CS-680 Spring 2005: Grading

Grading

In my ideal teaching world, each student is in the class in order to learn as much as he or she possibly can, and I am there to help. There are no grades at all. If a student decides not to learn anything, that's just his or her loss. I assign homeworks and give exams only to teach the material, not to test it.

In order to help you learn, I expect you to:

Attend class regularly and notify me in advance if you need to miss class.
Come to class prepared (study previous material, ask when you're confused, start the homework early, ...).
Participate in class.
Work with other students in class and, when assigned, outside of class
Contact me whenever you have any questions about the homework or the class material. No question is too minor. If it's blocking your understanding, then it's an important question!
Submit homework on time, as a hard copy pdf prepared with TeX. I will accept electronic submission only for extraordinary reasons.

I understand that grades may be important to you, so I will do my best to keep you informed about where you stand as the semester proceeds. But I won't put numerical or letter grades on each piece of work you submit. Homework will be graded on a check-minus, check, and check-plus system - in general, you should work to get a check or a check-plus. At the end of the semester, your course grade will reflect your work on homework assignments, one or two in-class exams, class participation and attendance, and the final exam.

When I began to teach mathematics in 1959 I believed I could use mathematics to calculate my students' final grades. I carefully assigned numerical scores to each homework and each exam question. At the end of the semester I computed a weighted average and assigned letter grades accordingly.

The more I did that the more uncomfortable I felt, for two reasons. First, I was never completely happy with what the numbers told me - they often suggested a grade lower than what I thought a student had earned (so I gave the higher grade in spite of the numbers). Second, I found that focussing on the numbers made it seem to me and to the students that the point of the class was to get a grade rather than to learn the material.

That said, I do have to decide on letter grades. I determine those using a rough curve. There are usually some A students in the class, so when the top grades on an exam are low that probably means the exam was difficult. The bottom grade is not always an F, or even a C (which for a graduate student is nearly equivalent to failing).

I have no prescribed fraction of grades of any particular type. Nothing would please me more than for every student to earn an A.

Here are the approximate weights I plan to use

40% homework
15% midterm
40% final
5% class participation