What I learned at the ICTCM, day 1

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3 responses to “What I learned at the ICTCM, day 1

  1. Jeff Walker

    I’ve done the “no partial credit” thing in math classes before with some success. I relax the grading scale (by a lot – think 80-60-40-20 as cutoffs in the most extreme case) and simply refuse to give any partial credit.

    While it is perhaps a bit unfair to give the same zero scores to someone who works the problem correctly except for some minor arithmetic mistake as well as someone who has no clue how to even setup the problem, the fact is, a wrong answer is still wrong.

    One thing I do see when no partial credit is given is that the better students will actually start to check their work. I have always shown students how to check their work (in part, by always checking my work on problems I do at the board), but they start to see the importance of it after getting a bunch of zeros on problems they know how to do. Spend the 30 seconds to verify that your solutions to the equation are actually solutions!

  2. Regarding partial credit: for the past few years, I have graded everything based on rubrics which essentially boil down to 3 points for fully correct solutions, 2 points for minor mistakes, 1 point for major mistakes, and 0 points for no work (or, more precisely, they get zero if none of their work makes any progress towards a solution).

    Missing 1/3 of the points on a problem due to a minor mistake is generally enough to get people checking their work, and this scale does allow differentiation between the careless and the clueless.

    I’ve found that this approach leads to a plethora of Bs and Cs and fewer As than I used to award. I’m fine with that. (Drops and withdraws generally keep the Ds and Fs off the books.)

  3. G

    The reason for using partial credit is because the instructor is assessing understanding and process. The final answer itself is often much less important for assessing mathematical learning. When a student performs analysis, solution process, and gives a final result, if that final result is wrong, but nearly all of the analysis and process was right, then most of the item’s credit should be earned.