GRADING PHILOSOPHY

TRADITIONAL VS. COSMIC JUSTICE.  This course will follow Thomas Sowell’s succinct statement regarding grading and standards:

"The philospher Pascal said that morality included a duty to think clearly.  Clear thinking, in turn, included not confusing effort with results.  If I practice singing as long and as conscientiously as Pavarotti, I will have as much merit as Pavarotti-- but I will still not sing as well as Pavarotti.  What other people can judge, in this case all too easily, is who sings better.   That is all they should try to judge.  Neither my personal effort nor his is known to them.  Likewise, we can have rules and criteria that apply equally to men and women.  Traditional concepts of justice or fairness, at least within the American tradition, boil down to applying the same rules and standards to everyone."

Thus in this course you will be evaluated by the answer to the first and not the second question; i.e., the first question is did you or did you not finish the assigned task?  Or were you there in class the whole time?  The second question goes to why or why not, but that is the cosmic portion that embraces everything from a death in the family to your ink cartridge going dry.  For clarity, these two are not seen as equivalent, but an instructor is hard-pressed to apply a fixed standard to a relative's death.   Exceptions are made for extraordinary reasons, but extraordinary is a EXTRAordinary as outlined below:

> Group assignments. There is no substitute for being in class to present your work because that is when the group meets; belated copies can be provided your fellow group members.
> Quizzes. Make-ups are possible for extraordinary reasons; do not take this class if you know you cannot be there on the assigned days.
> Exams. Make-ups are possible but only for extraordinary reasons. Contact the instructor within one week of date.
> Attendance. Required and counted each day.  One must be there the whole time; partial credit is not possible.

QUIZ GRADING
This is more straight-forward in that what you see is what you get.  Questions and answers are provided, and you are quizzed on the answer provided (even if the answer provided is itself debate, for this segment you are only accountable for what was give you).

ENTIRETY V. .  The exams, take home essay, journal submission, group work and attendance is graded in its entirety rather than incremental.  For clarity, there is no fixed point system that means minus one point for each mispelled word, or minus two points for flawed transition sentence, etc.  Instead, it takes the whole picture into account as the sum of the parts and not each separate part as x amount of points.

EXAM GRADING
The mid-term and final essay exams are graded based on the Grading Rubric.  Follow that link for specifics in form & content.  It is graded in its entirety weighing the strengths against the weaknesses of the argument.

JOURNAL
This is submitted in its entirety, and is graded accordingly which means that each segment or page IS NOT counted separately; instead the over-all submission is assessed via form (did the student follow the provided instructions?) and content (what was the depth of the analysis provided?).  This way every segment matters and students are not tempted to calculate what counts more or less.  Every part matters to the whole so it isn't advisable to submit weak portions.  Form is graded in five-point increments for 25 points; content is also graded on five-point increments for 25 points. 

GROUP WORK
Your fellow group members will be crucial for this assessment.  I heard from a disgruntled student one time that she deserved all the points because she did a good job.  That's what she thought, while every other group member did not see it that way.  Of course, this can be verified by the quality of work submitted in the Journal.