Jim
My profound condolences to you (and the students at UVA) for having to work at a school that mandates grading on a curve. That is just as arbitrary as any other grading system in existence as near as I can tell. To the question at hand, I have used contract grading with my students and you have described pretty closely the experience I had with the exception that I corrected all work produced as part of the contracts rather than sub-contracting to student groups to correct papers. Covey's approach there could be a helpful way around the mounds of correcting and record-keeping a contract grading faculty member has to do, but it must be carefully monitored as well. I have also taken a grad course, post-PhD, where all grad students completed a rather simple contract in pursuit of the grade they wanted--5 course products equaled an A, 4 an A-, etc. In the ones I designed and executed for my undergrads, I may have made it too complicated in that I allowed students to design their own products (and there were plenty of them) as part of the contract, which was submitted around week 3 of the course. I also allowed modifications along the way. It all added up to a lot of instructor work, but it got away from fear of less critical thinking and too much "standardized learning." In fact, my experience was that I tapped creativity within my students to a far greater degree than I have ever done in other systems of grading. The other thing I tapped in a big way was student motivation. Students used to getting average grades saw the system as an opportunity to get a good grade as long as they fulfilled their contracts, and excellent students saw it as a way to maintain their high gpa's without fear of instructor bias. Moreover, I got way more productivity out of my CGS students, though I also got some drek along the way--there was a little bit of a quantity over quality bias to the work of some students. All students felt that they were truly responsible for their grade--they had earned it, the professor had not "given" them their grade. I also liked it because, unlike curve grading, for example, it did not allow students to feel that their A was taken away from them because otherwise there would be too many A's in the class. I do admit that it graded motivation and persistence along with academic achievement, unlike most grading systems, but aren't those 2 qualities more important to career success than virtually any others?
So why did I quit using the CGS system? It was just too darn much work and I found some other techniques to get to my goals of motivating students and assuring that they felt responsibility for their own grades. However, if in retirement I teach an adjunct course and no others, I might re-institute it.
Best,
Bill
William P. Ferris, Ph.D.
Professor of Management
Western New England University
College of Business
227 Churchill Hall
1215 Wilbraham Road
Springfield, MA 01119
and
Editor-in-Chief
Organization Management Journal
www.tandfonline.com/uomj
omj@wne.edu
Tel: 413-782-1629
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-----Original Message-----
From: Management Education and Development Discussion [mailto:
MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU] On Behalf Of Clawson, Jim
Sent: Friday, December 14, 2012 10:55 AM
To:
MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU
Subject: Re: Students Creating Grading Contracts
Dear Doan,
In the absence of your email address, I write to pass on my experience as a student in Steve Covey's OB class back in 1971. He had contracts for each grade. Each higher grade included all of the lower grade requirements plus more. The contract for an A was two pages long single spaced and included memorizing and reproducing from memory a two page diagram that had 95 elements in it from Athos/Coffey's OB book. I liked the system, as each student could decide what grade they wanted. I've toyed with that system at our school, however, our faculty have implemented a forced curve grading system which is antithetical to a contract grading system so I've not implemented it. In summary, my beliefs are:
1. Contract grading systems (CGS) give student choice in how hard they want to work.
2. CGSs establish absolute grading standards that in most schools today are either subjectively arbitrary in the professor's minds or yield to relative systems based on normal curves.
3. CGSs won't work within universities that demand normal curve distributions.
4. CGSs make it more difficult to identify the "top 10%."
5. CGSs take more time to establish in the first two years, defining and then refining the absolute standards for performance.
6. CGSs would probably appeal to AACSB people who want to standardize learning.
7. Unless the instructor is careful, CGSs could push one more toward simple testing techniques rather than more critical thinking measures.
8. CGSs can be time-consuming to grade. If you have two pages of requirements for an A, who will go through all of those measures for each student? Steve divided us into teams, and we supported each other ("win/win") to reach our goals and we certified each other's achievements--so he dissipated the grading burden that way. "Honor" was very important in this process.
9. How does one assign a grade if a student gets all of the B requirements, all but one or two of the B+ requirements, and a few of the A requirements, AND had signed up for an A contract? In other words, what is the "judgment" of the instructor if a student signs a higher grade contract at the beginning of the course and then doesn't achieve that standard? (Steve never told us how he made those decisions.)
I hope this helps a little. I'll be interested in your summary document.
Jim
James G. Clawson
Johnson & Higgins Professor of Business
The Darden School, University of Virginia
Mail: Box 6550, Charlottesville, VA 22906
Packages: 100 Darden Boulevard, Charlottesville, VA 22903
Tel: 434-924-7488
Fax: 434-243-7680
Web:
http://faculty.darden.virginia.edu/clawsonj/index.htm
Twitter: @Jajisee
Blog:
http://jajisee.blogspot.com/
-----Original Message-----
From: Management Education and Development Discussion [mailto:
MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU] On Behalf Of Winkel, Doan
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2012 1:22 PM
To:
MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU
Subject: Students Creating Grading Contracts
*Apologies for cross-posting*
Good afternoon -
Does anyone have any experience letting students play a major role in creating their own grading contracts? I'm toying around with this idea and wanted to see what others have found successful and unsuccessful. I appreciate any and all feedback - please reply offline and I'll compile all feedback and report back.
Thank you - and happy holidays.
Dr. Doan Winkel
Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship
Illinois State University
Campus Mailbox 5580
Normal, IL 61790
(309) 438-2736
www.entrepeduc.org
LinkedIn: linkd.in/MPkBDA
Twitter: @Trep_Ed