*Music departments – my wife is a musicologist who also teaches piano, so I’ve seen this at close quarters – are definitely the extreme case, though, in the range of different approaches under the same roof.

Though I’m pretty sure that my lack of interest in grades for their own sake, combined with some unfortunate early ideas about how I had to take a lot of science classes and the fact that I didn’t learn how to study until Swarthmore, just cost me some grad school admissions. I don’t think I’d give up getting to experiment and make my own mistakes for more acceptances, but since it doesn’t seem to have cost me the admissions I really wanted, it’s easier to think that.

I took an upper-level biology class on behavior as an undergraduate simply because I wanted to. Didn’t get a great grade in the course but I was honestly more interested in the material and so didn’t care much. It may be harder for the current generation of students to be that unconcerned, I guess–hence it’s important to encourage some of them to explore by ameliorating the costs of exploration.

Part of what you called the student’s art is to gauge those consequences, and accept that sometimes their grades in one class will suffer on account of their commitments to something else. The professor’s responsibility is to communicate that writing a mediocre paper because of time constraints won’t make you think the student is a bad person – just that they’re busy and this wasn’t their priority. I think it’s great that Swarthmore allows people to take a certain number of classes pass-fail, so students have a way of making exploratory choices with somewhat less perceived risk.

I’m explicit about grading criteria in my assignments and syllabi: I tell students that a B means that they have met my expectations in all regards; a C or D (or F, and I give several each semester) means the have failed to do so in some venial or mortal ways, and an A means that they have somehow surprised me. I also tell them that I can explain how to get a B, but that getting an A means doing something that can’t be easily explained and reduced to a formula. I get very few grade complaints. Even though there’s an irreducible element of judgment in my grades (and my TAs’ grades, in big courses), I find that students are usually content knowing that the standards are not arbitrary and are applied across the board.

Like Tim, I sometimes find I’m more disappointed by students who are capable of greatness and settle for adequate work, but I also try to keep in mind the competing demands on their time.

One way of framing the whole grading issue that I have found useful, both in my self-understanding and in presenting the issue to students, is to insist that grades are professional _judgments_ of students’ works. That’s a way to get around the false dichotomy that holds that grades are either entirely objective or wholly subjective, especially because I try as much as possible to convey the bases for my judgments. My emphasis on _professional_ judgments reflects my desire to communicate to students that our standards are not arbitrary, on an individual level, but reflect disciplinary standards that are grounded in a community’s standards, not an individual’s whims. Even if there are some differences in individual grading philosophy, they do still refer to some sense of what the discipline considers to be its norms.

At my current institution, which is a commuter campus with a lot of older students juggling work and family responsibilities, the peak on my bell curve is both more towards the C range and the A leg of the curve is miniscule. I hope that the bell will move A-ward as the semester progresses; the students aren’t of below-average intelligence, but are both relatively inexperienced at college-level work and time-stressed.

At another place I worked, there was this very odd curve that kept showing up in my classes (so I know it wasn’t just one anomalous class). Basically, instead of there being something bell-like, there was this odd bulge at the B+ side and no A-s, and then a sharp spike of As.

For me, A-range work tends to combine originality with a firm grasp of technical skills. B-range tends to lack originality while being technically sound, or vice versa. C-range reveals a lack of understanding of the assignment, or an inability to meet much more than the basic requirements. D-range means something went noticeably wrong; Fs are just flat out failures. I don’t give many Fs, and I don’t give very many As, either. But, as I tell the students, this is because of the way student skills, interest, etc. average out; if everyone one day did A (or F) work, then that’s what everyone gets.

Anyway, what I finally figured out was happening with that peculiar curve was this: the students in that B+ lump had the technical skills to do A level work, and many of them were capable of the sort of originality and insight that characterizes A level work – but they were holding that back. They had such an ingrained respect for authority that they did not believe it was appropriate, or their place, to insert any of their own ideas into the work. Rather, they believed that they were to do a good job re-presenting the things they had learned in lectures and in the readings.

Once I realized this, and started aggressively encouraging them to offer their own insights on the material, there was a sudden spike in A-level papers and the bulge went away.

I do have to admit I find something oddly difficult and frustrating about translating my gut sense of an assignment’s success into a “B” or an “85”. I’d rather focus on getting students to improve and meet their potential, than reducing their performance down to a statistic. Perhaps this is because I attended an institution that de-emphasized grades; although they did record them for transcript and financial aid purposes, you couldn’t see them unless you made a special request or there was a serious problem. Instead, you got written evaluations of your work at the end of each term.

I teach a class in songwriting, and I do all I can to deemphasize grades–the students pretty much have an A unless they screw up. I’ve also taught the first semester of music theory, and even though the material overlaps with songwriting to some extent, the theory class is like a math class–lots of assignments, lots of red ink, a serious midterm and final, and no default As (I also tend to think of B as the mid-level grade). The theory class is a prerequisite to a bunch of other classes, songwriting isn’t. That’s one way to rationalize the different approaches, anyways.

(I see j. has made more or less the same point while I’ve been typing.)