It has been a while since I read the chapter in Better called "The Bell Curve." Still, I think I remember enough to be able to pose a couple of questions for others to consider.
First, do you think bell curve grading is the fairest way, or even one of the more fair ways, to assign scores to students?
Second, is there a point in medicine at which the effort you put in is no longer worth the fractional results? If not so in medicine, are there any endeavors where marginal improvements just are not worth the time?
I'll post very short responses to these questions at the end of my next post, which will be arriving soon. Of course, you may hear my answers in class tomorrow.
2 comments:
Joe - we didn't get to your questions in class today. I did want to comment about the first one. Grading on a curve is a different idea than the bell curve. They share some of the same jargon but they are about different things.
Grading on a curve is about rating performance based on relative ranking, in pretty much the same way as performance in a golf tournament determines how much prize money the pro wins. The key thing is that performance of others matter in determining the rating of performance of any individual. If you shoot 19 under par but somebody else shoot 20 under par, you come in second place. If you shoot 1 over par, but nobody else shoots better than 2 over par, you come in first place. So the question with grading on a curve is which place did you finish?
In theory, if not in practice, using this approach controls for the difficulty of exam, which might vary from one semester to the next. Absolute performance might seem "fairer" for assigning exam performance, but that does assume the instructor can intuit difficulty level when writing the exam.
I think grading on a curve is a fair way to assess, especially if the professor tends to make exams too difficult. Grading on a bell curve, however, is a method of grading that I do not think is as fair, but can be more motivating. I said in class that I was more motivated in my psychology class because there was some grading according to a bell curve-like system. I knew I had to perform very well in order to get the grade I deserved.
Overall, I think standard curve grading works in favor of everyone whereas the bell curve can tend to be unfair to those "19-under par" performers who just happen to have Tiger in their class.
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