Jen and I were good at school (Jen was salutatorian in high school; I was not, but still respectable), so grade card day was fun and exciting in our respective homes. Likewise, our two girls did well in school, so there were proud moments, smiles, and rewards on grade card days. Grades represent evidence of learning, but they can also measure whether you did what you were asked to do. You might have learned to be a great writer or be wonderful at math, but you will get a low grade if you don’t actually turn in the paper or do the homework to prove it.
One set of grades Jen and I didn’t enjoy giving out for our young girls was for the daily Barbie Talent Show. The two girls would use their dolls and outfits to put on a rather elaborate performance, each ending in critiques and grades from Mom and Dad with a daily winner. We had to score them on costumes, singing, gymnastics, dancing, and of course, the runway strut. Barbie-1 was great at doing the splits, but lost her hat in the process, while Barbie-5 often needed improvement on the cartwheel/flips. However, Barbie-3 beautifully sang a thankfully short song, all while wearing a stylish pantsuit. Every. Single. Day.
Grades are also a way to communicate with the students (and in the case of K-12 students, their parents) how things are going. It is important that students understand their grades and how to improve them if needed. In college, grades can be VERY important, determining if one earns or keeps a scholarship, qualifies for federal financial aid, can get into graduate school one day, stays eligible to play a sport or participate in an activity, and on and on.
And grades stay with you. It is called a permanent transcript for a reason. I have seen people come back to college in their 30s or 40s and have to deal with the fact that at 18 they may have made some poor choices about not coming to class and not sitting for the tests. This might cause them to have to apply for a fresh start or clemency to help with their GPA. They may have to wait to get financial aid until they complete a semester on their own dime.
Yet I don’t want to overstate the importance of grades either. If you define success as business success, then it doesn’t appear that there is a correlation between grades and getting rich. A recent study of millionaires in the US found that the average college GPA among them was 2.9. That’s a C+ average. So maybe grades aren’t everything.
Grade cards are very much a part of the learning process, whether you want it to be or not. I have worked with many grading systems in my 30+ year career in higher education, as has my wife, who, while only 35 years old, has seen many different grading systems installed and rethought in her 30+ year experience in K-12. (Ok, while I may have earned a lower grade in accuracy of reporting ages, I have earned an A+ in spousal happiness.) Those grading systems have had varied levels of complexity, effect on motivation and ease of communication, but all did about the same thing – helped determine where learning is happening and where it might need improvement.
The college trustees recently received the yearly grade card about how much the students are learning and how they feel about the college. And the report looked great!
The college has identified four aspects of general education that each associate of arts or associate of science graduate should know. Graduates should be able to: Practice responsible citizenship, live a healthy lifestyle, communicate effectively, and think analytically. The faculty who teach these areas focus on ways we can improve those scores and have meetings about their assessment results every year to see where they can work together for better results.
We also place special emphasis on one of those four goals each year. This year we are emphasizing analytical thinking. To publicize this, we even handed out analytical-thinking-themed t-shirts at an all-college meeting. (Actually, we fired them from a t-shirt gun, which was awesome! We can be part educator, part PT Barnum when we need to be. It made it memorable.) But just emphasizing a general education outcome is not enough. You need to measure it, give it a grade, and see where you can improve.
Each year we pull student performance data from specific course outcomes that align with the four areas of general education to see if they are truly learning these things. That report is given to our trustees as well as the rest of the college community.
I am happy to report that this year in all four areas our students achieved at or above the highest scores on record! We were up in citizenship, way up in analytical thinking (yay t-shirt gun!), and matched our highest scores in communication and healthy lifestyle.
Beyond the general education outcomes, each of our courses not only issues grades to our students but also measures the specific course outcomes taught in that class to see where learning is occurring and where it might be improved. Instructors then produce a report on how learning went and what they might be doing differently next time to see if that will improve those scores. In the report they can ask for more resources to help them accomplish those goals, requests which can then be tied to the budget process at the college. Our completion rate for those reports from the faculty is 99.5%, so our instructors take assessment seriously and fulfill that obligation.
Like them, love them, or hate them, measurements of learning through grades, outcomes assessments, or other methods are necessary to see what is being learned and where improvements can be made. The continuous improvement model tells us that we will never be done measuring, changing, and improving. We have been doing outcomes assessment at NCCC since 2003, and we are still finding ways to make things better!
However, I have graded my last Barbie Talent Show for a while. But maybe I miss it. If you have any questions about the proper way to score a Barbie’s talent, or anything else, please contact me at [email protected]
