Re: students grade themselves

[Marcy Bauman <marcyb@umd.umich.edu>]

On Wed, 3 Jan 1996, Lynne Belcher wrote:

> When I was an undergraduate in the early 70s, the classes in which 
> students were allowed to collaborate on their grades were considered 
> the no-brainer classes.  The professors had the reputation of not 
> really being engaged in their classes, and the students didn't always 
> feel like they learned much.  Those who took such classes took them for 
> an easy A.  I never enrolled in one of those classes because I didn't 
> think I could or would be honest about what grade I thought I had truly 
> earned.  

	Lynne's comments point up one of the functions of grades in 
traditional classrooms: to motivate students to work harder.  The 
question for me isn't so much whether to grade or not grade (I try hard 
not to grade), but how to motivate students if the prop of grades isn't 
there.  

	I suspect that the non-graded classes that work do so because the 
instructors have found other, more compelling motivators.  Paula's class 
sounds like a case in point:  the students clearly were more interested 
in doing a good job at writing for their audience of Deans than they were 
in just writing to get an A.  In those kinds of classes, grades seem 
superfluous or even silly.

Marcy

Marcy Bauman
Writing Program
University of Michigan-Dearborn
4901 Evergreen Rd.
Dearborn, MI 48128

email:  marcyb@umd.umich.edu