Raoul's China Saloon (V5.0) Beta
The Bar Room => The Bar (ON-TOPIC) => Topic started by: A-Train on April 30, 2014, 04:59:05 PM
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I recently gave a resit exam to a student. She failed it despite my best efforts to grade it generously. Now I'm being asked by the Vice Dean to "reconsider" her grade so that she can go on to a graduate school at Peking University. Honorable enough request?
(I came here with standards. Have no idea where the line is anymore)
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Funny you should bring this up. Due to some strange wrangling of my schedule I gave finals to a few groups. Roughly 5-10% have simply outright failed, twice.
The admin last semester surreptitiously altered my grades to make the failing students pass. I assume the same thing will happen again, so I'm holding a special "writing" class for those under the cut. 90 minutes of writing and re-writing the key vocabulary and phrases, after which I'll bump them up to 60% composite.
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I am going to throw the cat amongst the pigeons and say that there might be something up when someone is failing a test but still notionally going to Beida. Sure, the student may be at fault but as part of the graduate entry examination in China candidates have to undertake an extensive English language test so... It just seems a bit strange.
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If the student (or parent) asks me to change a grade, I don't. If the Vice Dean asks, I do. I don't lose any sleep over it. I try to teach the students to best of my abilities but I'm not here to change their systems regardless of whether I agree with them or not.
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Just trying to get a "sense of the Senate" vote here. I've long since given up any notion of academic integrity at this university, (and China in general), along with any vain delusions of my being able to change any portion of it. But, I'm not returning next semester so I've decided that I will change the grade ... I'm going to lower it.
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fuck china. they don't respect you, why respect them
ask if you can give her 1 million points instead of 100
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It is the old when in Rome thing, isn't it? If I had a request from one of the Powers That Be to "reconsider" something, I would make the student pass.
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I'm the same that if (in my case) the HR manager asks me to pass a student that either hasn't met the attendance requirement or was unable to do the coursework, then I normally do. If it's the attendance requirement then I usually try to get the student to come to a few additional classes. If the situation is that the student was below the level to pass then I say that I am willing to pass them but if we do additional training courses (we often do frequent training sessions at one company) then they must repeat the same level course. I've never had a problem with either option.
Perhaps you pass the student but ask for an additional assignment?
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...
ask if you can give her 1 million points instead of 100
Two years ago I taught a post-grad Finance course to foreign students at my uni. A Russian student flunked the final, but I knew throughout the semester that he understood the topics; he just had a bad exam. And even though his overall, course average was above the passing mark, the rule from the Chinese is that if someone fails the final exam, they cannot pass the course; the Chinese, (and British), fixation on the importance of final examinations. Last semester he was due to graduate but needed to pass a resit for this Finance exam. I approached the Ph.D. who was in charge and asked if I could take over the administration of the resit. I wrote the exam, gave the answer key to the student and, voila, he passed.
Call it unethical, but I felt that I had righted a wrong and gave a mild "fu@k you" to one asinine, Chinese dictum. I sleep better for it now. Of course, the Russian Vodka helps me get to sleep.
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That seem arrogant though A-Train. You used your own judgment to bend/break the rules while questioning your superior's request to do the same.
fuck china. they don't respect you, why respect them
Why do you see his as a lack of respect Kitano? Wouldn't all teachers, foreign or otherwise, be 'requested' to do the same? Isn't the request itself a show of respect rather than just changing the grade?
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+1 bjbjbjbjbj
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It is the old when in Rome thing, isn't it? If I had a request from one of the Powers That Be to "reconsider" something, I would make the student pass.
ETR I respect you. Also the school you are at. Your response confused me at first, as I wouldn't/didn't ever expect a "reconsider" from either you ar them. But upon close reading, I think I see your meaning. "I would MAKE the student pass." Not let, not give, not agree. MAKE. Perscactly!
Good advice (unless I mis-construed it).
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That seem arrogant though A-Train. You used your own judgment to bend/break the rules while questioning your superior's request to do the same.
Arrogant? Maybe so. But consistent ethically. I used my best judgement to pass the one student, and the same judgement to fail the other. It doesn't bother me that I was inconsistent with regard to the rules. I'm questioning the Vice Dean's ethics in "asking" me to pass the latter student for reasons that have nothing to do with merit.
Besides, don't all teachers need some amount of arrogance just to get through the semester.
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That seem arrogant though A-Train. You used your own judgment to bend/break the rules while questioning your superior's request to do the same.
fuck china. they don't respect you, why respect them
Why do you see his as a lack of respect Kitano? Wouldn't all teachers, foreign or otherwise, be 'requested' to do the same? Isn't the request itself a show of respect rather than just changing the grade?
Because you are the teacher and if you give them a grade it's your grade, if they ask you to change the grade then they make your grade for everyone invalid, if it's your boss asking you to change the grade it's seriously uncomfortable because theyare in control of your contract and they haven't sat in the classroom for your classes so have no idea about the grade.... I wasn't happy with my grades at university a lot of the time, if I disagreed with it I went and saw the teacher, I did that 3 times and once they did change my grade, the other times they still had a chat with me and gave me a bit of knowledge
I don't know about university outside of China, but here I'm sure it happens a lot. I get the impression that Chinese people tend to treat other Chinese people worse than 'laowai', but that doesn't mean we should put up with it. Specially at universities and the more serious institutions, bringing our own culture is just as much part of our job as teaching, taking things seriously is just not part of Chinese culture
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Well, naturally. You don't just hand out passes like Halloween Candy. Put it this way, I once had a Lit student who needed to passs. This student thought a Lit class was about him continuing his life-long attempt at making his iPhone love him. He failed twice. Third time came around, Uni asked me to "ensure" he passed. Now, I have made exams so easy they were not even exams, but in this case I contacted the student, told him which pages in the text book to read and then gave him the exam. I never told him the answers, but seeing as this chap was a plot of land, mortar, insulation material and all the bricks short of a house, I needed to work within very limited parameters. He passed the exam with a 68, but at least he did get enough questions right. I also checked with the Uni. My class was the only one he had not passed. I love my job and, despite the strenuous efforts of China, have managed to maintain a shaky hold on my ideals which are, admittedly, a mite frayed around the edges. Ideals are good, but cold, stark realism with a dash of compassion might help too. I was reminded of myself in Elementary school, 9th grade. Pretty decent in all classes except math and physics. Had a notorious tendency to completely muck up any experiment, respond to any question about physics with a glazed stare whilst making a confused "nghh...meeeeh...geeehhh" sound and would sometimes fall asleep. My physics teacher made me sit in the front row and every class would ask me incredibly leading questions. I ended up with a 7. In Denmark a fail is , pass is 6, so 7 is not exactly Rhodes Scholar material. I was not a slacker nor incredibly stupid, apart from physics, and my teacher knew this. So he "made" me pass, instead of letting one single class have a rather unpleasant consequence for me later on. I opted for the same solution with the Lit student. This boy was never going to be snapping at the heels of Harold Bloom, but I saw no reason to get on m academic high horse and destroy his future over his inability to remember the difference between Beowulf and Sir Gawain.
So, in the case of the OP's problem, my recommendation would be a carefully crafted test which aimed at whatever level the student is. No-one should ever, ever give a student a free pass, but one can make the work for the one student a bit easier. I would not do this at home but here in China, as stated, in order to not go crazy, we either chuck it in and or we allow those sterling ideals to become a little worn. Oh dear, long rant...sorry about that agagagagag agagagagag
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don't apologise for the rant, my friend. I wouldn't call it a rant at all.
A-Train: Of course, the Russian Vodka helps me get to sleep.
I wondered how long it would take to mix threads (with an eye to the student gifts thread)
I hate the final exam as the be-all, end-all of a course. Too many skewed results, too much cheating to deal with. When I can, I set a program of assignments, so the final is worth between 30 and 40 % of the final grade. Goof off enough through the semester and failure is assured before the final exam. Make and effort, and enough sympathy points will be factored into the assignment grades that a student can survive bad exam.
At the institute of light industry (best named college in China), I responded to the "everyone passes, eventually" by inflating all barely passing students' grades to 65 or higher, and the unearned passes were set at 60. I gave no grade between 60 and 65, so anyone who looked at my grade sheet could figure out who was really passing and who wasn't. Not that anyone looked, but I felt better about it. Got any vodka, mate?
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I wish this post was available for me last year. I failed 12:72 students and really wondered what would happen to me - and the students. Luckily I had good spread sheets to show why they had failed so the school did not come down on me. Some completed no homework (3 assessments) almost all cheated in the exam, 5 students attended less than 8:16 classes. I was still generous with marking but just couldn't get these students through. The Dean decided that I was OK with the failing and I have been asked to stay on again.
This term I have given 80% of marks to monthly assignments to lessen my overall load in the final weeks and hopefully get everyone through. It's looking good - so far all of my 'kids' (242) are sitting at 80%+ .
I blame myself for the fiasco last semester but some help from other FT's and the faculty would have helped too...