(SNIP)
>
>At 09:25 AM 11/17/98 +0500, Tony Jenkins wrote:
>>I have noticed this trend as well. Most of my students, even in Calculus
>II, are
>>doing virtually no homework. What is really strange is that overall
>attendance is
>>better than normal.
>>
>>Tony Jenkins
I had the same problem in almost all of my courses when I made homework 20%
of their grade. I spent untold hours grading the problem sets, assigning
partial credit, totaling up their score, making sure that similar kinds of
mistakes had the same number of points taken off, and so on. About half the
students turned in the problem sets regularly, and the other half either
turned in almost none of the problem sets.
Then I tried the following:
I made the problem sets worth 15% of their grade.
Each problem set would have two parts: odd numbered problems and even
numbered problems. They had to do both, but the only ones that I would look
at carefully (= read everything they wrote, find out ther mistake and
correct it, make comments, and so on; this was the same as before) would be
the even numbered problems. As for the odd numbered ones, I would only
check off whether they handed something in that had odd numbered problems
on it.
They would get either a 2, if they handed in both even and odd numbered
ones, a 1 if they handed in only even numbered ones, or a 0 if they either
did not do the even numbered ones, or did not hand in the problem set at
all. I also demanded that the problem set be handed in on time, or they got
a 0 (no exceptions!).
As a result, if they did the even-numbered ones and the odd numbered ones
on all the problem sets, they would get 100% for the 15% of their grade
contributed by the problem sets. (I also allowed them to miss one or two
problem sets out of 10 during the term: of course, I would only tell them
this after the last problem set was due.
The result of this was that *almost everyone* handed in *almost every*
problem set (and this has been the case for the 9 courses I have taught
since changing this grading procedure).
I was (and continue to be) pretty amazed and shocked at this. I think that
what was happening was that if the problem sets were graded like a test,
many of the students, after getting 60s and 70s on their problem set would
just figure "Why bother? This isn't helping my grade anyway," and just stop
doing the problem sets. On the other hand, getting full credit for just
handing in the problem set seemed like such a monstrously good deal that
they couldn't pass it up. However, I have no real idea why this idea worked
so spectacularly well (for me).
Of course, your mileage may vary...
mark snyder
fitchburg state college
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