Grading of Passes
S197 results were out yesterday for the 2007B presentation, along with a bunch of other science short courses, and I’m happy to say I got what I wanted:
What that screenshot doesn’t show is the OES score (because I keep such things to myself) – which seems to be an endangered species at the moment. This presentation of S197 was the last that will give a score, the current presentation of S194 that I’m working on won’t give a score, and that little habit will soon be spreading to other courses, apparently. I’m not happy about this. Read on below the cut for why…
According to the OU, percentage scores aren’t useful in giving feedback to students on where they went wrong on a course and how they could improve. They also don’t tell employers who are looking at your qualification what you’ve proved you can do. The alternative is to mark against a course’s Learning Outcomes – so in future, you’ll get “Just Achieved”, “Achieved” or “Well Achieved” against a Learning Outcome to indicate a pass, or “Not Quite Achieved” or “Not Achieved” to indicate a fail. There’s a post in OUSA 10-Pointers by the Course Chair of SK183, Audrey Brown, explaining the full rationale behind all of this, if you’re interested, along with a rather heated debate on the subject. Guess where I got the inspiration for this post…
I have no problem with the OU providing feedback against the Learning Outcomes – indeed, any feedback against a result can only be a good thing – but I don’t see why the percentage mark has to be abandoned to do it, other than as a result of pandering to political correctness. The score serves several useful purposes, not least in being a motivational tool – for me, each course is a constant quest to push the scores higher, to see what I can get, and the result for one course acts as the baseline for the next. A simple “Pass” doesn’t provide that motivation. Even going back in the process to look at assessment – in the ECA for S197, for example, you can look at each question, see the number of marks on offer, and work out from that how much information you need to provide (no point writing three paragraphs for a 2-point question). With the ECA for the current S194 presentation, by comparison, you can’t do that – some questions specify “two or three sentences” to clue you in, but not all, and you generally have no idea what the weighting of a particular question may be. How does that help? The point has also been made by others that, if you’re trying to decide what courses to take with one eye on the classification of a future degree, you want to take the courses where you’ve got the best chance of gaining a high mark, and the new “achieved” comments don’t help you do that.
I don’t see what the issue would be with providing both a percentage score and feedback against the learning outcomes. I truly think to OU are making a mistake here – I just hope enough pressure can be brought to bear to make them see a little sense.
21. June, 2007 at 10:02
I think the poll is an excellent idea! Many thanks for posting it.
) Have added my vote.
Incidently – for all 6 of the Science Short Courses I did, I got a score PLUS a feedback letter, so they used to do that. I agree that much of it is probably to do with being PC, but I wonder if by dropping one of these they will also save money…?
Thanks again,
Helen.
21. June, 2007 at 10:20
I’ve added my vote too.
I like grades – not to publish them to others, but to ensure that I am keeping up my own standards.
All the short courses I’ve done so far except s151 (maths) have had scores plus some feedback (the amount has varied).
I would go as far to say that I am slightly put off doing any more whilst there is only a pass/fail, and the achieved/just achieved malarky – bah humbug…..
Cathy
21. June, 2007 at 10:21
I’ve done two SSCs so far (S196 & S197), and just got the scores. Sometime I wish the OU would be just a little more consistent!
I do like the idea of the feedback – just not at the expense of the scores…
21. June, 2007 at 10:25
sorry folks, for grades read percentages in my message above. I knew what I meant…..
Cathy
21. June, 2007 at 10:35
I don’t understand why, if all the students want ’scores’ the OU are ignoring them. Or perhaps this has only just happened, and we are only just noticing.
I think we should take this further.
Thanks for the opportunity to rant (and vote)!!
Anna
19. July, 2007 at 01:48
Well, having taken higher education short course at a few University establishments then I don’t have a problem with the OU going down the learning outcome route. As for employers: decent one’s use some form of appraisal system which mirror the same sort of performance systems as that used by learning outcomes. Human knowledge isn’t static, applying our knowledge to increase and improve our potential to learn isn’t political correctness it’s commo sense. You get to learn a new system or become a dinosaur
21. July, 2007 at 11:02
It’s not that I’m against feedback against the outcomes, I just wish they’d continue with the scores as well. When I got my result for S197 recently (last presentation of that course that will issues scores), along with the percentage mark we also got feedback against each question & where people had made common mistakes in answering the ECA questions – that’s the best of both worlds, really.
As for employers: I’m working towards a named degree at the moment (the SSC’s are just for fun, really), and in my own experience all they’re interested in is the class of the degree. Certainly as far as my funding’s concerned, it’s a simple case of “Get a 2:1 or pay it all back”. Learning Outcomes have never come into it…