The most difficult part of teaching at the graduate school is giving a fair grade to each and every member of the entire class.

Much anxiety is felt when people forget that grades are an imperfect, temporary, arbitrary but necessary measure of a performance for a specific period of time. PEOPLE are NOT GRADES and vice versa. The grade does not in any way reflect the value or worth of a person or his skill in a particular profession.

Unlike a seminar where everything instantly ends after the last session’s exchange of  goodbyes,  the AGSB gives each professor,  2 weeks after the class ends to reassess everything  that happened from Day 1 till the last hour of the last day. This is why I leverage the digital benefits of using blogs, group FB pages and email so that documentation and assessment is complete and systematic.  It also allows easy and almost simultaneous comparison across all the students to ensure fairness.

Unlike a seminar, where the completion certificate is given simply by attending the class, the grade in a graduate level class must give commensurate value to student work inside and outside the classroom, during the semester.  I believe that the ideal ratio is 4 hours classroom time = 4 hours work outside the classroom. For a typical digital marketing class, the actual hours work outside the classroom could have ranged from 30 minutes to 2 hours before each session, depending on the student’s time constraints and willingness to do the pre-class or post-session assignments. Surprisingly, some of my past students in other marketing asses consider even a 30 minute pre- or post-work as too much.

I know the challenge of a fully employed learner- working during the day and studying at night and during weekends; for once upon a time, I was a fully employed learner too.

I respect and appreciate the professional experience that each graduate student brings to the class. I try my best to draw this rich and varied experience out as this benefits the entire class. Occasionally, due to classroom time constraints or student’s time constraints, this full sharing by all students is not always possible.  On the other hand, when a student’s professional experience is shared during the reports and the classroom discussion, this is also given due credit.

Personally, I want to give the highest possible grade of 4.0 to all my students. But I also know that this would not be fair as some students did more, while some others (for very valid personal and or professional reasons) could not even if they wanted to. I have always implemented my belief that  fairness requires that the student’s grade for the class is solely based on work done for the class (inside and outside the classroom), during the semester.

To earn the highest possible grade for the class, all the class requirements should have the right quantity, quality and done on time.  The sequence of required student work is designed to enrich each learning session not only for the student per se but for the entire class.  Consequently, there is a loss in learning opportunity for the student for late submissions.  The effort to prepare before the class even starts (like reading the assigned topic), to comply with all the class instructions on where and how to do the assignment and where to post are also considered. Of course, the most important thing is the student’s demonstration of learning from the activity and his/her possible application to the real world.

Occasionally, I also ask for student’s self-assessment so that I can also consider the student’s point of view.  It gives me inputs which I may not have noticed and  will consider in the final assessment.  This is even more critical for digital marketing due to the digital mode of communication.

What do the grades mean?

IMPORTANT: I often find that if I strictly follow the above QPI, very few students can earn the grade of 4.0 from a 98% miimum score. Given all the work done during the course, I usually find myself lowering the cut off for an excellent grade to around 95% minimum. The lower and wider range of course translates to the other grade brackets too.  For example a 3.5 might be earned from a 90 to 94 QPI. It really depends on the class performance as a whole and the individual student performance so dont tie me down to a specific number.  Am posting this here to remove the unnecessary anxiety from some students, particularly those who are running for medals. Bottomline, trust the coach to recognize if you are truly Primus Inter Pares.

My 30 Years of Teaching Experience tell me this: There are 3 instances where my fnal grading will be questioned not just by the school admin but by the students too. These are:

(1) When no one earns a grade of 4.0. I am guessing but school records will probably show that the average range of 20 to 50% of the class earns this grade. 

(2) When majority, like 80 to 100% of the students earn a grade of 4.0. (See #1). The top students will wonder, and justifably so, why their excellent output had the same result as those with clearly average output.

(3) When the failing or incomplete rate exceeds 10% of the class. 

INTERPRETING THE NUMBERS: Let’s start with a grade of 3.0. The qualitative description is Very Satisfactory and the numerical range is from 92% to 94%.  This grade is earned when the learner complies with 100% of the requirements of the course in terms of quality, quantity and timeliness.  In operational terms, what the professor gave as student work was complied with 100% showing that the learner applied the required effort and substantially complied with all the requirements.

When the work done is over and above that which is required and specified by the professor and the course, then there are 2 possible grades- a grade of 3.5 which means superior (95 to 97%) and a grade of 4.0 which means excellent (98 to 100%).  The only difference between the 2 grades is the degree of excellence or superiority in ALL the requirements for the course, not just for 1 or 2 categories.

Grades of 2.5 and below are earned when the learner misses some of the requirements of the course.

I am writing this grading explanation for the first time in my 21 years of teaching at the AGSB (and 24 years over-all).  It is my sincere hope that this will help students understand why the grade that they expected may be different from the grade earned.

Final Note: The limitations of grades

I do not and cannot see or measure everything. Look at grades as an iceberg…

Grades are an imperfect, temporary,  arbitrary measure of a student’s work at a specific timeframe covered by the class (includes inside and outside classroom tasks). The choice of measurements, the criteria for each requirement, and the final scores  are mere attempts to fairly measure and adequately reward student performance and effort.

But the class grade is far less important than the learning or inspiration that a learner should have gotten in class- not just from the course but from the other members of the class, including the professor. When this is how grades are interpreted, then there was learning…