behavior warrants a severe penalty, usually because they are repeat violators,” says Rob Gordon, director of the school’s criminology department. “A chair may also request the imposition of more severe penalties through the University Board on Student Discipline such as suspension and the rescinding of a degree.”

More: Don’t freakin’ plagiarize!

What should I do if I’m tempted to cheat?

The changes were the result of a university-wide, three-year investigation by Simon Fraser’s senate committee on academic integrity in student learning and evaluation, otherwise known as SCAISLE. The committee was struck in fall 2005 after a series of incidents concerning academic dishonesty were identified, and the school commissioned a report.

That report found that 63 per cent of faculty and 41 per cent of teaching assistants and tutor markers surveyed at Simon Fraser had ignored suspected cases of cheating. This included cases of falsifying lab data, “recycling” of labs, fabrication of bibliographies, extensive plagiarism in papers, homework copying, illegal group work, and copying on exams.

Calling the policy “a zero-tolerance approach both in theory and in practice,” Gordon says the school aimed to create a fair, consistent and effective new policy on matter concerning academic integrity. “We believe the combination of policies, procedures and strategies we’ve come up with will do that.”

As of May 1, the new policy includes a “Code of Academic Integrity and Good Conduct,” which includes a summary of expectations for students around issues of academic honesty and personal behaviour. This includes prohibitions against hazing, bullying, disclosing confidential information and possessing guns on campus.

“We now have a single student code of conduct that covers both academic integrity and good-conduct issues,” says Gordon. “And we’ve created a reporting system with a central record keeping mechanism so we can better detect multiple offenders across campuses and departments.”