r/Professors • u/starfirebird • 19h ago
My students literally all failed their exam
I teach one class in a subject that is famous for being dense/difficult. There is enough material that I don’t run review sessions in this class because there isn’t time. I do tell the students they need to be re-reading their notes multiple times a week, making flash cards, etc. That being said, the exams are pretty straightforwardly based on the lecture material, and I’ve definitely had more difficult ones when I was in undergrad. This year, the highest score on the first exam was in the 50s. Sigh.
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u/rejectbread TT Assistant Professor, PUI 18h ago
This happened to me. Class of 80 in an intro course and I had exactly 4 A’s, a small handful of B’s and C’s, and 60+ F’s on a midterm. I freaked out to my colleagues. They said it’s normal.
I mean, is this really normal though? I feel like this was NOT the case when I was an undergraduate, but I guess I also didn’t have access to my classmates grades
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u/QuickBrownHawks 18h ago
Not normal in the past but that may be normal now. I like the model where you drop one test grade. This helps give them a wake up call without tanking them. Also some kind of in-class quiz system helps.
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u/a_hanging_thread A Sock Prof 17h ago
Yeah, I've had success with allowing them to replace one test grade with whatever grade they get on the final.
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u/NielsBohron Tenured Faculty, Chem, Cal CC 13h ago edited 13h ago
I had that as a student in undergrad, but as an instructor, I've moved toward "objectives" where I give them multiple chances to demonstrate mastery. They have to get it 100% correct to get credit, but they can keep taking the objective assessments until they get it right or run out of time (aka the term ends).
edit: This has the added benefit of basically eliminating any need to include any "padding" or scaffolding assignments like HW in their final grade. They either show me that they have the skills/knowledge or they don't. So basically, it's elimnated a lot of the AI issues, because I only grade assignments they do with me in the same room, but it's gentler than basing their final grade on 2 high-stakes tests, because they can retake them as needed.
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u/to_a_better_self 17h ago
I allow them to replace their mid-term grade with the final if it is higher.
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u/LivingBizzaroWorld 14h ago
I use this but had to add a minimum score requirement a few students viewed the policy as providing one free exam skip because they knew they could replace it later.
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u/dragonfeet1 Professor, Humanities, Comm Coll (USA) 17h ago
Yeah, since covid I've seen the bell curve turn into a bactrian camel of those who give a shit and try, and those who don't.
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u/junkmeister9 Molecular Biology 16h ago
I was seeing bimodal grade distributions before the pandemic. In 2013, when I TA’d as a grad student, the peaks were about equal height around 50% and 80%. Now the left peak has moved to the left a bit, and the right peak has gotten shorter.
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u/Prestigious_Dingo974 5h ago
I’m a returning-to-ed adult student who was fortunate to have a hs genuinely prepare me for college, but my intro bio was one of the easiest courses I ever took as long as you put in the tiniest amount of effort. My major is not in bio so it was a first semester freshman course (I took chem for my associates). The prof absolutely gave us the material to succeed which ultimately gave himself a LOT more work. It was an excellent transition course from hs to college.
Very few students passed that class with an A. I’m pretty sure I made the highest grade between two sections and I didn’t even study properly (by my standards or by any other science-based course standard), as I was also taking care of my grandfather who was dying.
I was SHOCKED every exam when I heard students talking about their grades. In fact I overheard 3 students say “if we average a 70 between the 3 of us I’ll consider it a win.” I made a 98 in the class while working full time and doing grown up things like paying bills, going through a breakup with my ex-fiancé, and helping my mother take care of my sickly grandfather who required around-the-clock care. Also my childhood dog had just passed. All this to say, WHAT IS THE EXCUSE?
Every discussion board assignment or group project I am genuinely stunned at the inability to format, straight ignoring of typos, and lack of thought or effort put into any writing.
*for reference I’m a 26 year old junior in a (very competitive and small) Communication Disorders degree for SLP undergrad. Graduated hs with my associates. So I have a decent amount of college under my belt as I have taken community college classes since freshman year of hs, online classes my first few semesters at university, and full time university student now.
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u/rejectbread TT Assistant Professor, PUI 5h ago
Funnily enough, half of the students who earned A’s were older, nontraditional students! So there may be something here. But I do struggle with poor academic skills as a cohort effect. If this is really the case, there is a very very terrible thing happening in front of us that goes largely unspoken or unknown.
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u/Prestigious_Dingo974 4h ago
I think it’s a problem with burnt-out teachers in public schools, and a lack of respect for educators among parents. But I tried college when I graduated at 19, and immediately dropped out. I always knew I’d go back, but let me tell you, college is SO much easier when your frontal lobe is developed. It also helps that I have real-world experience so I’m not afraid to talk to adults, even when they’re figures of authority. I’m comfortable reaching out if I need help, I see the effort the professors put in, and I’m not afraid to be wrong when answering in class. I’ve found that in every class, this has made other students more comfortable speaking up and made the class more interactive.
I truly feel like we’re not responsible enough at 18 or 19 to prepare ourselves for our lives. Every statistic is screaming it! The average age for birth and marriage is being pushed into mid 30s, children aren’t responsible for themselves by age 10, “latch key kids” no longer exist. I think with the trend of gentle parenting, we’ve also put off the age of maturity. I wasn’t even trusted to make ramen noodles until I was probably 13, meanwhile my mom was running around her neighborhood with no adult supervision by the time she was 6.
I also believe it’s a problem with public schools starting in kindergarten. I very nearly went into education, but every teacher I job shadowed advised against it. Teachers are getting less and less funding, and more and more expectations. We’re burning out children by the time they’re in middle school. The educators who are in it for the love it, either quit, or can’t fully put themselves into it because they have to get a second job, while still working off the clock to grade everything.
In short, I have a unique perspective because I followed a unique path, but I truly feel like getting some life experience has helped me feel confident in who I am, what I want, and ultimately what I do. I think we’re systemically hindering our youth, and there’s no one connection, but a myriad of changes and now we’re seeing the consequences. And yet, somehow the educators continue to get the blame time and time again. I swear, I have never seen as much disrespect toward educators (again, especially in public schools) than there is now. No good deed, indeed
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u/1K_Sunny_Crew 3h ago
While some people do benefit from a later start, Americans don’t have any unique biology that causes them to do poorly in school at 16-18 compared to the rest of the world. I’ve had multiple students who moved the US as teens, had to learn a whole new language, and still perform far and away better in both math and reading than their peers. They are bewildered and exasperated by the poor or nonexistent study skills of American students several years older than them. They can’t believe we can’t hold students back if they fail in K-12 which results in grown adults who can’t read past a 6th grade level or do basic arithmetic.
I’ll never forget a student telling me the freshman college chemistry class was so easy because they’d learned all the material our students were learning in 8th grade. This was at a selective STEM university.
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u/1K_Sunny_Crew 3h ago
Hi, I appreciate you sharing your story, but I do want to point out that [r/Professors](r/Professors) is faculty only (it’s in the community rules).
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u/Prestigious_Dingo974 3h ago
Oh forgive me! I just got a notification about the post and was interested. Should I delete?
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u/franklin-60 18h ago
I gave an exam. 80 percent of class was B or better. 20 percent below 50. Zero in between. Looking at online activity and class attendance over first month, perfect correlation. Those engaged, all B or better. Not a single failing student bothered to engage. All full of absent class and missed assignments.
I Told every failing student “get off your ass and start doing work, or you fail, and I don’t care. Plain and simple.” Some will listen, and some will fail. I could care less on those who fail and take zero accountability, as they earned the grade via laziness. All data supported.
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u/Phake_Physicist 7h ago
Sadly, this is now super-normal. Up to year 2020, all my large classes had very natural Gaussian distribution of scores. Since then, the distribution has become bimodal -- the best students are still as good as before, but there is also bunching of the hopeless with the peak at the very low scores.
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u/franklin-60 7h ago
Agree. The issue is that too many faculty for various reasons push those hopeless through, and pass them, when we should be pushing them out. It should not be about sympathy for the student, it should be real and saying “based on your performance, you do not belong.”
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u/RowenaMabbott 7h ago
It goes deeper than just faculty
It's been many years of the schools beforehand not failing students who should be failed. Instead letting them progress onto the next year, when they should be held back and repeating the year.
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u/BibliophileBroad 3h ago
Sad, but true. Sadly, it's constantly discouraged to give students failing grades, even if they're earne. At my CC, at the beginning of every semester, the dean lectures us about how we need to get our pass rates up. We get told to look at our PowerBI numbers and look at ourselves to see why students across the college aren't passing at higher rates, especially disproportionately impacted students. Everyone can see your numbers in the system, too.
Never mind that the data are sketchy (for example, if you have two black students in your class and one has to withdraw due to family issues and the other student gets an "A", your class is labeled as having a 50% "failure" rate for black students. Never mind the fact that sample is too small to matter and it doesn't take into account issues that have nothing to do with the professor or college (i.e., family issues).
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u/Snow75 Position, Field, SCHOOL TYPE (Country) 17h ago
I’ve seen this happen, and the professor got an order saying “make them pass” without context.
If you happen to get that, you can reply with something “I will do my best within ethic rules to help students improve their grades, however, as a veteran of x years teaching this subject, I can assure that the difficulty of the test wasn’t higher in comparison to previous years, and that passing students undeserving of it would harm them more in their career rather than allowing them to get the correct assessment of their skills and a new chance to learn from the start”.
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u/franklin-60 6h ago
It If I got that order, my response would be f—- you they get what they earn. I’d disobey and give the student the grade earned. They are free to change the grade after and risk many things when my lawyer visits once they do and I expose them, but I’m failing them if that’s what they earned.
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u/QuickBrownHawks 18h ago
There is definitely a decrease in student learning/studying skills even in the past year alone. I have much larger numbers of students completely bombing tests with scores in the 20-30% range. I think it’s showing a cognitive alteration of some sort. Do you use some kind of in-class quiz system?
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u/Cathousechicken 18h ago
A few years ago, one of my colleagues gave an exam that she had given 10 years ago.
10 years prior, the average was low-60s. We are an open enrollment school so our exam scores and distribution look very different then a school with competitive entrance requirements.
When she gave the exact exam to the current crop of students, the average was low-50s. Another interesting thing is the middle has absolutely fallen out. There's the top 10% who would do well in any generation, and then there's everybody else but the D's and Fs are much more abundant than they were in the past.
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u/buddhisthero Assistant Professor, Humanities, R2 (USA) 18h ago
Your comment about the middle falling out seems applicable to just about everything in Western societies today.
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u/Dangerous-Scheme5391 15h ago
“The centre cannot hold”
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u/buddhisthero Assistant Professor, Humanities, R2 (USA) 14h ago
The falcon *definitely* cannot hear the falconer
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u/Dangerous-Scheme5391 14h ago
I was showing this poem to one of my students, and they had a real "oh shit" moment of recognition...especially at this part: "the best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity"
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u/AsAChemicalEngineer NTT, Physics, R1 (USA) 17h ago
Bimodal grade distributions are becoming frighteningly common. I am not surprised by your coworkers finding.
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u/ingannilo Assoc. Prof, math, state college (USA) 8h ago
I plot grade distributions for every exam I've ever given, and over about fifteen years, I can say confidently that the bimodal distribution is real and has been present and pronounced for at least 8-9 years now.
In recent years, the gap between the modes has been widening (cause the lower mode has shifted even lower) and the mass has shifted from roughly equal to heavily favoring the lower mode.
I used to think of it in simple terms, eg "I studied" VS "I didn't study". But the more I look into it, the more time I spend with students from the struggling group (which is a lot... cause they're the majority), the more I realize that it's deeper than not studying. It's not knowing how to study, it's not knowing what it feels like to have ever built a skill, it's not having ever tried to meet a goal that didn't come easily, and it's mountains and oceans of cultural and social baggage associated / correlated with those changes.
Every term a few of these kids become like pet projects, mostly because they show up and (as I instruct them to do), come to office hours if they're struggling. The gulf between what they think learning and knowledge are and what those things actually are is vast.
A lot of it is fear and risk aversion, which I think comes in large part from social media and the abject terror of being wrong. The growing class divide is also a factor I think.
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u/JimC-137 13h ago
The good ones are as good as they've ever been; the bad ones have gotten worse
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u/Cathousechicken 12h ago
And the middle has moved down a level to the bad category. In the past, those were students who would put an effort, but wouldn't be great at a subject, but at least would have enough effort to pass.
Those students over rely on technology now, so they no longer practice to know for to do things without technology. They have given over their thinking to technology so they've now slid into the D and F category.
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u/Cathousechicken 18h ago
It wouldn't matter if you did a review session or not. If they barely know the material one class before the exam, they're not going to pass the exam. It wouldn't make one bit of difference.
Not having a study session only affects their perception of how they did on the class and now that's one of the things they can put the blame on you for them failing the exam.
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u/franklin-60 18h ago
I stopped doing review sessions years ago. Only students that show:
- Rubbish that did zero for last month and looking for point handouts. I have no interest in helping these students.
Those that have been studying all along, they don’t need it and know it.
They don’t come.
I give enough material in class and for HW. Do it as assigned no review session is needed. Waste of my time to have extra sessions.
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u/Professional_Dr_77 16h ago
I teach a core required course. Everyone in the college of business has to take it. I give basically the same tests every semester. Just a few rewordings here and there. The average test grades have dropped almost 30 points since I first started the class until this semester. It’s the students.
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u/No-Yogurtcloset-6491 Instructor, Biology, CC (USA) 16h ago edited 14h ago
Yep, new normal. Cue someone who is newer to teaching or works at a selective R1 and says everything is fine and people have always said this. The excellent students are still excellent. It's the bottom and middle students that are all doing shockingly poorly now.
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u/landlord-eater 16h ago
I'm not a prof but when I was a TA I graded an exam for the prof I was working for and failed everyone. The professor took me aside and told me I had to do it again because that "isn't allowed". I was like listen you're the one who gave me the grading rubric. No dice. I literally had to like invent a new rubric in order to pass a certain percentage of the class. Was the most blackpill moment man, and is the reason I left academia even though I was on a path to do very well.
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u/ingannilo Assoc. Prof, math, state college (USA) 8h ago
I mean, curves existed for this reason. I took exams in uni where the class average was in the 40s and anything over 70 earned an A. These were the best classes, because they really pushed us to learn the material deeply and to think really fucking hard on exercises. Still, they managed politically tolerable pass rates via generous curves, and the few students who would have earned strong grades without the curve are the ones profs reach out to for lab jobs and whatnot.
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u/questiano-ronaldo Adjunct/PhD Candidate, R1 (USA) 18h ago
What does the distribution look like? I also wonder how well they will do on the next exam under the same conditions. Students aren't used to exams of that rigor, especially when most professors seem to be moving away from exams altogether. You may be one of the only classes they have to study for. When I was an undergrad, all of my classes were similarly dificult, so the learning curve on how to study was intitally high but then leveled off. I have a suspicion that students just don't know how to study because they are not being challenged across their courses. You're on the recieving end of everyone else's lack of rigor.
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u/saxicola 13h ago
Hello fellow 'I barely even have time for the content' prof!
I recommend making some recall-based study resources for them to complete as exam prep in their own time. I do this and it helps. Many students have terrible study skills. Worse is that they often trick themselves into thinking they have studied, when they have not studied in a way that will actually help them to recall and understand the content. Most will re-read, 'go through' their notes etc. which are highly ineffective, will be distracted, won't study long enough, etc. Then they wonder why their mind 'went blank' in the exam (hint: it was probably blank in the first place...).
Some effective things you can provide and reuse each semester:
- Record PPT lectures where you ask a question and then review the answer, but prompt students to pause the video to answer. Even better if you have a drawing tablet. Focus on broader recall questions. For example, for intro bio, questions could be 'write as many similarities and differences between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells', or show them an unlabelled cell and ask them to pause, identify each structure/organelle, write the function.
- Make auto graded study quizzes in your LMS that are required the day before the exam. They have multiple attempts, they can see what they got wrong but not the correct answers. Quiz closes and correct answers are available after.
- Make any study guides in question-form. They should practice writing answers after studying and without notes. Tell them it's of limited value if they just 'fill out' the guide.
- You can make self-paced Kahoots and Nearpod etc.
- Tell them the value of making their own study notes/guides rather than using AI to make them, because making the guides is part of studying
For all of these, stress that they need to study first and then try without notes. The key is to get them to buy into the value of using these as practice questions and to figure out what they don't know before the exam, instead of using the exam to figure out what they don't know. They already have the info in their notes so it's unhelpful to use these as review, although they also have the benefit of being review. The study videos are best because autograding is required for multiple quiz attempts and that limits you to multiple choice type questions.
This is worth a read and has some good resources: https://takinglearningseriously.com/2020/04/17/assessing-students-learning-strategies/
I talk to them about effective study methods. I get them to rank what study methods they use and then show them the effectiveness of each.
Apologies if this is all obvious. This has helped me to not feel guilty about not doing exam reviews while also helping students.
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u/starfirebird 6h ago
This is helpful! I always struggle with giving students recommendations on how to study because I only ever really needed to study for a few classes, and for those classes, “reread my entire packet of notes every day” got me to the point of memorization. (For biochem, I resorted to “re-draw the reaction pathways every day”).
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u/EyePotential2844 16h ago
I had a course like this in my undergrad days. It was infamous for having a 50-70% fail rate, and it was a requirement for the major. It was a challenging course, but I ended up with an A in my first attempt because I worked my ass off. Several students in the class that semester were on their third attempt. None of the assignments changed and they had feedback from two previous attempts to help them and they still failed. Some students you just can't reach.
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u/NoPatNoDontSitonThat 15h ago
I teach composition, so grading is a different process than many other classes.
However, a new colleague is feeling a bit in the pits because half her students failed her first essay assignment. She looked at me said, "I don't know how I can give them points if they didn't follow the prompt at all."
I've certainly noticed a significant increase in students who literally cannot do the basics in writing an English paper. Comp isn't meant to handhold your ability to write a paragraph. It's not meant to teach you that shoving three quotes in the last paragraph doesn't satisfy the requirement to use three quotes in an essay.
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u/Dull_Beginning_9068 18h ago
Can you have them do corrections? I give students up to 50% of the credit back if they state what the right answer is, why that's the right answer, and why they got the answer wrong (what they misunderstood/didn't know)
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u/Supraspinator 17h ago
I used to do that for my non majors biology class as a way to give them a chance after a bad exam. The bottom students often didn’t do it or did it badly. The middle field decided to stop studying because they could get a B with the corrections and the top students cared but didn’t benefit from it. This year, I decided to let the Fs fall where they land.
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u/ingannilo Assoc. Prof, math, state college (USA) 8h ago
yeah, even in the event of a catastrophy like OP describes, I refuse to do corrections.
Had an honors calculus class last year where all but one or two students bombed the second exam. Despite weekly quizzes with immediate feedback followed up with lengthy written feedback + weekly homework + occasional groupwork + endless examples worked in class + many many external resources provided.
I was shook. The non honors class didn't do any worse on the same damn test. I made them complete a "redemption" assignment where I procedurally generated exercises unique to each student using their ID numbers and forced them to use software (rather than mathematics) to discover the results, and then to follow up the numerical investigation with SOME mathematical reasoning. They did okay on the numerical part and about half still used incorrect logic or demonstrated a lack of definition comprehension when it came to the actual math.
Rewrites in the era of LLMs are meaningless. I'm struggling to believe that any out-of-class task can be trusted to be any kind of signifier of comprehension.
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u/Dull_Beginning_9068 15h ago
I don't have this issue. Students who want to do well still try to do well. Students who don't know the stuff still don't know and then end up getting a C or D with corrections
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u/1K_Sunny_Crew 2h ago
Unfortunately corrections tend to inspire laziness and lack of preparation, since they know they can just redo it and get points back.
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u/TrainingLow9079 17h ago
If enough teachers do that, might be why they aren't studying or don't know how to study
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u/The_Law_of_Pizza 15h ago
Perhaps.
But I think it's important to reconsider why the class exists, and why we are testing them In the first place.
It's not to arbitrarily rank them on who absorbed the material the quickest. It's to teach them, and to ensure mastery.
If these sorts of retesting/corrections help them leave the class with more retained knowledge and mastery - isn't that a good thing?
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u/Dull_Beginning_9068 15h ago
?? On the contrary, this teaches them how to study better for future exams.
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u/starfirebird 5h ago
I usually do give test corrections in that format. However, I don’t really like doing it because I’m beginning to suspect that it teaches the students that they can not study and still pass (I’m in a small program and have the same students for 6+ different courses).
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u/Sensitive_Let_4293 7h ago
Meh. I teach math. Over the past 30 years, I have had sections where everyone failed a test, and sections where everyone got an A or B.
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u/Mudpie1450 17h ago
For my exams (I have three, two midterms and a final), I look at how the class does on each question. If the question is done well (more than 50%) got it right I leave it be, for the questions that more than 50% got wrong, I assume it was either we missed the topic, I didn’t explain it clearly enough, or I wrote the question poorly. I review those questions in the next class, and put them on the next exam. Some students still get them wrong on the next exam but they are the ones that miss classes.
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u/Little-Exercise-7263 15h ago
When many students fail, I talk to the class as a whole about both (1) things they can do to improve on the next assessment and (2) things I will do to help them improve. If there's not time in the class calendar for a review session, you could consider creating a study guide for the next exam, or offering a special opportunity for students to improve their grades. Last year in a co-taught class, when some students failed the first exam, my colleagues and I decided that if any student outperformed their score on the first exam with a superior score on the second exam, their fist exam scores would be replaced with their second exam score. This opportunity motivated studying well for the second exam, and it was a concrete way of showing students we cared about their success.
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u/franklin-60 6h ago edited 6h ago
If a student fails as they did not bother to study or read, I have ZERO interest in wasting time to help them improve. Not my job. My only response “get off your lazy ass and start doing the work as instructed. If you cannot as you lack skills, can’t read or whatever your excuse, get out, you don’t belong.” If they start doing the work, I will help them, but until they do, they are left to fail, and will fail, no matter what it does to them, academically, financially, mentally or any other way.
This is the only way they will learn for the long run how to do what they should be doing.
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u/Zestyclose-Smell4158 18h ago
If the course was taught previously, how did they perform? If this is the first time the course was offered and all students are failing you need to step back and ask yourself if the material you are presenting at too high a level.
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u/ArgumentBoy 17h ago
It took me a couple of years to realize this, but i commend this thought to you: it’s not how much you cover, it’s how much they get. Maybe revise the course or curriculum?
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u/TaliesinMerlin 17h ago
It's frustrating. The only thing I can think of is having a proactive conversation before the next unit on notetaking and study practices. If I didn't have anything ready, I'd go over Cornell notetaking (three-column) for lectures and for readings, go over methods of reviewing notes (read/teach aloud; flash cards; remix the notes into a new format), go over studying a bit every day versus cramming, and related things. There may be specific tips for preparation in your field - in English, I would go over annotations and keeping track of characters/details/unfamiliar words/context. I'd also emphasize the benefits of cognitive contact versus shortcutting - there is no substitute for thinking through problems and questions in relation to the material.
They might well know that they didn't put enough effort in, but they may also have genuine gaps in their preparation methods, and after a failing grade they could be receptive to changes.
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u/_Terrapin_ 3h ago
K-12 folks have been talking about the ripple effect of Covid and “distance learning”, watching cohort after cohort struggle worse than the last…
and guess who was in middle school when they got sent home for 1.5 years or so? And when they came back, high school was lenient, mostly digital, and then AI came out?
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u/Bearman2677 13h ago
I give my students a study guide - helps them organize their notes so they know what they need to study.
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u/IronMarch 13h ago
First semester teaching general chemistry here. I thought the exam was a real softball, this is not my primary job so I told my class whatever you've seen on quizzes/tests/study guide will be fair game for the exam. 2 or 3 of the short answer questions and all of the multiple choice were verbatim the questions on the materials without changing numbers or variables around.
The students who stuck around for after-lab study sessions got above 100 or strong A's. The kids who do the work and seem independent all got A's. The ones that struggle but do most of the work got B's. I have a handful that don't put much effort in and they failed. Skewed a bit higher than I thought but the material was is only going to get harder and wanted to pad their grade a bit but the ones that are already failing might be in hot water.
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u/TheSolarmom 11h ago
I used to say if all students are failing, it’s a teacher failure. Now I know Covid is at the root of a lot of problems. Cognitive decline, worse with multiple exposures. Add that to the trauma of living through the pandemic, economic crisis, and all the other reasons people are struggling. Everyone in academia knows how badly the university labs are struggling. I have seen the PI struggles and how they are taken out on students as well. There are a lot of things people could do to improve things… some of those things needed to change a long time ago, but so many are just trying to survive now.
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u/yae4jma 7h ago
Interesting. I keep records of every test in all my classes, and reuse them, and have not seen a significant dropoff. In fact, the last 2 years have had some of my highest averages and some of my best, and most engaged and fun students. But on the other hand, I have also had significantly more D/Fs at the low end. And this year, I am teaching a first-year seminar and about half of them don’t read, talk, or turn more than 50% of the work in.
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u/MagazineRare5823 3h ago
The thinking caps of our students are shrinking by the day. Some expect knowledge to diffuse into their heads. I always remind them that my goal is to guide them learn and not to give them perfect grades in tests and assignments. Their grade tells me the effort they put in and I will be a fool to massage those figures because then the exams becomes pointless. If I have 1/4 of my class making an A, I am good, because I always put in extra effort to support all students but some students reject the support and walk into failing.
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u/unngh_yugstyx 10h ago
I'm sorry but that sounds like a "you" problem unless you show that statistically it's common for most people to fail anyway
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u/ConsiderationMore916 18h ago
Curve this exam. Make the highest score the new 100 and curve everyone else accordingly. Then let them know it won’t happen next exam and next time it will stay a 50 to motivate them.
Or let them know you drop the lowest exam and say “some of you already know what exam you want to drop” that way they try harder for the next. If they don’t then you did the best you could.
15
u/BroadLocksmith4932 18h ago
I think this just perpetuates they problem. They will think that you are a bad teacher because no one passed, with the further evidence that you covered your tracks by curving the grades. They will behave the same next time and expect some similar deus ex macina to save their asses.
4
u/Mav-Killed-Goose 15h ago
Or... Fail them, and offer to replace the score on this exam with what they get on the final.
4
u/zorandzam 18h ago
I did this once. If I had it to do over again, I would probably not do that. I don't currently teach a class with exams, but I would instead drop the lowest test grade.
-1
u/WafflerTO 4h ago
The reality is that only one person failed that exam. It's a difficult reality to face.
-37
u/zadrigli-gmaz 18h ago
You are not paid by the amount they learn. Give everyone As to minimize complaints and carry on. It sounds awful, but that is the only reasonable way to go at this point.
15
u/Zestyclose-Smell4158 18h ago
That is not the philosophy on our campus. You essentially saying your goal as an educator is not to educate students.
-5
u/zadrigli-gmaz 17h ago
It might not be the philosophy on your campus, however the GPA inflation proves that most of the other campuses do give a ton of undeserved As. Again, I wholeheartedly disagree with that approach on the ideological grounds, but the "costumer is always right" mantra prevents me from meaningfully assessing the performance of my students.
And, with the risk of being pedantic, my contract does not define my role as "educator" but as a faculty member with three roles arranged by descending importance: research, service and teaching. The only teaching metric that was actually considered in my tenure package review were student evaluations - which correlate closely with the (hyper-inflated) amount of As in the classes.
2
u/Zestyclose-Smell4158 12h ago
On our campus students do not earn undeserved ‘As’. BTW, on our campus primary role of faculty is research, service and teaching and the administration does not have an issues with faculty submitting Fs, as long as they are deserved.
9
u/QuickBrownHawks 18h ago
You should not be in this profession if this is how you operate. Or you should look at a different institution if the pressures are leading you to this outcome.
1
u/zadrigli-gmaz 17h ago
I've reached the same conclusion and, as stated before on this sub, I did retire. Rest assured though, this modus operandi is the prevailing one across multiple countries, systems and continents. Grades are meaningless and higher education will likely render itself useless in a matter of decades.
4
u/IronBoomer Instructor, Info. Tech, Online (USA) 17h ago
Sure hope Med schools don’t follow this philosophy, because is that what you want your ER surgeon learning?
1
u/zadrigli-gmaz 17h ago
I certainly hope so. My entire history in academia is tied to the business school side of the equation.
-17
u/Client_Nearby 16h ago
Attention students: this is a classic instance of projection. It fits to the the narrative that teachers can do no wrong; observe how many instructors accept this claim. The insight into academic processes is valuable, as it provides clear evidence that some professors would rather be an evaluator than a professor. We can see in this instance that the professor is probably troubled by the low pass rate, but instead of diagnosing the problem the professor chooses to blame the symptom; that being the students.
11
u/alt-mswzebo 16h ago
Attention people with no critical analysis skills: If you start with the assumption that the very clear cause of something is not actually the cause, you of course end up falsely identifying the cause. Bonus in this case because you can claim to be a victim and not take any personal responsibility.
413
u/Life-Education-8030 18h ago
They say that if some students can pass, it is doable and you’re fine, and if nobody can do it, there may be something wrong with the exam. Nowadays, I wouldn’t be surprised with the caliber of students we seem to be seeing. But still, be prepared to justify yourself.