evaluation
aardvarchaeology | December 19, 2013The Swedish Higher Education Authority (Universitetskanslersämbetet) has evaluated our basic university programmes in a long series of subjects. The results for archaeology were published yesterday, based on the status 2012. There were 21 BA (3 yrs), Mag.Phil. (4 yrs) and MA (5 yrs) programmes at the country's archaeology departments. The median grade they've received is "high quality", which translates to a pass here. Let's look at the eleven programmes that flunked or passed with distinction.
Gothenburg. Mag.phil. in Mediterranean archaeology. Very high quality.
Gothenburg. BA in…
rallain | August 27, 2010It would be nice if I could come up with a good rhyme for grade to fit this title.
One of my brothers is a biochemistry faculty at Appalachian State University (hint - he is the one with the same last name that I have). We were talking (and surprisingly agreeing) that grades were dumb. What would happen if we stopped grading? Wouldn't that be awesome?
So, what would happen if there were no grades? Here are some thoughts.
We would only have one job in the class - help students learn. The second job of evaluating student understanding would only be there to help them learn more.
It would…
rallain | July 16, 2010I have been thinking about grades lately and I am pretty sure they are dumb. The main problem is that it seems that many many many people (politicians, parents, students, administrators, some other faculty, and zombies) think that the grade is the THE THING to worry about. Really, it is just a pale representation of the real thing.
This brings me to the allegory of the cave. I know you remember this when you read Plato's The Republic, right? Here is a picture that explains the whole thing:
I don't know where this image came from, it was on a boat load of other websites, none looked like…
jstemwedel | June 17, 2010Chad has posted an interesting discussion of a study of students' academic performance and how it is correlated to their evaluations of the faculty teaching them. The study in question is Carrell, S., & West, J. (2010). Does Professor Quality Matter? Evidence from Random Assignment of Students to Professors Journal of Political Economy, 118 (3), 409-432 (DOI 10.1086/653808) . Go read Chad's post for a detailed discussion of the methodology of the study, since it will likely answer your questions about my quick overview here. After the overview, I'm going to offer a few more thoughts…
rallain | May 20, 2010Grades are all over the place, but what are they? Well, I guess there are a few questions. What is a grade? What is the grade supposed to be? Why do we give grades?
I think the grade is supposed to be a measure of a students' understanding of the material. Probably everyone would agree with that description. But, it is still a bit tricky. Who (or what) determines what a student should understand? Who determines what an "A" means? Fortunately, there is not a governing body (yet at least in physics) that says what an "A" grade means. It is left up to the expert evaluations of faculty…
drorzel | January 14, 2009If you've been a student or faculty member at an American college or university in the past twenty years or so, you've almost certainly run across student course evaluation surveys. They're different in detail, but the key idea is always the same: toward the end of the term, students in every course are asked to fill out a questionnaire, usually a bubble sheet, assigning numerical values to various aspects of the course and the professor's teaching. Most schools also provide some option for free-form written comments as well.
These course surveys, particularly the numerical scores, figure…