Grading in CHEM 210 and CHEM 215 take seriously the need for students to be engaged. What does engagement mean?

Engagement is finding the resources that work for you, and the self-awareness to know that they are working for you. It means knowing when something is not working, and either modifying the behavior with it or rejecting it and trying something new. Engagement also means, for the vast majority of people, that they are working up to speed with the pace of the class, and understand that they are in control of their learning. As an successful and experienced learner will tell you, it also means working independently AND with others, and it means staying ahead as much as possible.

There are so many ways to use class time effectively, but they all begin with a simple idea: let class time be the second time you are encountering the material – whether by reading, watching the video from a prior term, or having conversations with your peers.

To emphasize the engagement with resources and their importance, 50% of the course points derive from completing a self-reflective, self-reporting survey – EVERY WEEK – on what you have been doing and what you plan to do the next week. These are called the HEL|UM (“helium”) surveys (Holistic Engagement List at the University of Michigan).

These surveys are announced, open for 48 hours a week, and can be repeated as many times as students like. There are 588 possible points (14 weeks x 42 points), and 500 of them can be put towards the final grading. These points are serious business! If a student gets perfect scores on the exams, they have only earned 50% of the points in the course. We believe so strongly that self-reflection on engagement is important that we have given this activity equal weight to the exams.

The exams

There are three term exams, each worth 125 points, and a mandatory, comprehensive final exam worth 250 points. The lowest of the term exams is dropped. There are no excused absences from exams, so the zero assigned to a missed exam, for any reason, would obviously be the one that is dropped. Thus the 500 possible exam points.

A quick scan of the exam collections in the books should convince you quite rapidly that the tests in CHEMISTRY 210 and 215 are not designed to test your ability to recall information.  The examples from class are not repeated for recall; examples from year to year serve more of a purpose about what NOT to ask.

We use a historically determined ABSOLUTE SCALE (not a curve) to assign grades.

A curve means that only a certain percentage can earn an “A” grade, regardless of the outcome. A curve discourages cooperation. At the end of the term, we simply add up the points that have been earned. Using a scale, your grade is completely independent of the rest of the class. Using a curve, your grade depends completely on the rest of the class.

Scales are good; Curves are bad. With a scale, everyone (in practice) can get an “A” grade, as long as they get over the line – and if that happened we would be thrilled!

Here it is:
All 500 HEL|UM points plus 80.00-100% of the 500 exam points is the A-/A/A+ range (900-1000)
All 500 HEL|UM points plus 60.00-79.99% of the 500 exam points is the B-/B/B+ range (800-899)
All 500 HEL|UM points plus 40.00-59.99% of the 500 exam points is the C-/C/C+ range (700-799)
All 500 HEL|UM points plus 20.00-39.99% of the 500 exam points is a D (600-699)
Less than 600 total total points is a failing grade (E).

Any instructor reserves the right to vary the exact grade cuts from term to term, but these are the historical ranges from which we start. We do not round.

Letter grades in the course only come from the total points.

A few questions related to grading recur. These are almost all resolved by the core principle related to assessment: the criteria need to be openly stated, made available and applied to all students, and are not open to individual negotiation.

(1) Once the scoring key is set and used, it will not change. You are perfectly free to disagree that certain questions have partial credit and others do not, that some point values are not what you want them to be, and that makes no difference at all. It is our job to make these decisions. And 100% of the time, the only reason someone disagrees with them is when they are trying to get more points (not less), and so that position is biased and a complete conflict of interest, not principled.

(2) Discretionary reasons for assigning grades will not be used. Students tell us, quite sincerely, that any of a hundred extenuating circumstances ought to be taken into account that would cause the number of points to increase or cause the scale to be changed in their favor. Of course, it is always in the person’s favor. Taking these considerations into account is not going to happen. Ever. And you absolutely do not want to be in a system that allows such individual negotiation. First, it is against every credible rule: we guarantee the university that any opportunity provided to one student has been provided to all of them. We are not offering an essay site for anyone to explain to us why they believe their performance was lower than it might otherwise have been (in fact, see the testing as performance essay – subject matter mastery is not the sole thing grades depend on, they also depend on performance and the situation around the performance). Second, once you open the door to discretionary decision-making, who is to say that the negotiation must go in your favor? You have absolutely no power as a decision-maker and so some scoundrel of an instructor could well decide that disagreeing with the scale is a reason to lower a grade by 20%. Once you open that door to negotiation, you are open to all sorts of unintended consequences.

(3) We do not round the values. No matter where the line is, there will always be someone below it. We only ever hear from those whose scores were just below a line; set a different line, hear from another group. The lines are set and there is no rounding. This will not change.

(4) Correcting scoring errors is only open for a finite amount of time. Checking exams carefully is extremely important to learning, and we underscore that by giving you only a few days to submit for corrections. Please pay attention to those due dates and times, and do not wait until the last minute.

Essay 1: You have autonomy
Essay 2: The learning skills you enter with
Essay 3: Post-COVID dialed up autonomy
Essay 4: Resources and their useful use
Essay 5: Practice explanation: Control over when you make errors
Essay 6: Testing: It’s called performance for a reason
Essay 7: Transformational Learning: Resistance is Futile
Essay 8: Grading: Scales are good; curves are bad.