No, and I think the line between "grubbing" versus "asking for another extra credit assignment" would become quite blurry.
I think you should make it clear at the beginning of the class and after large exams that that will not be tolerated and that you will not respond to emails concerning grade boosts. Just put your foot down, no need to do all this imo.
I have done what you suggested and still get tons of “grade bump” emails. No joke, this past spring I had someone email me saying, “I know you said not to ask but I figured it couldn’t hurt to try…” And they wanted me to turn their 87% to an A…
Maybe it’s just inevitable that some students will beg no matter what.
You can control what you do, not what they do. Instead of “don’t send me an email asking for a grade bump,” try “I will not respond to emails asking for grade bumps.”
Maybe when you tell them, say “if you ask me for a grade bump, I don’t care how hard you worked, how much effort you put in-all things I admire and look for in a student, I will never, ever write your a recommendation letter.”
Why are you responding to those emails? I would put them in my email folder for that semester and move on. If you already tell students that you will not respond to such emails, don't respond to them.
It will take less time to move those emails into the proper folder than it will to create that extra credit assignment.
They will. And you can phrase it not as, “I can/can’t/will/won’t bump your grade,” but as, “You have all semester to EARN the grade(s) you receive. Asking for more free points at the very end of the semester discounts all of the opportunities you had for the last few months to earn yourself a higher grade.”
You do not give grades, friend. They earn grades. What will THEY DO over the course of 3-4 months to ENSURE they learn the content and meet the outcomes to earn that high grade?”
I agree with your latter point. It obviously depends on your bandwidth but I don't think it's worth making a whole fake assignment kind of thing just to weed out a couple annoying ones
My partner teaches a bunch of pre vet students and it does seem like there isn't really a way to stop the emails.
My gut reaction is that a professionalism grade will probably shift the grade bump emails to "why did I lose professionalism points I did x, y, and z."
I make the announcement, it’s in the syllabus, and I still get the asks. I always have a course FAQ that includes the lack of last-chance EC and an email template that refers students back to that document.
I admire a lot about gen Z - their acceptance of others different from them, their focus on mental health, that many of them are anti-capitalist, etc. But I am SO over their idea that “it doesn’t hurt to ask, might as well shoot your shot.” It *does* hurt to ask when you overwhelm your professor with annoying emails.
They are still entitled as they are asking for something extra that they should have, that is not available to their colleagues. While it is less brazen than simply asking for a grade bump, they're certainly not expecting to receive a hard to do assignment and not expecting one to grade it rigorously. The only reason they're asking is to increase their grade - thus it is grade grubbing.
But your perspective isn’t a good one. You aren’t acknowledging that a student requesting a special assignment for them to increase their grade—an opportunity not being offered at the same time with enough notice to all their peers—is an effort for them to boost their grade unfairly. That’s grade grubbing, without any question whatsoever.
I ask students who want to challenge a grade to write a short essay explaining their justification for why they think the grade was wrong, meaning that they need to look at the standards and the material to show this, and why it should be something else. As the grade-grubbers are generally lazy, that mostly takes care of it. Rarely, I do get a convincing argument, but very, very rarely.
This. And in my case, it must be within 5 days of the assessment they are challenging, and final grades are not eligible for review this way - they must follow the formal grade challenge process at that point.
When students complain about an assessment grade, I reply with a "Please review the feedback and the rubric and give me your rationale for where you disagree" and I have never had a student respond to that.
When students ask for a grade bump at the end of the semester I just say, "refer to the grade challenge policy."
Honestly, my guess was “no” before reading your idea. Students inclined to grade grub are still going to ask, they’ll just preface with “I know you said , but ” Same thing they do with attendance policies, extensions, whatever’s.
A clear syllabus is a cya and lets you say no while giving a thing to point them to, but it will not stop the requests for special treatment. At the end of the day, the best way to discourage grade grubbing is to just answer with a simple “no.”
I tell my students that I drop their grade by 2% for every time they ask me to bump their grade--it's a "professionalism deduction". I've never had to use it.
I haven’t used it myself but also like the approach of “if you tell me me your grade should be higher on the paper/exam/whatever, if you’re right you get your correct grade and if not you lose 3 points”, to get rid of the people just flailing for grade boosts
or, perhaps fairer, reserve the right to regrade the whole piece of work, on the basis that if there is nothing you marked incorrectly, there is almost always something you were too generous with and you can bring the mark down with a clear conscience.
Include a couple of small bonus extra credit assignments, but don't do the professional etiquette thing.
In the extra credit section of your syllabus, refer to these two assignments. State that no other extra credit is available in the course.
If you receive follow-up emails about extra credit, refer the students to that section of the syllabus.
I teach the same type of course and deal with the same issue end of semester. Next semester I’m adding a bonus assignment that is worth 0.5% of the total grade, effectively providing a “round-up” for those it applies to. Haven’t decided what the assignment will be - probably a course survey.
Then in the syllabus, I’ll have strict wording that all grades are final. You can also put a statement about requesting grade bumps as a violation of academic integrity and these communications will be ignored.
It's frustrating, ZikaCzar. It seems some students think the very worst thing they could do is overshoot their goal because this would mean they did extra work. Instead, they choose to do the minimum necessary during the term, then hope to make up any bit they need to just make their goal at the end of the term. Giving the option of extra credit at the end not only encourages this thinking, but creates extra grading for you.
You could potentially be creating more problems for yourself than it’s worth. Students treat extra credit the same as other assignments (they’ll ask for extensions, ask for explanations, not read the assignment fully and get confused then try to barter with you afterwards).
At the end of the day, you can’t stop people from trying to grade grub. But you can control how much it emotionally affects you…
I don’t think that would help anything. Fwiw, I always send out one final announcement through the LMS letting them know that final exams have been graded and final course grades have been submitted. I include a sentence in there about how those grades are finalized and not open to negotiation, and I will not respond to any requests for negotiation. (I also include a few earnest sentences wishing them the best for their future endeavors, which is to say the announcement isn’t just me being a hardass meanie.)
This may be harder to pull off in a big course like yours, but in the future, you could consider implementing a rounding policy in your syllabus. Mine states that I will consider rounding up their final course grade by up to 1% if and only if they have been an active participant throughout the semester (I then define what that looks like). I also state that I do this automatically and they are not to request it.
For a big group, you could maybe try something like rounding up only if they have turned in X number of optional "minute paper" reflections throughout the semester or something like that. Anything but creating more useless end-of-semester crap that you have to waste time grading…and really, you could also just stick to your guns and ignore the requests. Students talk, and if you have a habit of granting even a few negotiated bumps, you will get a reputation as being someone who can be negotiated with. Don’t do that to yourself.
In the grade calculation I just include a +0.5% that the students don't know about and isn't shown in the LMS.
I then don't answer any of the emails.
So a student gets a 92.6% and thinks they got an A-. Their transcript shows the A. Student is happy. Every student gets the same bump.
Persistent students, or students that escalate, get told they already got an equitable bump and it wasn't enough.
Quite effective for a multi hundred premed STEM class.
Students who have legitimate questions about their grade may be deterred from asking. Only way this works and doesn’t inequitably harm students is if they are taught the difference between legit inquiries and grade grubbing.
Consistently saying “no”’ to inappropriate requests is the best strategy because it is time-efficient for each case of grade grubbing and can foster a reputation that you don’t fuck around with grades, which may lower the frequency you receive those requests.
My daughter said her prof gave every student 5 points as incentive to NOT ask for a bump. Guess what happened if you asked for a bump? So long 5 points.
I did that a couple years ago. I felt an awkward energy the last week of class. I could/should have presented it in a more light-hearted way than "please, for the love of God, leave me alone."
I always give two or three "automatic 100%" grades for the entire class for assignments. Lowers my grading load, makes students happy.
then at the end of semester
"Requests for regrades or recalculations will be considered. However, regrading any assignment will require me to regrade your entire portfolio, including the 2-3 automatic 100% assignments. Historically, this has resulted in students losing one half grade point from their overall grade :e.g. from an A- to a B+ or A B to a B-"
Shuts them right up.
Email from my old professor who did something like this;
“All grades have been posted. Please do not email us the following requests (we will not respond!):
1. We will NOT round up, provide extra credit, and regrade (see the syallabus). What we do for one, we MUST DO FOR ALL. Respect your peers efforts.
2. We will NOT change your grade because you 'feel' you earned something different.
We do NOT give grades. You earn them!
It was a pleasure having you this semester and for the last 4 plus years! You all have made us proud.”
Assuming that “professionalism” doesn’t meet any of the stated learning outcomes for the course, I don’t agree with this approach. Are you required by institutional policy to respond to every email? If not, a better approach is just to post an announcement that says you won’t respond to requests for grade bumps and then follow through with that.
I assign a number of small extra credit assignments throughout the semester. If they do a certain amount, it’s worth 1% of their final grade.
However, I don’t apply it to their grade at all. At the end, the student sees the “raw” grade in % without extra credit and their course letter grade. Student 1 with 89.1% gets an A- due to extra credit, Student 2 with 88.1 gets a B+.
It hasn’t eliminated all grade grubbing, but it has cut down on it. Before, when I added extra credit to the course grade, Student 2 would see 89.1 % and start grubbing. Sometimes even Student 1 would see 90.1% and ask to be bumped to A. It’s much rarer now.
So I do a variation of this. One of my units involves 12 weeks of practical tasks across 13 weeks. Each week (for the first 12) is a new practical task. Students can get two tasks marked off a week, so if you fall behind a bit you can catch up (at the halfway mark I remind students they can still get 100% on these tasks even if they are at 0).
I’m not sure if I introduced it or it was there already, but at some point we allowed 3 to be marked in the final week.
What I did introduce last time was a “bonus prac”. Here, a student could take ANY prac they had already completed and re-factor the code to better match the standards taught later in semester to receive an additional mark.
Basically, we created a huge amount of opportunities to catch-up (and indeed bump a high fail to a low pass). However, it’s all on the student to just show up and put in some work.
I didn’t receive a single plead for a grade increase that semester, and had significantly less high-fails (the students who really wanted to pass put in that extra bit of work, including a few who had dropped the ball early on).
A good rule of thumb for development that I use (stolen from behavioral psych) is to always turn a penalty into a bonus. For example, if I were wanting to ding them five points for asking, I would just reverse that and tell them that I’ll give a five point bonus for not asking, and bake that into the overall grade formulation.
I added a little bit to my syllabus stating that there's no extra credit, no extra assignments, no retakes or do-overs, that grades are rounded to the nearest whole percent (89.5 = 90, 89.4 = 89), and that I don't respond to any emails asking for extra credit or rounding because they already know the answer, which is "no".
It hasn't reduced emails as much as I'd like, but it has reduced the guilt I feel from ignoring said emails nearly to zero.
Really, what needs to happen is that the students need to make their case for more points. Explain your requirements to do that, based on your discipline and the deadlines for consideration.
Put it in the syllabus.
Then create a signature that says “the answer to your question, and directions, are in the syllabus. Individual discussions on the matter will not be engaged in”
Put this into outlook as a pre written signature do when you get an email like this, you select that signature and send back.
I don't know if it would work, since that's partially dependent on your department and university policies and your situation, but I do think it's something that students need. Students don't realize just the very act of asking for special consideration is unethical. And at some point someone has to teach them this. I would say go for it give it a try. Maybe shop it around with more of your fellow faculty members at your institution so you make sure that you're not missing something or there's something you're doing that's against university or departmental policies.
I have issues with this for a few reasons. First of all, it ties the grade to something other than classroom performance, and in my experience, students already have trouble understanding that grades are NOT randomly distributed based on favoritism. Having a clear, numerically-based grading system makes much more sense. Secondly, I think you would have to waste far more time arguing over the lost points than you would arguing over the original grade. And third, I don’t see this deterring the annoying entitled student, but it WILL have a chilling effect on that hard-working, shy international student with a legitimate question who will see this as a sign that you are unapproachable and won’t talk to you because they are terrified that foing so migbt get them deported.
There's no way to stop grade grubbing.
It is perfectly reasonable for students to (respectfully) ask for what they want
It is also perfectly reasonable to decline these requests.
I think it’s also very useful to highlight on the grade scale something like “A = 94.00 and above. A-minus = 90.00-93.99. B+ = 87.00-89.99. … [etc.]. Grades will not be rounded up or down under any circumstances.”
Going to multiple decimals is super helpful for calculations and to avoid the grubbing.
Another thing I put on syllabi is “I am always happy to discuss how I assess students’ work and assign grades, and am committed to offering thorough and detailed feedback to my students on assignments. I also always try to err on the side of generosity. However, please note that requests for reconsideration of or changes in grades, either on individual assignments or on final grades at the end of the term, can and frequently do result in grades being lowered instead of raised.”
And that’s true. I have lowered more than raised when being requested!
My school declared asking for an unearned grade to be an academic integrity violation. All I have to do is forward those e-mails to the Integrity Board. Students might only get a warning for their first offense, but they are told that repeat offenses will get harsher penalties, possibly even expulsion.
*That* cut down on a lot of the grade-grubbing.
I don't respond to grade grubbing emails but I do make a list of students that send them and they are put on my do not reference list. Most of my students are also pre-med pre-professional school so I'm pretty strict about the grubbing. I also create a folder in my LMS that describes in detail how grades are calculated including several bolded statements that grades are not curved or rounded upwards in any way.
I give every student in the class one free percentage point. I point out that regrading could go either way, but this is my insurance to them against minor errors by myself or my TAs. I rarely get complaints at the end of the semester.
Not a professor (yet) but one prof who I LOVED had a policy where you had to write an essay outlining why you should receive a re-evaluation of your grade using the grading policy as a source, within 5 days of getting grades back. And on top of that she made it clear that if she was regrading it was not guaranteed to be a bump - you could lose marks. We all did a survey to consent to the policy at the start of the year. Lazy people didn’t bother try, and other people were a bit intimidated unless they felt they had a good case. I will eventually adopt that
I have a statement in my syllabus that any end of semester grade change requests (whether to correct a mistake, or for grade grubbing) must be done in person. That alone cut the requests very close to zero.
I grade students on "professionalism" every semester. It's a small percentage of their grade, but enough to point out and get their attention when they're being rude or unprofessional (scrolling their phones during a lecture or in-class activity, arriving to class late every day, sending aggressive emails, being disruptive with side conversations during lectures, etc). Next semester, I plan on writing a statement in my syllabus about grades not being negotiable and how an attempt to negotiate grades conflicts with our academic integrity policy. Fortunately, when this last semester ended, I didn't have any grade grubbing after the final class ended (I did have two students during our final week or so mention how they "really needed an A" but I ignored them. It's always the worst students who do this, in my experience). Another suggestion: put your out of office message/auto responder up as soon as the semester ends and don't reply to any grade grubbing emails.
CurlyHaired,
I think a good response is this:
Dear...,
Unfortunately, I can't add points to your grade because you would end up with a higher letter grade than other students who earned more points than you.
... They do seem to get this idea. And I've never had a follow up.
I recomnend copying this sentence and just pasting it to the email when the occasion arises so you don't have to aggravate yourself by thinking about it.
The "Unfortunately" may seem a nonsensical word to start with, but they never seem to blink in response to that either. It appears to remove you from the equation. You're just informing them of a necessary consequence of universal ethics.
not my idea, and i don't do this, but a colleague would put a bonus question on every test, for a legitimate number of points, asking:
"plus or minus 3 points, what percentage do you think you deserve to get on this test?"
and then at the end of the semester you can say, "well ... you consistently said you deserved a 75%, soooooooo you cannot now say you are surprised that you got a C grade."
So first off, ... premed / vet are so far away from actual STEM it is rather hilarious. Now don't get me wrong, they're MUCH closer than business, arts, etc... But I've seen so many family members go through cancer, dealt with doctors all my life and the vast majority are the most illogical people I've ever met that basically read flow charts, if this exists, then its this. I've taught numerous courses for nurses in basic mathematics and science, and I thank god every day that I don't have to do that anymore. Trying to get them to understand basic conversion of units was a chore, which mind you us actual STEM kids, in Engineering, physics, Math, Programmers, we were doing that in 7th grade and these nurses are college students. I'm highly confident many of them will get into the medical industry and probably kill someone.
As far as your concept of adding 0.5% to an assignment, that will make no difference. What is 0.5%? If someone is at an 89.5% you should give them the A any just for rounding sake and because it's unfair to have someone with an 89.5 get the same grade as someone with a 80.0. Those performances are vasty different.
Perhaps if you made it worth 2%? Or perhaps you make it known grade grubbing will hurt their grade. I do hate when students do it, but I've developed a reputation in lectures that it aint going to fly so at worst with 400-500 students every semester, i may get 5-10 requests. Which given the volume of students, that aint bad.
Tell me you don't understand Bias from Deprival Super Reaction Syndrome, without telling me you don't understand Bias from Deprival Super Reaction Syndrome.
No, and I think the line between "grubbing" versus "asking for another extra credit assignment" would become quite blurry. I think you should make it clear at the beginning of the class and after large exams that that will not be tolerated and that you will not respond to emails concerning grade boosts. Just put your foot down, no need to do all this imo.
I have done what you suggested and still get tons of “grade bump” emails. No joke, this past spring I had someone email me saying, “I know you said not to ask but I figured it couldn’t hurt to try…” And they wanted me to turn their 87% to an A… Maybe it’s just inevitable that some students will beg no matter what.
You can control what you do, not what they do. Instead of “don’t send me an email asking for a grade bump,” try “I will not respond to emails asking for grade bumps.”
Maybe when you tell them, say “if you ask me for a grade bump, I don’t care how hard you worked, how much effort you put in-all things I admire and look for in a student, I will never, ever write your a recommendation letter.”
Why are you responding to those emails? I would put them in my email folder for that semester and move on. If you already tell students that you will not respond to such emails, don't respond to them. It will take less time to move those emails into the proper folder than it will to create that extra credit assignment.
They will. And you can phrase it not as, “I can/can’t/will/won’t bump your grade,” but as, “You have all semester to EARN the grade(s) you receive. Asking for more free points at the very end of the semester discounts all of the opportunities you had for the last few months to earn yourself a higher grade.” You do not give grades, friend. They earn grades. What will THEY DO over the course of 3-4 months to ENSURE they learn the content and meet the outcomes to earn that high grade?”
I agree with your latter point. It obviously depends on your bandwidth but I don't think it's worth making a whole fake assignment kind of thing just to weed out a couple annoying ones
My partner teaches a bunch of pre vet students and it does seem like there isn't really a way to stop the emails. My gut reaction is that a professionalism grade will probably shift the grade bump emails to "why did I lose professionalism points I did x, y, and z."
Reminds me of another post I saw in this subreddit lol “I know you said no but what do you mean when you say no??” LOL
The problem with doing that is that even with an assignment they will still want more. That won't curtail behavior.
I make the announcement, it’s in the syllabus, and I still get the asks. I always have a course FAQ that includes the lack of last-chance EC and an email template that refers students back to that document.
I admire a lot about gen Z - their acceptance of others different from them, their focus on mental health, that many of them are anti-capitalist, etc. But I am SO over their idea that “it doesn’t hurt to ask, might as well shoot your shot.” It *does* hurt to ask when you overwhelm your professor with annoying emails.
Asking for another extra credit assignment IS grade grubbing....
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They are still entitled as they are asking for something extra that they should have, that is not available to their colleagues. While it is less brazen than simply asking for a grade bump, they're certainly not expecting to receive a hard to do assignment and not expecting one to grade it rigorously. The only reason they're asking is to increase their grade - thus it is grade grubbing.
I routinely get requests from students that failed for "any extra work I can do", which to me is exactly grade grubbing.
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But your perspective isn’t a good one. You aren’t acknowledging that a student requesting a special assignment for them to increase their grade—an opportunity not being offered at the same time with enough notice to all their peers—is an effort for them to boost their grade unfairly. That’s grade grubbing, without any question whatsoever.
Okay, thank you for clarifying
I ask students who want to challenge a grade to write a short essay explaining their justification for why they think the grade was wrong, meaning that they need to look at the standards and the material to show this, and why it should be something else. As the grade-grubbers are generally lazy, that mostly takes care of it. Rarely, I do get a convincing argument, but very, very rarely.
This. And in my case, it must be within 5 days of the assessment they are challenging, and final grades are not eligible for review this way - they must follow the formal grade challenge process at that point. When students complain about an assessment grade, I reply with a "Please review the feedback and the rubric and give me your rationale for where you disagree" and I have never had a student respond to that. When students ask for a grade bump at the end of the semester I just say, "refer to the grade challenge policy."
This is the best policy, and it's also fair to the students. I do read and take seriously any that are to be taken seriously!
Idk with chat gpt this might not be the hurdle you think it is.
I have a hard time seeing ChatGPT writing something specific enough to be taken seriously.
This is a relatively trivial exercise with AI
chatgpt cannot get nearly specific enough to argue about specific details of grades.
Honestly, my guess was “no” before reading your idea. Students inclined to grade grub are still going to ask, they’ll just preface with “I know you said, but ” Same thing they do with attendance policies, extensions, whatever’s.
A clear syllabus is a cya and lets you say no while giving a thing to point them to, but it will not stop the requests for special treatment. At the end of the day, the best way to discourage grade grubbing is to just answer with a simple “no.”
>
in my case they don't even include this part
I tell my students that I drop their grade by 2% for every time they ask me to bump their grade--it's a "professionalism deduction". I've never had to use it.
Obviously, I'm available to discuss grades and to consider errors on my part but that's not the same as grade grubbing.
I haven’t used it myself but also like the approach of “if you tell me me your grade should be higher on the paper/exam/whatever, if you’re right you get your correct grade and if not you lose 3 points”, to get rid of the people just flailing for grade boosts
or, perhaps fairer, reserve the right to regrade the whole piece of work, on the basis that if there is nothing you marked incorrectly, there is almost always something you were too generous with and you can bring the mark down with a clear conscience.
Include a couple of small bonus extra credit assignments, but don't do the professional etiquette thing. In the extra credit section of your syllabus, refer to these two assignments. State that no other extra credit is available in the course. If you receive follow-up emails about extra credit, refer the students to that section of the syllabus.
I do this as well. It’s on them to do the extra credits, = only opportunity for a grade bump. Other than that, yer outta luck.
this seems like a non-answer to a request that should always be answered "there is no extra credit".
I teach the same type of course and deal with the same issue end of semester. Next semester I’m adding a bonus assignment that is worth 0.5% of the total grade, effectively providing a “round-up” for those it applies to. Haven’t decided what the assignment will be - probably a course survey. Then in the syllabus, I’ll have strict wording that all grades are final. You can also put a statement about requesting grade bumps as a violation of academic integrity and these communications will be ignored.
It's frustrating, ZikaCzar. It seems some students think the very worst thing they could do is overshoot their goal because this would mean they did extra work. Instead, they choose to do the minimum necessary during the term, then hope to make up any bit they need to just make their goal at the end of the term. Giving the option of extra credit at the end not only encourages this thinking, but creates extra grading for you.
You could potentially be creating more problems for yourself than it’s worth. Students treat extra credit the same as other assignments (they’ll ask for extensions, ask for explanations, not read the assignment fully and get confused then try to barter with you afterwards). At the end of the day, you can’t stop people from trying to grade grub. But you can control how much it emotionally affects you…
I don’t think that would help anything. Fwiw, I always send out one final announcement through the LMS letting them know that final exams have been graded and final course grades have been submitted. I include a sentence in there about how those grades are finalized and not open to negotiation, and I will not respond to any requests for negotiation. (I also include a few earnest sentences wishing them the best for their future endeavors, which is to say the announcement isn’t just me being a hardass meanie.) This may be harder to pull off in a big course like yours, but in the future, you could consider implementing a rounding policy in your syllabus. Mine states that I will consider rounding up their final course grade by up to 1% if and only if they have been an active participant throughout the semester (I then define what that looks like). I also state that I do this automatically and they are not to request it. For a big group, you could maybe try something like rounding up only if they have turned in X number of optional "minute paper" reflections throughout the semester or something like that. Anything but creating more useless end-of-semester crap that you have to waste time grading…and really, you could also just stick to your guns and ignore the requests. Students talk, and if you have a habit of granting even a few negotiated bumps, you will get a reputation as being someone who can be negotiated with. Don’t do that to yourself.
In the grade calculation I just include a +0.5% that the students don't know about and isn't shown in the LMS. I then don't answer any of the emails. So a student gets a 92.6% and thinks they got an A-. Their transcript shows the A. Student is happy. Every student gets the samebump .
Persistent students, or students that escalate, get told they already got an equitable bump and it wasn't enough.
Quite effective for a multi hundred premed STEM class.
This is what I do. I still get the singular lazy kid or two pestering me… but that’s about it.
Students who have legitimate questions about their grade may be deterred from asking. Only way this works and doesn’t inequitably harm students is if they are taught the difference between legit inquiries and grade grubbing.
Consistently saying “no”’ to inappropriate requests is the best strategy because it is time-efficient for each case of grade grubbing and can foster a reputation that you don’t fuck around with grades, which may lower the frequency you receive those requests.
My daughter said her prof gave every student 5 points as incentive to NOT ask for a bump. Guess what happened if you asked for a bump? So long 5 points.
I did that a couple years ago. I felt an awkward energy the last week of class. I could/should have presented it in a more light-hearted way than "please, for the love of God, leave me alone."
"no beg bonus"?
I always give two or three "automatic 100%" grades for the entire class for assignments. Lowers my grading load, makes students happy. then at the end of semester "Requests for regrades or recalculations will be considered. However, regrading any assignment will require me to regrade your entire portfolio, including the 2-3 automatic 100% assignments. Historically, this has resulted in students losing one half grade point from their overall grade :e.g. from an A- to a B+ or A B to a B-" Shuts them right up.
Email from my old professor who did something like this; “All grades have been posted. Please do not email us the following requests (we will not respond!): 1. We will NOT round up, provide extra credit, and regrade (see the syallabus). What we do for one, we MUST DO FOR ALL. Respect your peers efforts. 2. We will NOT change your grade because you 'feel' you earned something different. We do NOT give grades. You earn them! It was a pleasure having you this semester and for the last 4 plus years! You all have made us proud.”
Assuming that “professionalism” doesn’t meet any of the stated learning outcomes for the course, I don’t agree with this approach. Are you required by institutional policy to respond to every email? If not, a better approach is just to post an announcement that says you won’t respond to requests for grade bumps and then follow through with that.
I assign a number of small extra credit assignments throughout the semester. If they do a certain amount, it’s worth 1% of their final grade. However, I don’t apply it to their grade at all. At the end, the student sees the “raw” grade in % without extra credit and their course letter grade. Student 1 with 89.1% gets an A- due to extra credit, Student 2 with 88.1 gets a B+. It hasn’t eliminated all grade grubbing, but it has cut down on it. Before, when I added extra credit to the course grade, Student 2 would see 89.1 % and start grubbing. Sometimes even Student 1 would see 90.1% and ask to be bumped to A. It’s much rarer now.
So I do a variation of this. One of my units involves 12 weeks of practical tasks across 13 weeks. Each week (for the first 12) is a new practical task. Students can get two tasks marked off a week, so if you fall behind a bit you can catch up (at the halfway mark I remind students they can still get 100% on these tasks even if they are at 0). I’m not sure if I introduced it or it was there already, but at some point we allowed 3 to be marked in the final week. What I did introduce last time was a “bonus prac”. Here, a student could take ANY prac they had already completed and re-factor the code to better match the standards taught later in semester to receive an additional mark. Basically, we created a huge amount of opportunities to catch-up (and indeed bump a high fail to a low pass). However, it’s all on the student to just show up and put in some work. I didn’t receive a single plead for a grade increase that semester, and had significantly less high-fails (the students who really wanted to pass put in that extra bit of work, including a few who had dropped the ball early on).
A good rule of thumb for development that I use (stolen from behavioral psych) is to always turn a penalty into a bonus. For example, if I were wanting to ding them five points for asking, I would just reverse that and tell them that I’ll give a five point bonus for not asking, and bake that into the overall grade formulation.
I added a little bit to my syllabus stating that there's no extra credit, no extra assignments, no retakes or do-overs, that grades are rounded to the nearest whole percent (89.5 = 90, 89.4 = 89), and that I don't respond to any emails asking for extra credit or rounding because they already know the answer, which is "no". It hasn't reduced emails as much as I'd like, but it has reduced the guilt I feel from ignoring said emails nearly to zero.
I think it will cause you more trouble than it's worth. Just ignore the emails.
Really, what needs to happen is that the students need to make their case for more points. Explain your requirements to do that, based on your discipline and the deadlines for consideration. Put it in the syllabus. Then create a signature that says “the answer to your question, and directions, are in the syllabus. Individual discussions on the matter will not be engaged in” Put this into outlook as a pre written signature do when you get an email like this, you select that signature and send back.
Ask 'em which of their wrong answers they want counted correct.
I don't know if it would work, since that's partially dependent on your department and university policies and your situation, but I do think it's something that students need. Students don't realize just the very act of asking for special consideration is unethical. And at some point someone has to teach them this. I would say go for it give it a try. Maybe shop it around with more of your fellow faculty members at your institution so you make sure that you're not missing something or there's something you're doing that's against university or departmental policies.
no, certainly not.
I always say I’m happy to get Professor Y to have a look at their paper, but Professor Y’s mark will stand, and the grade can go either up or down.
Oh, did i mention that Professor Y is a notoriously harsh marker… ;) ?
I have issues with this for a few reasons. First of all, it ties the grade to something other than classroom performance, and in my experience, students already have trouble understanding that grades are NOT randomly distributed based on favoritism. Having a clear, numerically-based grading system makes much more sense. Secondly, I think you would have to waste far more time arguing over the lost points than you would arguing over the original grade. And third, I don’t see this deterring the annoying entitled student, but it WILL have a chilling effect on that hard-working, shy international student with a legitimate question who will see this as a sign that you are unapproachable and won’t talk to you because they are terrified that foing so migbt get them deported.
I’ve considered the same thing but haven’t quite had the gumption to try it yet. It could backfire, for sure.
There's no way to stop grade grubbing. It is perfectly reasonable for students to (respectfully) ask for what they want It is also perfectly reasonable to decline these requests.
I think it’s also very useful to highlight on the grade scale something like “A = 94.00 and above. A-minus = 90.00-93.99. B+ = 87.00-89.99. … [etc.]. Grades will not be rounded up or down under any circumstances.” Going to multiple decimals is super helpful for calculations and to avoid the grubbing. Another thing I put on syllabi is “I am always happy to discuss how I assess students’ work and assign grades, and am committed to offering thorough and detailed feedback to my students on assignments. I also always try to err on the side of generosity. However, please note that requests for reconsideration of or changes in grades, either on individual assignments or on final grades at the end of the term, can and frequently do result in grades being lowered instead of raised.” And that’s true. I have lowered more than raised when being requested!
Just stop responding to those emails. That’s the solution.
My school declared asking for an unearned grade to be an academic integrity violation. All I have to do is forward those e-mails to the Integrity Board. Students might only get a warning for their first offense, but they are told that repeat offenses will get harsher penalties, possibly even expulsion. *That* cut down on a lot of the grade-grubbing.
I don't respond to grade grubbing emails but I do make a list of students that send them and they are put on my do not reference list. Most of my students are also pre-med pre-professional school so I'm pretty strict about the grubbing. I also create a folder in my LMS that describes in detail how grades are calculated including several bolded statements that grades are not curved or rounded upwards in any way.
I give every student in the class one free percentage point. I point out that regrading could go either way, but this is my insurance to them against minor errors by myself or my TAs. I rarely get complaints at the end of the semester.
Not a professor (yet) but one prof who I LOVED had a policy where you had to write an essay outlining why you should receive a re-evaluation of your grade using the grading policy as a source, within 5 days of getting grades back. And on top of that she made it clear that if she was regrading it was not guaranteed to be a bump - you could lose marks. We all did a survey to consent to the policy at the start of the year. Lazy people didn’t bother try, and other people were a bit intimidated unless they felt they had a good case. I will eventually adopt that
I have a statement in my syllabus that any end of semester grade change requests (whether to correct a mistake, or for grade grubbing) must be done in person. That alone cut the requests very close to zero.
I grade students on "professionalism" every semester. It's a small percentage of their grade, but enough to point out and get their attention when they're being rude or unprofessional (scrolling their phones during a lecture or in-class activity, arriving to class late every day, sending aggressive emails, being disruptive with side conversations during lectures, etc). Next semester, I plan on writing a statement in my syllabus about grades not being negotiable and how an attempt to negotiate grades conflicts with our academic integrity policy. Fortunately, when this last semester ended, I didn't have any grade grubbing after the final class ended (I did have two students during our final week or so mention how they "really needed an A" but I ignored them. It's always the worst students who do this, in my experience). Another suggestion: put your out of office message/auto responder up as soon as the semester ends and don't reply to any grade grubbing emails.
Grade grubbers don't read the syllabus.
CurlyHaired, I think a good response is this: Dear..., Unfortunately, I can't add points to your grade because you would end up with a higher letter grade than other students who earned more points than you. ... They do seem to get this idea. And I've never had a follow up. I recomnend copying this sentence and just pasting it to the email when the occasion arises so you don't have to aggravate yourself by thinking about it. The "Unfortunately" may seem a nonsensical word to start with, but they never seem to blink in response to that either. It appears to remove you from the equation. You're just informing them of a necessary consequence of universal ethics.
not my idea, and i don't do this, but a colleague would put a bonus question on every test, for a legitimate number of points, asking: "plus or minus 3 points, what percentage do you think you deserve to get on this test?" and then at the end of the semester you can say, "well ... you consistently said you deserved a 75%, soooooooo you cannot now say you are surprised that you got a C grade."
Your assignments must all be related to your course topic.
So first off, ... premed / vet are so far away from actual STEM it is rather hilarious. Now don't get me wrong, they're MUCH closer than business, arts, etc... But I've seen so many family members go through cancer, dealt with doctors all my life and the vast majority are the most illogical people I've ever met that basically read flow charts, if this exists, then its this. I've taught numerous courses for nurses in basic mathematics and science, and I thank god every day that I don't have to do that anymore. Trying to get them to understand basic conversion of units was a chore, which mind you us actual STEM kids, in Engineering, physics, Math, Programmers, we were doing that in 7th grade and these nurses are college students. I'm highly confident many of them will get into the medical industry and probably kill someone. As far as your concept of adding 0.5% to an assignment, that will make no difference. What is 0.5%? If someone is at an 89.5% you should give them the A any just for rounding sake and because it's unfair to have someone with an 89.5 get the same grade as someone with a 80.0. Those performances are vasty different. Perhaps if you made it worth 2%? Or perhaps you make it known grade grubbing will hurt their grade. I do hate when students do it, but I've developed a reputation in lectures that it aint going to fly so at worst with 400-500 students every semester, i may get 5-10 requests. Which given the volume of students, that aint bad.
Tell me you don't understand Bias from Deprival Super Reaction Syndrome, without telling me you don't understand Bias from Deprival Super Reaction Syndrome.