What Gets You the Learning Should Get You the Points
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder argues that completion grades are justified because the activities that produce learning deserve to be reflected in the grade.
Key Takeaways
- Completion leads to learning - Students who do the work learn more than those who don't; grades should reflect that
- Points for completion are points for learning - If the assignment produces learning, grading for completion is grading for learning
- This isn't lowering standards - Requiring completion is the foundation on which mastery is built
Transcript
I got to put in a good word for completion grades because what gets you the learning should get you the points.
And that's kind of an unpopular idea.
I haven't heard anybody talking about completion grades or talking about tying grades to the work that produces the learning.
What I'm hearing a lot about these days is standards-based grading and not penalizing students for not doing the work because that's just compliance or that's a behavior and we don't want to grade behavior.
I think we do want to grade the behavior of doing your work because it is only by doing your work that you actually learn anything.
So it makes total sense to me that we would grade things for completion, especially if they're practice, right?
There should be lots of things that are graded for completion.
In other words, you don't get points if you don't do it, but you also don't get points taken off if you get a question wrong.
Students should be able to get things wrong when they're still practicing, when they're still trying, when they're still...
going through that process of figuring out how to do something like math problems.
If it's a practice problem set, you should not get points if you don't do it.
And these ideas that are going around now, these policies of 50 points being the lowest allowable grade, don't make sense to me because that disincentivizes kids from actually doing the work that is going to produce the learning.
And I think that that's the connection that we've lost sight of.
that if you don't do the work, you don't do the learning.
So of course, why would we give points for other stuff?
Why would we give points when students don't do anything?
Why would we fail to give points when students do their work?
Why would we take points off when they get problems wrong?
There's such a narrow window in which effort makes sense rationally for the student.
I have to try hard enough to get some points, but if I get something wrong, I might not get those points anyway.
And if somebody else doesn't do the assignment at all, they get half credit.
We've just got to stop all these things that don't make any sense.
You know, as a kid, everybody would ask in every class, is this for a grade?
And the teacher would always kind of roll their eyes.
And if you're a teacher like me, you rolled your eyes and said, like, this is not a good question to be asking.
Yet it is something that people really care about.
Everybody wants to know, is this for a grade?
It should be for a grade.
Everything should be for a grade or kids aren't going to do it.
And if they don't do it, they don't learn.
Let me know what you think.