I’ve been thinking a lot about grading recently. It turns out that one of the jobs of the chair is to approve all grades and that leads a person think about what grades mean and how we deploy them. It seems to me that grading is the ultimate collaborative activity – grades are arbitrary signifiers that only mean what we collectively agree they mean – and yet it is a collaboration that we rarely consider and discuss. Last time I remember a group discussion of grades was back when we still did everything on paper, the schedule of courses came out in print, and every English professor was assigned 40 advisees. I don’t think we even have consensus on the philosophy underlying our grading – do grades reflect a student’s relative standing in relation to comparable students (grading on a curve, if you like, based on a broad peer group such as all students who take English classes) or do grades reflect a student’s mastery of specific skill sets (grading by achievement, where all students can achieve a perfect score if they can manifest perfect control of the skill sets)?

If the reality for most of us is probably some combination of those two, then it is useful to know the norms for the distribution of grades. The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences presents its sense of appropriate distributions, based on discussions of the Educational Policy Committee, and that information is handily charted here. If you assume that most of our courses are advanced undergraduate classes, then they suggest 22% As, 38% Bs, 37% Cs and a grade point average of 2.77. If you are worried, though, that your grades are out of line, it might be more interesting to know the true distribution range of our department, and that, too, it turns out, is knowledge available to faculty through the Registrar’s Infobank site (access requires your hawkid, and then click on Grade Distribution under Miscellaneous Reports). From the whole 75,000+ grades reported in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in Fall 2005, it turns out that 28% were As, 32% Bs, and 17% Cs, with a grade point average of 2.89. If you focus on the hundred or so courses taught by English faculty for majors, the distribution is about 30% As, 42% Bs, and 16% Cs.

All of this comes to my mind in part as we approach the end of term and I realize that we will each be agonizing – alone and with little consultation – about the appropriate range of grades in the classes we are teaching. It comes to mind even more forcefully, though, on account of an amazing website that is getting advertised to all of our students but none of us faculty, a site called Pick-A-Prof (http://www.pickaprof.com/). Here the information that is confidentially and not very clearly accessible to a DEO at the end of each semester is made available in stunning technicolor detail to all of our students. Here, in beautiful bar charts, presented with technical wizardry for free to any student who chooses to look, is available the Grade History on every one of us professors. Here you can see the percentage of As, Bs, Cs, Ds, and Fs that each of us has given as a whole or in specific courses, along with our grade point average. From what I can make out, it’s based on the last two or three years of grades and is generally accurate, if full of misunderstandings.

Horrified yet? It gets worse. Not only can you look at the grading characteristics of each professor in detail, you can also compare the grade distribution of each professor who has taught the same class lately. Click on 008:101 Literature and Culture of the Middle Ages and you learn that Professor Wilcox gives the lowest gpa for this course at 2.72 (despite my high total average gpa of 3.22, displayed on the same page – Old English, with its self-selecting high-achievers, apparently makes me look soft on average!). You also learn that nobody dropped my 008:101, even though my average drop rate is a relatively high 19% (this time Old English, with its special challenges, makes me look harsh). A course like 008:147 Shakespeare provides an example where five different professors all with different teaching styles in large and small classes all have roughly the same grade point average and roughly the same drop rate. 008:106 Literature and Culture of 20th Century America, on the other hand, also taught by a range of different professors with different pedagogical styles and emphases, has a hugely varying grade distribution and grade point average depending who taught it.

And so, I find myself wondering, just how are students using Pick-A-Prof.com? Maybe they are comparing all of our grading practices to seek out the most rigorous educational experience they can get for their tuition dollars. We can but hope! More likely, though, I can’t help suspecting that students are going to look at that handy technicolor data and use it to make decisions about which professor it is expedient to take if they want to get a high grade. As the time approaches for signing up for summer and fall courses (early registration begins April 17), it occurs to me that we might want to pull our grading expectations towards a common norm if we don’t want to skew the registration process. In particular, it might be wise for us to agree on a common approximate grade range for a single course even when it is taught by different professors. Maybe it’s time to start thinking about another departmental-wide discussion of grading expectations, one that acknowledges the realities of the world of information technology?

Research Funding Matters

As winter breathes its final gasp, crocuses begin to raise their wary heads, and pelicans appear on Coralville Reservoir on their way to cooler northern climes, it’s that time of year when the mind of many an academic turns to… research grants. May 1 is the deadline for NEH individual fellowships (details here), while you can find other grant opportunities gathered together in the convenient websites of the CLAS and the Division of Sponsored Programs. As you contemplate your grant applications, let me remind you of the vital importance of routing your application correctly through the College and the Division of Sponsored Programs. The big reason for doing this has to do with requesting a stipend supplement to bring an external grant up to the amount of your salary (details here). In many cases, the university will happily provide such a supplement (see guidelines), but only if you have routed the application correctly in the first place. This means filling out the form available at the website and sending a copy of your application to the College after getting my signature on it for all grant applications.

Happy applying!