Beyond Grade Inflation Grading Problems In Higher Education

Author : Keshava Prasad Halemane, Ph.d.
Publisher : Createspace Independent Pub
ISBN 13 : 9781480098725
Total Pages : 84 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (987 download)

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Download or read book Apes-Usa written by Keshava Prasad Halemane, Ph.d. and published by Createspace Independent Pub. This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Direct OnLine Order from CreateSpace - https://www.createspace.com/4025134/ (B&W)https://www.createspace.com/4011032/ (Color)Congratulations! You have, right in front of you, a treasure. From within the pages of this book you will be able to pick up a good collection of reformist ideas and concepts, endowed with the potential to bring about an epoch making impact on all kinds of assessments or evaluations in general, and in the academic performance evaluation of students, in particular. Once it so happened that Prasad was moved by a real life encounter with one of his long time friends who shared with him her sour experience as a student in a premiere educational institution. It seems that when she inquired with the professor who gave her a 'B' grade in a course in which she expected an 'A' grade, she was called to a side and explained that it was indeed a very high 'B', and that after all the difference between a low 'A' and a high 'B' is only marginal! However, that marginal difference had resulted in her missing an admission into an elite graduate program, which was her cherished dream unrealized. Prasad was ruminating on that episode during one of his casual walks on the sandy beach side off the Institute campus, on a beautiful Thursday evening of the Eighth of August Two Thousand Two; when he was 'visited' by the slippery idea of 'SQUIDS' flowing over the tidal waves from the salty waters of the sea swashing on and off the sandy beach front. Here, 'SQUIDS' stands for 'Scale Quantum Unit Interval Domain Size' that is the most fundamental basis for the design of a measurement scale. SQUIDS is the key concept that has been effectively used here in explaining and also resolving the mathematical fallacy that seems to have been mysteriously implied in the very design of the letter grading system; and also in developing an alternative system design. The grade points scale has only five or ten or at most fifteen points, thus providing a possible measurement precision of no better than 1-in-5 or 1-in-10 or at best 1-in-15. But, the GPA and the CGPA are usually reported as numbers running into second or third decimal places, thus falsely projecting a high precision level of 1-in-100 or even 1-in-1000. Also, the poor system design is the cause for the problem of the phenomena of the chaotic system biased information loss/corruption, resulting in chaotic system biased unfair and unreliable comparisons among the students being evaluated, making it to be grossly unfair to the students. It is unfair to the prospective employers who expect some relevant, unbiased, reliable information to be contained in and conveyed through those grade reports. The LGS system is unfair to the teacher, since it wrongly presumes that the teacher's precision in evaluation is rather poor, limited to classification into possibly only a handful of distinct categories, although the original data-set of the raw scores awarded by a teacher usually has a far better precision level, at least around 1-in-100. The LGS system just simply fails to provide a reliable/precise and robust/resilient mechanism for a true representation and communication of otherwise appropriate/relevant information as to what the teachers really meant to convey, regarding their unbiased/objective and fair/justifiable assessments/evaluations originally conducted.The well known problem of Grade Inflation is of human origin, and needs to be addressed at that level. However, the more serious problem of grossly unfair comparisons of student performances, arising from the use of a very crude scale as the grade points scale is of fundamental nature inherent in the very design of the letter grading system [although not easily recognized, like a silent killer] thus requiring a complete re-design.The proposed design for a novel "Students Academic Performance Evaluation System" has a tremendous potential to usher in a conceptual paradigm shift in all kinds of assessments or evaluations.