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A letter from the course coordinator of my Chemistry program

Cyc

Cyc

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Sep 11, 2000
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Canada
A letter from my CHEM coordinator re: Test results.

Dr. xxxxx writes in response to a student who is upset about his grade on the first exam.

At the end of the year, the average grade has to be within a narrow range that is set by administration. We're not permitted to disclose what that number is, but you can imagine the different things that could be done to achieve that number. Possibilities may include adjusting the level of future tests and exams, giving x% to the entire class, etc.

The average for the short-answer section was 49% for all the sections combined. After the MC section was taken into account, the overall average for the Nov Test was 60%. i.e. For the test as a whole, the average is therefore not below failing. While this is somewhat lower than we thought it would be, it is not out of the ordinary.

While I understand your concern that the majority of students are honours or near-honours students, it is important to realize that admission is based exclusively on high-school grades. However, there is no consistency with respect to the meaning of a grade. Some high schools will hand out 90s to students who do very little, while other schools will make students work hard for their 85. Students in the former category often have a very tough time in unversity, while those in the latter category usually have an easy time in first-year and find most of it to be review, despite having a lower entrance grade.

As you've suggested, first-year (and this test in particular) is likely to be a reality check and a wake-up call. We (both instructors and TAs) were particularly surprised that the tutorials were very poorly underutilized up until the week of the test. During the week of the test, the tutorials were packed, and the majority of the questions asked by students were not from chapters 1, 2, or 3, but rather about stoichiometry (general review). While some students are staying up-to-date with the material, it was evident that many were not. This is a common issue throughout other first-year science courses.
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Now first of all, admission is absolutely NOT based on high school marks. I've never taken a Chemistry course in my life. However, on the course outline, they have a handy little disclosure basically to the tune of, "If you don't meet the course prerequisites we reserve the right to kick you out without a refund."

Second, he's lying. I have it on good authority that the class average was closer to 58% for this test. He's just bumping the numbers to make it sound better.

So this leaves me in a quandary. I really want to write back to course coordinator, because I believe that the school policy is not in the spirit of fairness. However, if I do, I'm afraid they'll do a background check and boot me out of the course. I have a response prepared:

This is my reply. Mind you this is on a public message board. All 1600 students and 6 professors and dozens of TA's can read this.

You said, "At the end of the year, the average grade has to be within a narrow range that is set by administration. We're not permitted to disclose what that number is, but you can imagine the different things that could be done to achieve that number."

This strikes me as a rather bizarre policy. Wouldn't meritocratic fairness dictate that class averages be accountable to the warm bodies in the classroom, and not some vague, undisclosed administrative number? It just seems like you're condemning people to failure, regardless of their capability.

I understand that with such a large group, standard deviation would be quite low, but the whole thing flies in the face of what I believe is the spirit of higher learning. Also, you have to consider that there are mature students enrolled in this program. Chemistry is the only 100 level Science course that completely fails to make accommodations for non-traditional students.



I'm just too big of a pussy to hit "send" because I'm afraid the Gestapo is going to shut me up. What to do.... What to do?


Does this seem really strange to anyone else? They actually have a strict % average must be gotten in the course in order to meet administrative guidelines. That just blew me away. What about the students, don't they matter?
 
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Cyc said:
Dr. xxxxx writes in response to a student who is upset about his grade on the first exam.



Now first of all, admission is absolutely NOT based on high school marks. I've never taken a Chemistry course in my life. However, on the course outline, they have a handy little disclosure basically to the tune of, "If you don't meet the course prerequisites we reserve the right to kick you out without a refund."

Second, he's lying. I have it on good authority that the class average was closer to 58% for this test. He's just bumping the numbers to make it sound better.

So this leaves me in a quandary. I really want to write back to course coordinator, because I believe that the school policy is not in the spirit of fairness. However, if I do, I'm afraid they'll do a background check and boot me out of the course. I have a response prepared:

This is my reply. Mind you this is on a public message board. All 1600 students and 6 professors and dozens of TA's can read this.

You said, "At the end of the year, the average grade has to be within a narrow range that is set by administration. We're not permitted to disclose what that number is, but you can imagine the different things that could be done to achieve that number."

This strikes me as a rather bizarre policy. Wouldn't meritocratic fairness dictate that class averages be accountable to the warm bodies in the classroom, and not some vague, undisclosed administrative number? It just seems like you're condemning people to failure, regardless of their capability.

I understand that with such a large group, standard deviation would be quite low, but the whole thing flies in the face of what I believe is the spirit of higher learning. Also, you have to consider that there are mature students enrolled in this program. Chemistry is the only 100 level Science course that completely fails to make accommodations for non-traditional students.



I'm just too big of a pussy to hit "send" because I'm afraid the Gestapo is going to shut me up. What to do.... What to do?


Does this seem really strange to anyone else? They actually have a strict % average must be gotten in the course in order to meet administrative guidelines. That just blew me away. What about the students, don't they matter?
Click to expand...

This is extremely common practice and I don't actually think there's anything wrong with it. A lot of courses standardise their marks in this way. One reason is that if everyone does poorly in a course, it means the course was taught badly. If you standardise marks, it means that people don't lose out because of bad teaching. Another reason is the opposite: if everyone does extremely well, it means the assessment was too easy.

Also, I don't know what kind of background check you think they will do on you, or what you have done in the past to think you could get kicked out for it, but you really have nothing to worry about here. No professor is going to be bothered doing a "background check" (whatever that is) on a student for something they posted on a message board, and I doubt there is anything in your background that could result in them kicking you out of uni anyway (I can't think of anything, including a serious criminal record, that would allow this).

Ultimately go ahead and post it. I doubt you have much to worry about except for being ignored.
 
I don't know Cyc. If this is in response to a private letter written to you, I think you could be doing yourself a disfavor by posting a response in public. If you are the individual facing problems in that course, the best action is to work with the professor and TAs; you want them to know you, appreciate your particular challenges, and assist as they can in clearing a path for you to do well.

Also, setting a curve for a class (e.g. the class average shall be an 87.5) doesn't condemn anyone to failure. Grades that deviate in the negative direction from the average sufficiently to fail would also fail if there were no set curve.

So I'm not sure your problem is really with the setting of a curve, or keeping the range secret (it's almost certainly within a B+ range).

It seems to me that really relevant claim is that the school does not provide adequate aid during the chem 100 course for non-traditional students. That is, the tutorial sections are not sufficiently helpful, or the coursework assumes too much knowledge for certain individuals to catch up and still have a chance at doing well.

Whether that's true or not will depend on the nature of the aid offered, the amount of knowledge actually assumed, and whether the problem is widespread among non-traditional students.

I think a better option would be to deal with this in an individual manner, perhaps face to face. Ultimately, what the student wants is a fair chance to do well, which necessitates that adequate resources be provided for him to do so.
 
Perhaps I'm not understanding what you mean by "setting a curve for a class."

The course outline is clear. You need 60% to pass, and the tests and labs are weighted in a very specific manner. There no curve involved as far as I know.

The take-home message that I got, is that they're trying to make the test questions and format sufficiently difficult, so that a certain amount of people fail.

Assuming what the chem coordinator said is true (that the class average was 60%.) Then if that trend continued, 50% of students would fail the course. That doesn't correlate at all with a B+ average.

How is this standardising a mark? I'm unclear on what you mean. Maybe I misunderstood the response completely.
 
^^
Oh. Sorry! It's me who completely understood. So what you're saying is that you need a 60% to pass, and most people didn't get that?

Well I mean that's ridiculous. It's outrageous to have a course at any level except the absolute highest undergraduate level in which half of the students fail. This is particularly the case for a mandatory first year course which is supposed to be introductory. What the professor is doing is basically saying sucks to be you if you fail, and then blaming the overall grade on inadequate class attendance (which may or may not be true, I don't know). I mean, even if the class average is at the pass level, that's really really low still.

If the message you quoted was e-mailed to you directly then I would avoid posting that on a public board. That would be considered kind of shitty. But if it was posted on a public board then you could probably respond. Ultimately I just think you'll get ignored, but you can do your best. As Heuristic said, I think you would have a better outcome if you dealt with whoever it was on a personal face to face level rather than posting on public boards, since you will probably just be written off as someone posting in a huff because they are pissed off they didn't get they grade they think they deserve. If you have external circumstances influencing your ability to study, you could also probably apply for some kind of special consideration from the faculty.
 
Sorry, to clarify - This is all taking place on a public message board. I have written a personal letter to all the professors, but as you predicted, I was ignored.

Also, while this really hurts my pride to admit, this is my 2nd crack at this course. Otherwise I am a A or B+ student in all my other subjects. Technically I should be acing this course, but I got 50% on the first test. I found I knew the material, but would often get tripped up by the wording of the question, or false positives on the multiple choice.

Many students are upset, and understandably so. I'm just not sure why the chemistry dept. is trying to hard to cull 1st year students. It's really stressing me out. The textbook is fine. The teachers are fine. I do all the work, and enjoy the subject material... I just find that testing is ridiculous.

Would it help if I posted an actual question from the test, to give you guys an idea of what I'm talking about?
 
The only outstanding question I can think of would be if the 60% mean was fixed as target, but grades were normalized about the real mean after-the-fact, and then "redistributed" to align with the 60. I've seen this kind of thing pulled before. For example, students who get between the mean and a standard-deviation above the mean in percent receive a "B" (regardless of their "true" percent score), students who get above two standard-deviations get an "A," and so on. So really, their angle is not to make half the class fail, but instead to distribute the same amount of A's as F's and so forth...The 60% is just a benchmark, and grades are actually assigned much differently (your actual grade is translated into a predetermined percent in the redistribution effort). Mainly this is done in an effort to run-out grade-inflation and such, but isn't the run-of-the-mill way to do it (more confusion, less obviousness, etc.). Surely does allow for a student to fail who would pass under otherwise systems, but the opposite could be said; a failing student could pass here.

Or, in a simpler and similar situation, 60% is the average, but the percentiles are changed. Maybe 80+ is an "A," 60-80 a "B" and so on. I've had this done in courses before. Mainly where the teachers want to torture you, but not necessarily punish you too bad for it either (but don't want to frustrate themselves by not tearing work apart, either).

That's all I can really think of, though. If it's not any of that, and actually 50% of people are failing an introductory course, then that is just a bit insane.

As for the mature-student instruction, I see both sides. One being yours, so I won't reiterate it, but the other being the fact that I couldn't have passed an intro-level dance course at any age so far to save my life (to argue via example)... The latter is probably what they'll throw at you -- that if you want to enroll as a mature student, you have to be able to "keep up," akin to older athletes or something. But by all means, if you feel as if you are being treated unfairly, speak up on that front. It's your basic right as a student to do so.

I understand your frustration, but I do also agree that 1. You should do this privately, not publicly and 2. Either way, the chance of you not being heard if a likely possibility. It's very "political" in that regard :\
 
Cyc said:
Also, while this really hurts my pride to admit, this is my 2nd crack at this course. Otherwise I am a A or B+ student in all my other subjects. Technically I should be acing this course, but I got 50% on the first test. I found I knew the material, but would often get tripped up by the wording of the question, or false positives on the multiple choice.
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Reading the first paragraph of the professor's letter, it seems that the final course grades will be curved. That is, supposing that the prescribed course average must be within a couple points of 87.5. And suppose the actual course average, before the recentering, is a 62.5. Then the grades would be shifted appropriately to give a new course average of 87.5.

If you score 50%, then you were about 8 points below the mean. If you kept up this performance, I'd imagine you'd finish the course with around a B-/C+ average.

But meet with the professor, or TA, face-to-face, and check this.

Cyc said:
Would it help if I posted an actual question from the test, to give you guys an idea of what I'm talking about?
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Absolutely. Or even a few questions, if you can manage, particularly those you found problematic. Then if there is some systematic error or problem, perhaps we can put our finger on it.

Regardless, you're fairly close to the class average. It doesn't seem as though you're impossibly far behind. I'd meet with the TA or professor to discuss the mechanics of computing you final average, and work with them to find ways to improve your grade. Questioning whether the university should keep the range to which it wants courses curved private isn't a fruitful approach, and really doesn't bear on your problem. It also sets up an antagonistic relationship between yourself and the TAs and professor, which is not optimal.
 
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