Boxers or briefs?
Superman or Batman?
Coke or Pepsi?
Plus/minus grading or the status quo?
There are plenty of conflicts and rivalries out there, but the decision of whether to add plus and minus signs behind letter grades has professors and students from universities all over the nation rolling up their sleeves ready for debate.
"You are entering into an area where opinions and passions often prevail over evidence and reason," said Thomas Guskey, University of Kentucky education professor and author of "Developing Grading and Reporting Systems for Student Learning."
Students at ASU collected nearly 4,000 signatures of graduate and undergraduate students opposed to the grading system passed by the Academic Senate on Feb. 24. The graduate and undergraduate student governments will present an alternate grading system to the Academic Senate at a 3:15 p.m. meeting today to try to compromise with faculty.
Other universities have tried to appease students and professors in different ways.
At Clemson University in South Carolina, student and faculty protest for and against a plus/minus system was so strong, the provost's office decided to enter into a two-year trial as a compromise, said Ryan Solomon, former Academic Senate chair for Clemson's student government.
The trial began last fall with a grading system where pluses would add .33 to all base grades of A (4.00), B (3.00), C (2.00), D (1.00) and F (0.00) and minuses would subtract the same amount.
Professors can assign plus/minus grades, but they will not affect student transcripts during the trial.
A report generated after the first semester of the trial showed that 62.6 percent of Clemson student GPAs were lower under the plus/minus system than under the regular grading scale. About 30 percent of student grades increased and 7 percent saw no change.
Many professors pushed for the new system because they want to motivate students to work harder and learn more, but Solomon said the plan isn't working as well as faculty expected.
"Because the grading changes are just experimental, I don't believe students are working any harder than before, and I don't believe that students would work any harder on a true plus/minus system," Solomon said.
Solomon added that the trial would not likely become permanent policy.
Students and faculty at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania were sitting on the plus/minus issue for nearly nine years and finally decided to institute a trial in fall 2001.
Students only received plus/minus grades for their mid-term report cards, but the grades won't affect GPAs and transcripts.
"Students at Carnegie Mellon are here to learn first and earn grades second," wrote the editorial board of the student newspaper. "Implementing the plus/minus grading scale for final grades would only increase competition and strain in the intense academic environment at CMU."
The trial ended in fall 2002, and the university has maintained the mid-term grading system.
According to Guskey, the feuding could be quelled if everyone shifted the focus to determining the meanings of grades.
"I am not suggesting that we abandon grading, but until we precisely identify what students are expected to learn, articulate the criteria by which their learning will be judged, and clearly communicate these criteria to students, grading will remain an arbitrary and highly subjective process that victimizes more students than it helps," he added.
Reach the reporter at lynh.bui@asu.edu.
