Grades, the Curve, and Questions
Folks,
If you’re wondering why you got the grade you did, there are a few things to consider:
- It’s possible that I was forced by the University Administration to give you lower grade than you really earned. This unfortunate requirement by our university is, sadly, common across Korea in Universities. It is, in my opinion, unfair although I can understand why it might have become necessary at some point in the past. In any case, regardless of my feelings and regardless of the quality of your work, there are limits to how many As and Bs can be awarded to students in classes of 20 or more students.
The curve, combined with the inept management of this system, in handling students who drop courses, is the cause of a lot of frustration and anger, and also of painful feelings, every semester. It hurts me to give students lower grades than they have earned, but I cannot do otherwise: the computer doesn’t allow me to enter more than a limited number of As and Bs, and all I can assure you is that I work from the highest grades to the lowest to make sure that the grading is as fair as possible, given the unfair system.
If you doubt my anger at this system, or my frustration at its unfairness, then please feel free to visit me sometime during semester and we can talk about it. I will turn red in the face very quickly, and probably start shouting at the walls within ten minutes. I hate this system, but there seems to be nothing I can do about it. Maybe as students, you can do something about it?
- The University’s definition of “classes of 20 or more students” is also problematic. Students who stop attending but don’t bother to drop a class are counted as a member of the class. This is relevant for my Listening & Speaking class this semester, in which there were only 19 students in the course, but 23 on the class list. While I cannot publish the names of the students who quit attending the course but didn’t bother to drop the course officially, they are the problem in this case. I’m told that there is nothing I can do, and therefore a number of students deserving of As and Bs received Bs and Cs.
- It’s possible that you missed some specific homework or other factor. Some students performed extremely well on major course tasks, but participated poorly. Some students participated well but missed a few homework assignments. A and A+ grades are for students who excel in all aspects of the course, managing assignments, participation, performance on exams or essays, and so forth. Indeed, not all completed homework assignments are equal: a checkmark is okay, but a check-plus is better, and a check-plus-plus is the optimal score. Missing small assignments seems like a little thing, but it adds up. Doing small assignments just well enough to receive a check-mark (but not check-plus or check-plus-plus) is simply not competing with others for the chance to receive the limited A and B grades available in the class.
- When it comes down to a choice between two people of the same grade for the last A or B available, then all things being equal, class participation, engagement with course topics, and quality of homework are always more important than attendance, exams or essays.
- If you stumbled in a major way — not coming to a midterm or final exam, missing more than ten hours of class (which is my limit), didn’t participate once in class, or otherwise, then you should receive an F, plain and simple. If you didn’t, then be grateful! If you ask me to reconsider your grade in that case, you’ll probably receive the F you deserve!
To sum up: I spend hours and hours every semester grading, tracking grades, inputting grades into my system, thinking about participation marks, and thinking about how to improve my system for grading each of my classes. While I think grading and grades are detrimental to education, I take them seriously, I work hard to make sure they are fair, and I spend a lot of time on them. So before you ask me whether you got the grade you deserve, please think over what I’ve written above. Check out this page, too, for more observations on grading.
One last thing: if you got a grade lower than you would like in my class, it doesn’t mean getting the grade you want is impossible with me. A number of students who have gotten Cs, Bs, or even A0s with me have gone on to get A+ in a later class, when they are more used to my teaching methods and ready to work at it. So please don’t give up! You can do it, and I am eager to work with you.
I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas (I was grading!) and a marvellous New Year’s! Good luck, and hopefully I’ll see you next semester.
Article to Check Out
Here’s Bruce Sterling’s article on Cyprus. It might be interesting reading to compare to Tamara’s article which we discussed on Nov. 10th.
Jeong-ok’s essay, and one more thing!
Hi everyone,
Sorry for the short notice on the class cancellation, as with so many opportunities it was a last minute thing… I attended a meeting in Daejon about SETI, a very rare opportunity.
Here is Jeong-ok’s Article (PDF), which we will discuss in class on Thursday. We will need to have a make-up class, and I’ll talk to you about that in class on Thursday too.
Also, please make sure that you have made a Gmail account before class on Thursday. It is homework, and if you haven’t done so, you will lose homework marks. We need to start sharing articles using Google Docs, for efficiency and ease of sharing.
See you Thursday!
Jingwen’s Article
Hi everyone,
Sorry this is late, but I got attacked by a Russian.
(A Russian spyware virus program, actually: my computer was disabled for a day till I could kill the virus.)
We really need to start using Google Docs so that you can share the files with one another more conveniently!
Let’s try set that up tomorrow: everyone come to class with a working Google account, okay? Thanks!
For now, here’s the article:
Hyun-Hye’s article
Here it is!
Eun Young’s Article
Here is her article. If there’s a problem please email me immediately!
Hyun Hye’s article hasn’t arrived yet but she promises it by 5pm Monday.Please check back for it this evening, I’ll post it as quickly as I can.
Everyone else should be pretty much done drafting by now, so we can have anyone’s article for critique after tomorrow!
Goeun’s article
Here’s Goeun’s article, for critique on October 1st:
And I would like to highlight one more thing:
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE use one of the following formats: .rtf, .doc
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE DO NOT use one of the following formats: .hwp, .docx
I don’t understand why, after discussing this not only in our class but in many other classes, for years on end, people are still sending me files in the latter formats.
Why .HWP format should not be used for this class:
Nobody outside of Korea uses .hwp format files, nor can they read them. Most non-Koreans in Korea also prefer not to use .hwp format files, since the software is inferior for writing in English.
Why .DOCX format should not be used for this class:
The .doc format is standard, and the .docx format is the new version of .doc. Eventually, .docx will probably become the standard. However, that has not yet happened for a number of reasons:
- People in many places are less likely to upgrade to the new Microsoft Office software right away, probably for two reasons: (a) intellectual property rights are more strictly enforced and piracy of software is slower than in Korea; and (b) most institutions are happy to keep using the software they already have licensed, instead of upgrading and facing new problems and issues.
- While Microsoft Windows is the default OS (operating system) in Korea — so much so that most of the Korean Internet cannot be accessed properly except in Internet Explorer — the rest of the world uses a much wider variety of OSes. Outside of Korea, the general expectation is that websites, files, and content will work on Mac, Linux, and Windows alike. Therefore, proprietary formats like .hwp and .docx are more difficult to use in other OSes, and usually are not accessible for some time after the new format is created. For example, on my Linux computer I can open .docx files since a few months ago. I cannot open .hwp files without buying (or stealing) expensive software or piracy.
By the way, in the bigger picture this is why so much of the Korean Internet is useless to non-Koreans. Requiring users to have Windows XP (sometimes only a Korean-language version), Internet Explorer (because of the overuse of ActiveX controls that even Microsoft doesn’t support anymore), and a 주민등록번호 are all ways of ensuring that people outside Korea will use a different website to order their products or get their information, instead of ordering it from Korea. By contrast, as long as you can read English, you can use Amazon.com’s website: any OS, any browser, and any nationality can order from Amazon. Amazon wants everyone’s business — including people in Bangladesh and Morocco. And they are, more and more, getting it!
So using open formats also makes good sense in terms of popularizing your culture, in terms of the economy, in terms of trade and export, and more. If globalization and IT are at all connected — and of course they are — then at the core is the importance of accessibility!
Use Accessible Formats
This is the real reason the rest of the planet is using .rtf or .doc: it makes files easy to open and read.
If you send a file to your University instructor, he or she will probably ask you to send it again. In the business world, however, they might decide you’re incompetent and it could cost your company a contract. You might miss a deadline since an unopenable file is as useful as no file at all. If you’re submitting files to foreign institutions like universities or schools and they cannot open the file, they may not contact you to re-submit, especially if there are many applicants: your application or submission might never be considered. In other words, using inaccessible formats is just a way of making sure your work isn’t read, and is a very bad way of interfacing with the world.
On the other hand, using universally accessible formats will allow others to access your files. It doesn’t guarantee that people will read your work, but at least it removes all the barriers that come with inacessible formats. It means people can read your work if they want to… and maybe more people want to than you think!
As well, it minimizes the chances of problems like Eunsuk’s article title being lost in file conversion.
Open formats are also good netiquette: it is more considerate to think about whether your recipient can actually open the file you are sending or posting for download. This is why all the files I provide on this site are in .PDF format, for example.
So when you are mailing files to Koreans who haven’t specified a file format, feel free to use .hwp. After all, .hwp is the standard format inside Korea.
If you prefer to use .docx, ask the person you’re sending a file to whether it’s an acceptable format.
But otherwise, or when in doubt, always send the file in a universally accessible format.If you don’t know how to save a file from your word processor in an alternate format, learn how. Look in the FILE menu, there’s usually a SAVE AS or EXPORT option available. Use the HELP menu if you can’t figure it out.
Like good formatting, accessibility is simply basic for a writer.
See you tomorrow.
Go Eun’s Article
… apparently is coming tomorrow morning, as her computer has died. This is what an email she sent me form her cell phone said.
Anyway, check back tomorrow for her article.
Eunsuk’s article!
Here it is!
Please see the earlier posting (just below this one) for a review of the points you must cover in your critique!
Eunsuk’s article is coming!
Eunsuk emailed me yesterday. She apologizes, but she had to do some fancy footwork to get her interviews done for her article. She said she’d email it to me by Sunday evening, so I’ll check my email. Her article should be here for download by Sunday night, or at the latest early Monday morning (depending on when she emails it tonight).
Please check back. Remember, this article is the one you will critique on Tuesday, so think about the four points of critique:
- What is this article doing? (What effect does the author seem to want to have on the reader?)
- What’s working here? (What are the things the author is doing effectively or successfully?)
- What isn’t working here? (What are things the author needs to improve for the article to be successful?)
- Make one suggestion for improvement. (If you could make only one change to improve this piece of writing generally, what would it be?)