Word: grades
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...enough to be part of the pre-International Baccalaureate program at Robinson Middle School in Wichita, Kans., are used to classes full of bright, motivated kids. But even in this heady environment, Tyler Emerson stands out. Tyler's 12-year-old mind runs deep, notes one of his sixth-grade teachers, Lura Atherly. "He questions things, but not with surface questions. He asks extending questions: Why? What if...?" When the class studied the Russian Revolution, Tyler wanted to discuss what would have happened if the Romanovs had escaped: What if they had come back after the fall of communism...
...Core program (which oversees its own section hiring), stated in an e-mail, "Core courses don't hire undergraduates to teach sections. If they can't staff with teaching fellows or teaching assistants, they lottery the course." It should follow from these assertions that undergraduates do not grade the subjective work of their peers at the College. Unfortunately, the facts prove otherwise...
Gould's course last semester is the most glaring exception to the EPC recommendation, but in several other courses the use of undergraduates to help teach and grade has become an accepted practice. In General Education 156, "The Information Age, Its Main Currents and Their Intermingling," for example, Professor Anthony G. Oettinger employs an undergraduate to assist him and to provide feedback on response papers...
Despite the possible benefits from a situation such as Layzer's, where undergraduates share responsibility with a more experienced instructor, I strongly believe it is inappropriate for undergraduates ever to teach and grade their peers. There are exceptional students at this college who will, I have no doubt, become effective teachers in the future. But for the moment we are all members of the same community. We have neither the qualifications, nor the depth of understanding in our field, nor the disinterestedness, nor the authority to formally judge or instruct one another. One example of the problems with this practice...
...issue here is not just whether the final grade given is ultimately the right one. Grading is by its nature imperfect. Something much more important is at stake: the quality of undergraduate education at Harvard. William Mills Todd III, the dean of undergraduate education, agrees. When I asked him whether he thought the subjective grading of undergraduates by other undergraduates was ever acceptable at the College, he responded, "Absolutely not." He was equally reassuring when I asked him if he would support a Faculty Council resolution prohibiting this practice from happening in the future. "Yes, absolutely," he wrote...