Anna PryslopskaDoes anyone else get emotional when they have to fail a student in their course? 😢
Claus Aranha@anna_pryslopska Yeah, it sucks!
Shravan Vasishth@anna_pryslopska There was a really interesting article that a Cambridge prof, David MacKay, wrote about grading: https://www.inference.org.uk/mackay/exams.pdf
@ShravanVasishth I admit that having to turn in weekly assignments is a lot for many students. Perhaps splitting the course in two would have been better. There's nothing I can do about grading, though. That's out of my hands. Pass/fail would be so much better in my opinion.
@anna_pryslopska I have a policy that if the student makes an honest attempt (I define what that means in the course description), I give 100% regardless of whether they got it right or not. But they have to attempt all questions.
@anna_pryslopska My idea was to dissociate learning from getting punished for getting stuff wrong.
@anna_pryslopska If you send the message that getting stuff wrong is bad, then students try to focus on avoiding making mistakes, whereas the greatest learning happens when you mess something up badly (and try to figure out why you messed something up). So errors should never be punished.
@ShravanVasishth I have learned about the "honest attempt" method from @tmalsburg and that is how the weekly homework assignments are graded (pass/fail) 😁 In particular, I stressed multiple times that people have to tell me WHAT they tried and WHERE they got stuck.
🚫 "I don't know how to do this"
✔️ "I tried X but that didn't work".
🚫 "I don't know how to do this"
✔️ "I tried X but that didn't work".
@ShravanVasishth Still, maybe I'm being too strict.
Annette Krop-Benesch@ShravanVasishth @anna_pryslopska In my son's 1. and 2. grade, spelling mistakes wouldn't be pointed out and corrected, so the kids wouldn't be frustrated. I did this at first and my son learnt a lot and felt good about getting to know these words, but I stopped because I couldn't correct all the words he "learnt" in school.
However, in tests they would loose points for these mistakes. Guess who felt punished and frustrated then.
@kropbenesch @anna_pryslopska Well, I am talking about graduate students here, MSc program. And we do correct their mistakes. The whole value of a mistake arises only if it's corrected. If one just leaves the errors uncorrected, of course that will damage learning, no matter what age. As an example, just look at all the garbage research published by hot-shot professors.
Tatjana Scheffler@ShravanVasishth @anna_pryslopska I would be really interested in seeing how you define "honest attempt". This seems like a very useful policy.
@tschfflr @anna_pryslopska From my moodle page, Part 1/2
Completing a homework assignment means that you have to make an honest attempt to answer every question given; it doesn't matter if your answer is correct or not, but you have to answer the question given.
@tschfflr @anna_pryslopska Part 2/2:
An answer does *not* count as complete if you answer some *other* random question, or if you copy out the question. Making an honest attempt at answers does not mean that you just *thought* about answering the question, but couldn't and so you submit an empty homework submission. An attempt counts as an honest attempt only if you actually attempt to answer the question given, and write some relevant code that attempts to answer the question.
Jules@anna_pryslopska yes, I hate it.