Is this just?

[sanddrag]

Okay here's the situation. In a certain class of mine one of the regular assignments is a study guide for the chapter. You must write the vocabluary term or question and the answer to each of about 40 items from the chapter. This study guide is worth 40 points (1 point per question/vocab term) in the class grade. Now, here comes the part I want you to give an opinion on.

If a mistake is made such as misspelling a word and crossing it out, no credit is given for the entire question/vocab term. Is this fair? So not attempting it at all gives the same credit as doing it and making one little mistake.

But it's more than that.

If a question, answer, or both are missing from the assignment or the answer is incorrect, double the value of the question (2 points) is subtracted from the score of the assignment.

Now, the controversy in this is that theoretically a student who does not do the assignment would receive a grade of -80. The teacher claims there is no such thing as a negative grade, the lowest a person can receive on an assignment is zero. So okay fine, you would receive zero out of 40 for not doing the assignment.

Now picure this. You do 20 questions of the 40 question assignment. You did not do 20 of the 40 questions, resulting in a 2 point reduction for each meaning you receive a score of zero for the assignment. Completing half the assignment earns the exact same grade as not doing the assignment at all. This would be promoting laziness in that there is no incentive to do any less than half the assignment. If a student doesn't do at least half, he might as well not do it at all.

Because of this fact, let's suppose the teacher didn't really mean to say the lowest score possible was zero and that there a negative score was indeed possible so there would be some incentive for doing any portion of the assignment. A person who honestly just did not do the assignment would receive the lowest possible score which would be -80 out of 40. My school's policy on cheating is that if cheat, you get a "double zero" for the assignment meaning you get a zero out of twice the value of the assignment. In this case that would be 0/80. The score of 0/80 is a far better score than -80/40 so in essence the teacher would be cheating. Is this not true?

Last, if an answer does not contain all of the required parts to it, it is labled as "sparse" and -3 is given for that question.

The bottom line is how can a teacher take away more points for not doing something, than the points he gives for doing the same something?

I know that points have nothing to do with the fundamentals of education but the math in it seems purely illogical to me.

What do you all think of this?

[Adam Y.]

If a mistake is made such as misspelling a word and crossing it out, no credit is given for the entire question/vocab term. Is this fair? So not attempting it at all gives the same credit as doing it and making one little mistake.

Yeah I had one teacher like that this year. All you can do is grin and bear it since he makes the rules. Besides its not the biggest pain in the but and it probably would help if you type it. A good typer can type some homework out in five mintues. Personally I understand where he is coming from. You can't expect someone to decode everyone's handwriting. Crossing out stuff makes it worst.

You must write the vocabluary term or question and the answer to each of about 40 items from the chapter.

Sorry this may sound stupid but do you make the questions up or do you answer the ones in the book?

The bottom line is how can a teacher take away more points for not doing something, than the points he gives for doing the same something?

Because he says he can. Im serious. There are some people you will and are going to meet that make no sense what so ever.

[sanddrag]

Typing not allowed and the questions/vocab terms are on a handout he gives us. We have to copy them onto a new piece of paper.

I understand what you are saying about doing what the teacher says because he is the one in authority, but is what he says just?

What do the rest of you think?

[Cory]

I think your teacher isn't going to care what a bunch of random people on Chiefdelphi think.

To answer your question, yes, that's kind of dumb, but sometimes you just have to deal with it, since you can't change it.

Cory

Yeah, my math teacher told us to print out and bring in the online study guide for the exams(school system too cheap to print out copies for students), and we get no points for bringing it in, but somehow we get less points if we don't.

[Joshua May]

Originally Posted by Cory

I think your teacher isn't going to care what a bunch of random people on Chiefdelphi think.

To answer your question, yes, that's kind of dumb, but sometimes you just have to deal with it, since you can't change it.

Cory

Of course they'll care, it's CD!

But really, I (being the non-confrontational person that I am) would just do the 80. however, I think it is wrong to subtract points for doing something wrong, especially to subtract more points than the question is worth in the first place. It's slightly different with the SATs where an ommision is 0, correct answer is +1, and wrong answer is -1/4. I have run into a situation with a teacher like yours, except what he does is make every single assignment worth 5 points. This doesn't change between vocab tests, big tests, essays, or a simple paragraph-long assignment. And he didn't even go over our summer reading work which was supposed to be 10 percent of our grade, and I spent about three weeks straight doing it right so I could get a good grade.

[Eugenia Gabrielov]

As far as advice goes, the best you can do is decide if it's really worth it to try and change it. The teacher likely won't change their style if one student complains but if a lot do it's more likely. In addition to that, the best thing you can do at this point is to do the assignments and deal because you'll get worse professors later on. I wish you much luck. -_-. Or you could just drop the class and play computer games all day .

[c-squared_2006]

It is unfair but it not like the teacher is unreasonable talk with them about their policy and point out the weak spots. But offer suggestions to amend them.