It's the end of the semester and it has occurred to some students to check their grades on the LMS. One student asked, "Is it 74% out of 100?".
Now mind you, each project is graded as the number of points achieved / number of points possible.
The total number of points is listed. A total percentage is also listed, as I question whether or not students could calculate this.
So, um, yeah. 74% out of a possible 100%.
--Aca Deme
Hope springs eternal in the human breast -- and yes, especially, in the breasts of students at this time of year. Except in all too many cases it's not so much hope as cockeyed optimism, or willful denial of math and the inevitable march of time. While it varies by class, in every class there comes a time in the semester when students who have done nothing or nearly nothing simply *can't* catch up and pass. In almost no class does this point fall as late as the last week of the semester.
ReplyDeleteDenial - it's not just a river in Africa. Years ago, I had a student ask "If I get a 100 on the problem set and a 100 on the final, can I get a B-?" I reminded her that she had a 32 average on the two midterms. I gently suggested that tripling her score on the final would be difficult given that she was taking 4 other courses.
DeleteWhat I really wanted to say was that if she got a 100 on the final, I'd streak the campus quad at noon the following day. Happy ending - she withdrew from the course.
I was told there would be no math...
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