Final Grades

One of my least favorite things about being a teaching is giving out grades. I do all sorts of crazy percentages and stuff to try and help out the students, and most of the time all is good. I have submitted grades for 3 of my 4 classes. The last class I am done with the grading but I haven't yet decided on the actual grades to give out.

The problem becomes, do I curve the final exam...it was hard, but not TOO hard. Especially since I allow students to have a 5x7 notecard with anything they want on it. Yet still the grades were really low, and then if I do curve the final, how much to curve it? I messed around with different curves, 3pts, versus 5pts, no pts. And what happened this semester is that almost 2/3 of my class went up a +/- letter grade with a curve. Most of the time my grades are pretty good, I don't have a lot of borderline people, this was one of the first semesters it was this bad.

I have problems with curving a exam, especially one that you get a "cheat sheet on". And in a class where I have give out an opportunity for some extra credit. I really think that the students at HPU don't care that much about their grades. They aren't studying enough, or not studying correctly. One of my students is transferring to Virgina Tech because he says their is no competition in the classroom, that other students just don't care that much. I really think that is true.

Well, at least I am DONE with exams, done with grading, just have to decide to be nice and bump grades up or be mean and leave them as is.