During my higher national diploma, a lecturer asked us to explain the purpose of examination, we all knew what examination was; we have had it plenty of times but we forgot the purpose of it. We have been having it since we were kids, we all have different meaning for it but the purpose; we knew nothing of it. As student of higher education, the best we could come up it was "It is a method of evaluating a student level of knowledge" And our lecturer reply was "Does it?
There are some things that exist within the academic structure that we have gotten used to, we know it is there but we never really took time to ask why, we just accept it for what it is. For grading system, this structure has been in place for decades, as far as education is concerned. Though some of the alphabetical structure might have changed but the details still remain the same.
Is there any point in documenting grades in details? For most people, it might not but for students, it definitely does. When it comes to grades, there are points attached to the details. Imagine if a grading system is structured this way, above 50 equals pass and below 50 equals fail. It might look appropriate but it does not. This means that for a student that scores 100 and a student that scores 51 both are in the same category, while a student that scores 49 and a student that scores 0 are both in the same category.
For both categories, none of them would know how well they passed or how bad they failed. For students that scores 51 or 50 and all they see is pass, they would never know how close they are to failing. For students like that, they are meant to put more effort because they are too close to the margin. The same also applies to students that scores 49 and 0, but all they see on their report sheet is fail. For those that scored 49, they are very close but they would never know.
They will only see themselves in the same category with those that scored 0, So how will anyone of them improve? This is why explaining grades in details helps people understand their grades a lot better not just categorically. They get to see how far they could get and where they are at the moment. With details, no student gets to hide under the simple grading system of pass/fail, every one get to see their true score.
There are also other things attached, I remember when I was in school, there are awards given to students that perform extraordinarily in specific subjects. Now imagine if the grading system is just pass/fail, how will this be determined. That means every student that falls within a category will be awarded, instead of giving it to the ones that actually deserve being awarded. I believe this will affect students morale more, why would I strive harder, if I belong to the same category like everyone else.
This write-up was inspired by weekly featured content titled Grading system in hive learners community.
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