A week or two ago, the provost informed faculty (without asking for input) that they are required to sift through student work before Fall Break and submit midterm grades. No, not grades--that might actually be useful information--just a letter: S for Satisfactory, or U for Unsatisfactory. "S U!" some faculty have replied, refusing to post the grade.
The letter, posted on CourseConnect, indicates whether you have a chance of passing the class in the last eight weeks of the semester. What percent of a chance? 100%? 50%? No way to know.
The move could encourage profs to do some overdue grading, or maybe it will just make them crabby. Apparently it's aimed to improve retention, with the idea that it will keep students from flunking out.
To drop or not to drop--freshpeople get warning letters if they're flunking a class, but don't you upperclassmen have a sense of when you're in over your head?
What do you think? Is the S/U worth it?
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2 years ago
1 comment:
Sounds pretty dumb to me. Like you said... you don't know the percentage of chance of failure so it can either make you overconfident and thus slack off or freaked out when you don't have that much to freak out about. Either way... seems dumb and not very well thought out. I think a grade is sufficient enough.
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