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This is an interesting debate - but so far it has been UK centric - understandably so since most of the members of this list are in the UK. It wasn't until I moved to Canada that I discovered that not all degrees are graded in the same way. I have removed my class of degree from my CV because colleagues have no idea what a 2.i means (not sure they would understand a 'first' either, but I didn't get one so can't find out!). Degrees are not classified here, they are awarded with or without honours, but students also have a transcript which is used if classification matters - for professional courses, masters, doctorates etc. Isn't there some debate in the UK as to whether or not to keep the class system for degrees, given that UK students also get a transcript? The other big difference is the range of grades used - the allocation of grades it is still arbitrary in my mind, since not everyone uses a rubric and most people don't seem to have heard of second or blind marking, but the range is wider. Or at least the top end of the range is wider but the lower end is not used at all. For example for a masters course this is the grading scale: 0 - 59% F, 60 to 69% C, 70 to 74% B, 75 - 79% B+, 80 to 84% A-, 85 to 89 A, 90 to 100% A+ With so much emphasis on the top end of the scale one might think students would be happy with a B or B+ but no, that is not the case. Most students are anxious and keen to negotiate if they get anything less than a straight A. Sorry if this is somewhat divergent from the original post but I thought I'd share as I find it fascinating.... Celia Celia Popovic ? Director Teaching Commons YORK UNIVERSITY 1046 Victor Phillip Dahdaleh (formerly TEL) Building 4700 Keele Street Toronto ON ? Canada M3J 1P3 T 416.736.2100 ext 55922 F 416.736.5704 [log in to unmask] ? www.yorku.ca ? www.yorku.ca/teachingcommons ? Teaching Commons Communities of Practice - Join Now! ? TC Learning, Teaching and Assessment Programs Details of my new co-edited book Advancing Practice in Academic Development can be found here: https://www.routledge.com/products/9781138854703 Latest article with Mandy Frake-Mistak and John Paul Foxe - "The instructional skills workshop: a missed opportunity in the UK' is available online here: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14703297.2016.1257949 Newly available - the Educational Developers' Cookbook: http://teachingcommons.yorku.ca/educational-developers-cookbook/ This electronic mail (e-mail), including any attachments, is intended only for the recipient(s) to whom it is addressed and may contain information that is privileged, confidential and/or exempt from disclosure. No waiver of privilege, confidentiality or any other protection is intended by virtue of its communication by the internet. Any unauthorized use, dissemination or copying is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, or are not named as a recipient, please immediately notify the sender and destroy all copies of it. From: Peter Hartley <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask], Date: 03/06/2017 07:33 AM Subject: Re: Categorical Marking Sent by: "Online forum for SEDA, the Staff & Educational Development Association" <[log in to unmask]> I would also join the argument in favour of a grading system - after all we do end up sorting students into grades (the typical pass/merit/distinction at PG and the degree classes for UG) so why not focus on that throughout the course? It might also resolve an issue which I think is implicit in the first comments from Stephen and John. Stephen mentioned ?the full 100% mark range? and John talked of the ?full range of scores from 0 to 100?. There are a few assumptions in there which I would challenge. For a starter it assumes that marks behave like numbers and I have issues with that (happy to expand on that if folk are interested). But for this discussion I would like to query the notion of the range of marks. Until fairly recently the actual range of marks used by examiners was something like 30-80. Anything less than 30 was complete disaster; you usually had to have an argument with external examiners to award anything over 80. Going further back in time (which unfortunately I am able to do with starting clarity) anything over 75 was regarded as ?too generous?. And where did this scale come from in the first place? Focusing just on UG for the moment, why is there a 30-point scale for First Class students and only a 10-point scale for everyone else? In a system which often uses average marks to determine final grade then doesn?t this give these students an ?unfair' advantage? For example, if a student can earn 90% for a 20-point module then they have boosted their overall average for the year by a couple of percent compared with that same student being marked according to previous conventions - and a couple of percent can often mean a difference in degree classification. And doesn?t this almost guarantee some amount of grade inflation? So I think that grades deserve much more use (and investigation as Rachel suggests) alongside other ways of escaping from the problems of numerical marking, such as the work on programme-focused assessment which benefited from the contributions of Chris and colleagues (http://www.pass.brad.ac.uk ). Best wishes Peter On 6 Mar 2017, at 11:55, Rachel Forsyth <[log in to unmask]> wrote: Completely agree with Chris (as ever) - four pass grades would be great. Here it is not compulsory, but we use it on our own PGC LTHE and I much prefer it. It?s stepped, or step marking here, and we offer this guidance http://www.celt.mmu.ac.uk/assessment/lifecycle/5_step_marking.php - we couldn?t find any studies on this either. What would you look at, if there were a study? Student and staff satisfaction with a reduced range of grades? Rachel From: Online forum for SEDA, the Staff & Educational Development Association [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Chris Rust Sent: 06 March 2017 11:05 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Categorical Marking John In my view this is a half-way house to dealing with assessment problems/issues that doesn?t go far enough and essentially fudges the issue. Much better to do away with the use of numbers altogether because of the baggage they bring and to use grades instead. You also need to reduce the number of assessment choices to something sensible in terms of granularity. At Brookes, before I retired and the project was shelved, we were moving to a grade based marking system (see attached) based on Biggs SOLO taxonomy with 4/8 pass grades. Best wishes Chris Chris Rust Professor Emeritus Oxford Brookes University "Before acting on this email or opening any attachments you should read the Manchester Metropolitan University email disclaimer available on its website http://www.mmu.ac.uk/emaildisclaimer "