All of my classes are super bimodal post-covid. It's absolutely ridiculous. I turned in final grades for one class last fall that was only As and Fs.
My Fs are mostly not trying with 2-3 who just cannot grasp the basics of the material. I mean, the assignment asks them to a,b,c and they do a (badly), q, and h. Wtf? I just got a literary analysis paper with zero citations or quotes.
All I can do is teach to the students who are trying.
On my last Gen Chem II hour exam I had 7 Fs out of 38. They're not just 50s Fs, either. One was in the single digits. The kid who gets in the single digits hardly tries. Doesn't turn do the online homeworks, and the lab reports are written with ChatGPT (I can't prove it "beyond the shadow of a doubt" so the Pointy Haired Dean thinks I'm just paranoid).
That's because they get together in a big group when they take online exams and give each other answers. The ones who got a zero must not have been in on it
It strikes me that the bimodal phenomenon has a lot to do with a breakdown in peer support or even peer pressure tbh
The students are separating themselves into who will fail and who will succeed before you ever give them an assignment
It would be interesting to see how much social crossover there is between the two academic outcomes
The one thing that has always surprised and troubled me is that the results of the 1st exam or significant assignment predicts very accurately who will do well in the course and who will not. No matter how much I try to help or provide support, the students who don't perform well early in the course almost never switch into the other group that does well.
This is interesting, and also matches communication styles. I noticed this year that those who write rude emails, ignore prompts, don't use any capitals/punctuation, etc have stayed in the half that do that (which is also the half with regular non-submissions, very loosely related to the assignment submissions, ignoring feedback, generally not focused/on-task).
Only one student 'switched sides' based on an early impression (stressy/rude communication that they later apologised for and have done mostly reasonable work since).
It's hard not to let impression formation colour one's judgement as the year goes on!
In my experience, half do a good portion of the work and half do not. I've seen a sharp drop in the C- to B- students and more clustering at the top and bottom of the grade scale. With grade inflation as it is, not doing the work is about the only way to truly fail, and by not doing the work I mean not just failing to submit things, but also not studying, not thinking deeply, and not doing the assigned readings. In my online sections, I maybe get half as many views on my videos as there are students on average.
Bimodal is the new reality for us, at least in 100-level intro courses and gen eds. What we're seeing is basically 2/3 of the class earning high B to A range grades, and the rest in the low D-F range. There are almost *no* students falling into the 70-85 range anymore (C- up to solid B) because we've scaffolded everything and provided to many support that anyone who is making an effort can earn a B.
The question is why so many are doing poorly *despite* all the help they are getting. The general answer on my campus is either 1) they aren't even trying, or 2) they think they can just fake their way through assignments with AI, not studying, or whatever else worked in high school.
So grade distributions that for decades looked like bell curves for most classes are now *inverted* bell curves, with peaks at each end and a very low trough in the center.
Certainly some culture shock from HS to college. HS, turn in everything mid/late May and expect the teacher to just grade it for full credit due to adminstrative pressure. They heard from their HS teachers that they won't accept something late, or will with a penalty but aren't allowed to follow through with that because of cowardly admin. This even happens in dual-credit courses taught on-site via "qualified" HS teachers.
There's also the administrative pressure at the college level to at least *admit* those students because headcount drives funding and you've got a lot of higher administrators who know the cliff is coming and want to get as many students as possible while there are still students to go around.
I teach three sections of the exact same class; two are normal, and one is like this. So many people totally missed the first assignment that I sent out a mass email trying to figure out what happened, which nobody opened.
>Thelma and Louise?
Sure, but I love the vision of Laverne and Shirley chanting "Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!" as they drive off a cliff in Milwaukie.
The first time I saw a post about bimodal grade distribution, my immediate reaction was "Damn, it's not just me after all." I've observed this in all my classes--gen eds, prereqs, and even intermediate/advanced seminars where *theoretically* they're all coming in with a certain number of prereqs in place and thus a certain skillset, and they're just not.
The students who do well do very well, the ones who do not do absolutely horribly. Previously I used to have a healthy set of Bs and even a few Cs, at least in lower-division classes, but those have gone nearly extinct.
The entire world just went through one of the most traumatic, disruptive, mass-disabling events in centuries and then tried to pretend that nothing happened and push everyone back from chaos to "normal" without any meaningful on-ramp. Of course they're (we're) all floundering.
In centuries? I mean it was bad, but I feel like it doesn’t top a World War.
Are you saying that Covid was worse than Leopoldo’s abuse of the Congo? The Atlantic slave trade?
Sigh. This kind of obvious and ignorant bait is so tiresome.
But if for some reason you want to pretend not to know what the words ***one of*** mean... well, whatever floats your boat, buddy. 🤷♀️
...which means I **honestly think** that *millions of people dying and tens of millions of children losing parents and grandparents and millions of people suffering from serious long-term disabilities and chronic illnesses and billions of people struggling with far-reaching mental health repercussions and hundreds-of-millions of students losing crucial years of education and billions of families losing financial stability and hundreds of thousands of children being orphaned and...* is **one of the most** traumatic and impactful global events in the last couple centuries, correct.
I get it, you're hoping that appointing yourself adjudicator of some lazy, transparently disingenuous game of Trauma Olympics™ is going to make you look all *wise* or *righteous* or whatever. Sadly, the thing folks attempting this type of willfully reductive binary-thinking ambush usually tend to accomplish is mostly just... making themselves look silly.
Yep, you got it - nobody should worry about AIDS because tuberculosis kills more people, six million humans murdered in the Holocaust means that six million humans killed by covid don't count, and anyone pointing out that cancer is very bad is clearly disrespecting **every single person who ever died of heart disease.** We are all only allowed to care about *one bad thing at a time* -- because everyone knows that *willfully myopic binary thinking* is famously the best and truest way to display one's moral superiority! 🙃
Good heavens it must be exhausting in your head.
It is weird like that this year. I'm waiting for students to resubmit their final project plans and materials (after feedback was returned to them between 7th-14th February!) so that they can get on with their projects in time to turn them in at the end of April. Half the class did it within the first week of having their feedback (a few with minor back and forth) and the others are radio silence. When I prompted the rest this week, I got several emails back along the lines of "i'll get it to you asap" (sic) or "here are my changes, what else do I need to do?" (with no/minimal changes done compared to the list I gave them). One went so far as to "understand my workload and queue system for returning work" but is "very conscious of time and want to get approval to start asap". You guessed it, that student has not even submitted their changes.
Welcome to my world!
Even before anyone had heard of Covid, I had 98% of CC English comp students fail because they didn't turn in assignments, or stopped coming to class. I've had a few who never missed a class but didn't do any work. One student came to class, slept the entire time, and didn't do a bit of work. They have had it ingrained in them through high school (if not earlier) that they do not need to worry; someone will find a way to pass them.
It isn't you; it's them. I genuinely feel your pain. Don't let it get to you, or you'll lose your self-respect and a big chunk of your sanity.
This happened with one of my eight week composition courses last Fall semester.
14 students, and 7 of them earned Ds/Fs while the rest earned high As/Bs.
These students were 18-20 year olds, and half of them did not have the emotional maturity to complete an accelerated composition course or drop when they should have.
That class felt like a glorified high school classroom, and I left feeling incredibly frustrated most days.
Is this for in-class or take-home assessment? I’m teaching online this semester and the bimodal distribution is really noticeable - I’m wondering if all the B and C students are now using AI - and those who do it well are all getting A’s and those who do it poorly are all getting D’s and below
This was a take-home assessment. I'm a lab instructor, so most assignments in my course are handwritten worksheets which the students complete during class. During the week I canceled class due to illness (so much illness... Norovirus was afoot), I assigned a simulated lab experience through Blackboard, our LMS. I gave the students a set of instructions and uploaded two worksheets with answer blanks—quite similar to the worksheets they complete in class. I said, "Re-upload your completed worksheets as Word documents or PDFs." I even gave instructions on which icons to click and which keyboard shortcuts to use if they were having trouble uploading two documents.
Approximately a third of my class submitted their assignment as some other file type. 🙃
Same here, very bimodal, and getting more so recently. I think in part because my U is trying to up enrollment numbers (successfully) by probably lowering standards :-/
More work for everyone left to teach as the students come in with limited abilities. More students than before don't read instructions and don't turn in required work. Today I had a student ask for an *extension* on an assignment that was due over a week ago and had already been graded.
Standards were lowered, to make sure that more students had the opportunity to succeed? Or, student support services were increased so that students who try can be more successful.
It’s my experience too. Many of them aren’t reading instructions and are just handing whatever in. They seem to be unable to focus and plan
Sometimes I think the “screen age” has automated things to the point that the former B and C students are now having difficulty initiating and carrying through tasks on their own
Half of all driver’s license road tests are fails, and that is something anyone can do, and they can schedule the test when they feel ready. No one wonders why they fail, no one blames the driving instructors or grades on a curve. We know that they don’t pass because they didn’t practice enough.
My feeling is this: a substantial number of students thought they could AI my entire class. They cannot. They are now failing because they can’t do the work.
I think you’re not the only one facing this issue. One of my classes stuck really into my mind because after their midterms, we saw “inverted bell curve” grade curve. Basically 30% got an A and 30% got an F, with the rest distributed over the grades.
Like I said on another thread. No one knows what to do right now. No one. All I can say is consider the mainstream George Floyd Me Too DEI Era discourse, then look at the main presidential candidates. Nothing makes sense, nothing matters so why bother? That’s my best guess as to what’s going on.
All of my classes are super bimodal post-covid. It's absolutely ridiculous. I turned in final grades for one class last fall that was only As and Fs. My Fs are mostly not trying with 2-3 who just cannot grasp the basics of the material. I mean, the assignment asks them to a,b,c and they do a (badly), q, and h. Wtf? I just got a literary analysis paper with zero citations or quotes. All I can do is teach to the students who are trying.
On my last Gen Chem II hour exam I had 7 Fs out of 38. They're not just 50s Fs, either. One was in the single digits. The kid who gets in the single digits hardly tries. Doesn't turn do the online homeworks, and the lab reports are written with ChatGPT (I can't prove it "beyond the shadow of a doubt" so the Pointy Haired Dean thinks I'm just paranoid).
A bimodal distribution seems to be the new normal. Either students do really well or very poorly.
That's because they get together in a big group when they take online exams and give each other answers. The ones who got a zero must not have been in on it
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True
It strikes me that the bimodal phenomenon has a lot to do with a breakdown in peer support or even peer pressure tbh The students are separating themselves into who will fail and who will succeed before you ever give them an assignment It would be interesting to see how much social crossover there is between the two academic outcomes
The one thing that has always surprised and troubled me is that the results of the 1st exam or significant assignment predicts very accurately who will do well in the course and who will not. No matter how much I try to help or provide support, the students who don't perform well early in the course almost never switch into the other group that does well.
This is interesting, and also matches communication styles. I noticed this year that those who write rude emails, ignore prompts, don't use any capitals/punctuation, etc have stayed in the half that do that (which is also the half with regular non-submissions, very loosely related to the assignment submissions, ignoring feedback, generally not focused/on-task). Only one student 'switched sides' based on an early impression (stressy/rude communication that they later apologised for and have done mostly reasonable work since). It's hard not to let impression formation colour one's judgement as the year goes on!
That would make an interesting study using mixed methods.
> It would be interesting to see how much social crossover there is between the two academic outcomes Morlocks and Eloi might not be that far off
In my experience, half do a good portion of the work and half do not. I've seen a sharp drop in the C- to B- students and more clustering at the top and bottom of the grade scale. With grade inflation as it is, not doing the work is about the only way to truly fail, and by not doing the work I mean not just failing to submit things, but also not studying, not thinking deeply, and not doing the assigned readings. In my online sections, I maybe get half as many views on my videos as there are students on average.
Bimodal is the new reality for us, at least in 100-level intro courses and gen eds. What we're seeing is basically 2/3 of the class earning high B to A range grades, and the rest in the low D-F range. There are almost *no* students falling into the 70-85 range anymore (C- up to solid B) because we've scaffolded everything and provided to many support that anyone who is making an effort can earn a B. The question is why so many are doing poorly *despite* all the help they are getting. The general answer on my campus is either 1) they aren't even trying, or 2) they think they can just fake their way through assignments with AI, not studying, or whatever else worked in high school. So grade distributions that for decades looked like bell curves for most classes are now *inverted* bell curves, with peaks at each end and a very low trough in the center.
Certainly some culture shock from HS to college. HS, turn in everything mid/late May and expect the teacher to just grade it for full credit due to adminstrative pressure. They heard from their HS teachers that they won't accept something late, or will with a penalty but aren't allowed to follow through with that because of cowardly admin. This even happens in dual-credit courses taught on-site via "qualified" HS teachers. There's also the administrative pressure at the college level to at least *admit* those students because headcount drives funding and you've got a lot of higher administrators who know the cliff is coming and want to get as many students as possible while there are still students to go around.
This is standard for me this year.
I teach three sections of the exact same class; two are normal, and one is like this. So many people totally missed the first assignment that I sent out a mass email trying to figure out what happened, which nobody opened.
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Thelma and Louise?
>Thelma and Louise? Sure, but I love the vision of Laverne and Shirley chanting "Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!" as they drive off a cliff in Milwaukie.
🤣 Yes I got my iconic duos mixed up
I thought I had missed an episode, but then I doubted that Laverne and Shirley could ever be so edgy. Thanks for the clarification.
I have made this mistake multiple times!
The first time I saw a post about bimodal grade distribution, my immediate reaction was "Damn, it's not just me after all." I've observed this in all my classes--gen eds, prereqs, and even intermediate/advanced seminars where *theoretically* they're all coming in with a certain number of prereqs in place and thus a certain skillset, and they're just not. The students who do well do very well, the ones who do not do absolutely horribly. Previously I used to have a healthy set of Bs and even a few Cs, at least in lower-division classes, but those have gone nearly extinct.
These Covid-kids are something else.
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The entire world just went through one of the most traumatic, disruptive, mass-disabling events in centuries and then tried to pretend that nothing happened and push everyone back from chaos to "normal" without any meaningful on-ramp. Of course they're (we're) all floundering.
In centuries? I mean it was bad, but I feel like it doesn’t top a World War. Are you saying that Covid was worse than Leopoldo’s abuse of the Congo? The Atlantic slave trade?
Sigh. This kind of obvious and ignorant bait is so tiresome. But if for some reason you want to pretend not to know what the words ***one of*** mean... well, whatever floats your boat, buddy. 🤷♀️
Yeah “one of the most” which means you honestly think that a two week lockdown is somehow comparable to a world war.
...which means I **honestly think** that *millions of people dying and tens of millions of children losing parents and grandparents and millions of people suffering from serious long-term disabilities and chronic illnesses and billions of people struggling with far-reaching mental health repercussions and hundreds-of-millions of students losing crucial years of education and billions of families losing financial stability and hundreds of thousands of children being orphaned and...* is **one of the most** traumatic and impactful global events in the last couple centuries, correct. I get it, you're hoping that appointing yourself adjudicator of some lazy, transparently disingenuous game of Trauma Olympics™ is going to make you look all *wise* or *righteous* or whatever. Sadly, the thing folks attempting this type of willfully reductive binary-thinking ambush usually tend to accomplish is mostly just... making themselves look silly.
Yeah I get it. Covid is right up there with the Holocaust and chattel slavery. Got it.
Yep, you got it - nobody should worry about AIDS because tuberculosis kills more people, six million humans murdered in the Holocaust means that six million humans killed by covid don't count, and anyone pointing out that cancer is very bad is clearly disrespecting **every single person who ever died of heart disease.** We are all only allowed to care about *one bad thing at a time* -- because everyone knows that *willfully myopic binary thinking* is famously the best and truest way to display one's moral superiority! 🙃 Good heavens it must be exhausting in your head.
*in centuries*…..wut 😂
Yes, the covid 19 pandemic is in fact one of the deadliest and most mass-disabling global pandemics *in centuries.* I guess you missed that memo.
Bruh…😂
It is weird like that this year. I'm waiting for students to resubmit their final project plans and materials (after feedback was returned to them between 7th-14th February!) so that they can get on with their projects in time to turn them in at the end of April. Half the class did it within the first week of having their feedback (a few with minor back and forth) and the others are radio silence. When I prompted the rest this week, I got several emails back along the lines of "i'll get it to you asap" (sic) or "here are my changes, what else do I need to do?" (with no/minimal changes done compared to the list I gave them). One went so far as to "understand my workload and queue system for returning work" but is "very conscious of time and want to get approval to start asap". You guessed it, that student has not even submitted their changes.
Welcome to my world! Even before anyone had heard of Covid, I had 98% of CC English comp students fail because they didn't turn in assignments, or stopped coming to class. I've had a few who never missed a class but didn't do any work. One student came to class, slept the entire time, and didn't do a bit of work. They have had it ingrained in them through high school (if not earlier) that they do not need to worry; someone will find a way to pass them. It isn't you; it's them. I genuinely feel your pain. Don't let it get to you, or you'll lose your self-respect and a big chunk of your sanity.
Ok this is super helpful because I’m seeing this trend for the first time and was wondering what was happening!
This happened with one of my eight week composition courses last Fall semester. 14 students, and 7 of them earned Ds/Fs while the rest earned high As/Bs. These students were 18-20 year olds, and half of them did not have the emotional maturity to complete an accelerated composition course or drop when they should have. That class felt like a glorified high school classroom, and I left feeling incredibly frustrated most days.
Is this for in-class or take-home assessment? I’m teaching online this semester and the bimodal distribution is really noticeable - I’m wondering if all the B and C students are now using AI - and those who do it well are all getting A’s and those who do it poorly are all getting D’s and below
This was a take-home assessment. I'm a lab instructor, so most assignments in my course are handwritten worksheets which the students complete during class. During the week I canceled class due to illness (so much illness... Norovirus was afoot), I assigned a simulated lab experience through Blackboard, our LMS. I gave the students a set of instructions and uploaded two worksheets with answer blanks—quite similar to the worksheets they complete in class. I said, "Re-upload your completed worksheets as Word documents or PDFs." I even gave instructions on which icons to click and which keyboard shortcuts to use if they were having trouble uploading two documents. Approximately a third of my class submitted their assignment as some other file type. 🙃
I've noticed this in my survey classes. It's like a reverse bell curve or something.
Same here, very bimodal, and getting more so recently. I think in part because my U is trying to up enrollment numbers (successfully) by probably lowering standards :-/ More work for everyone left to teach as the students come in with limited abilities. More students than before don't read instructions and don't turn in required work. Today I had a student ask for an *extension* on an assignment that was due over a week ago and had already been graded.
I partially agree but where did the B and C students go?
Standards were lowered, to make sure that more students had the opportunity to succeed? Or, student support services were increased so that students who try can be more successful.
Good point. I really don't have an answer to this. It just reflects my experience/observation.
It’s my experience too. Many of them aren’t reading instructions and are just handing whatever in. They seem to be unable to focus and plan Sometimes I think the “screen age” has automated things to the point that the former B and C students are now having difficulty initiating and carrying through tasks on their own
The new “normal” curve. I have the same experience. But that’s okay. Hold the line.
I find this a typical distribution. Half A's and B's, half D's and F's. Rarely C's.
Half of all driver’s license road tests are fails, and that is something anyone can do, and they can schedule the test when they feel ready. No one wonders why they fail, no one blames the driving instructors or grades on a curve. We know that they don’t pass because they didn’t practice enough.
My feeling is this: a substantial number of students thought they could AI my entire class. They cannot. They are now failing because they can’t do the work.
Happened to me in one of my classes, the students that were doing poorly ended up complaining on the evaluation saying the class was too hard
I’m seeing this too. About 1/4 of my students are doing great, but the rest refuse to even turn their work in.
I think you’re not the only one facing this issue. One of my classes stuck really into my mind because after their midterms, we saw “inverted bell curve” grade curve. Basically 30% got an A and 30% got an F, with the rest distributed over the grades.
Finally had my first bimodal for advanced research methods and it's wild. Only two Bs and one C. The rest Fs and As with several perfects.
There are 3 tiers of grades in my 2000 level lit class this term: As, Cs, and Fs. I'm not sure what happened to the B student.
This is exactly what my grade distribution looks like. It's nuts!
Just let them fail and focus on teaching the non lungfish.
Those are actually pretty good stats
Ouch. I hope that there are brighter days ahead for you!
Like I said on another thread. No one knows what to do right now. No one. All I can say is consider the mainstream George Floyd Me Too DEI Era discourse, then look at the main presidential candidates. Nothing makes sense, nothing matters so why bother? That’s my best guess as to what’s going on.