| 2020-02-18 | Let students focus on learning, teachers on teaching, and thus together achieve the intended learning outcomes. Grades (and hence GPA) has become so important to students such that some student's eyes are no longer on learning. Indeed, I heard of a student that she was planning to defer an introductory level core course to her third year, when she would be on exchange. The reason was that our grades obtained during exchange are not counted toward HKU GPA, and by doing so, she would be able to avoid the likely poor grade on such difficult course at HKU to affect her GPA, and consequently avoid the negative impact on all GPA-based opportunities. Sad, because such introductory level core courses are supposedly a foundation for the upper level courses. When substantial number of students are doing the same thing, teachers of the upper level courses would not be able to assume such foundation in teaching. Standard of such upper level courses is then lowered. And, so is the standard of the whole curriculum.
I believe that the way out is to reduce the impact of student's grades on GPA. Give students a second chance, please! If they fail or get a low grade in a course, students should be given a chance to retake it and the new grade should replace the original grade. Only the new grade will be used in the calculation of GPA. Consequently, failing a course would not too stressful. Students are more willing to take the introductory level courses as designed in the curriculum. Teachers are more willing to maintain the standard across time. The standard of the curriculum can be maintained.
Below is letter I wrote to the university and later discussed at the University Teaching and Learning Quality Committee. This is my second time (likely the last time) making such proposal in hope to push an university-wide policy to promote teaching and learning at the university.
Unfortunately, again, the idea did not get much support. In case you consider this proposal reasonable, feel free to use it and start to persuade the University.
---- My letter to the university ------
Dear xxx,
I hope the Faculty and the University will re-consider my proposal of allowing students to retake any course (including passed courses) and let the new grade replace the old grade. This allowance will be especially important in the past semester when everyone was adversely affected.
This year is very unfortunate. Students were distracted by the social unrest. The University had to close and to switch to online exam. Student's learning and hence performance has been greatly affected. In addition, we had caught cheaters and considered it reasonable to lower their overall grade by one full letter grade as a penalty. To maintain similar standard as previous years, we are forced to shift the grade distribution downward (more failures, more students to get grades lower than B.). If we want to keep the same grade distribution, we will be forced to lower the standard.
Recently, a student alerted me that the accreditation of her professional program (Actuarial Science) requires her to achieve a grade of B- and above in Introductory Microeconomics. For what is worth, this student will be awarded C+. I sincerely hope that such students will be given a second chance to retake the course to obtain a grade high enough to meet the accreditation requirement.
Let me reiterate my proposal. Allow students to retake a course whenever they want to and allow the new grade to replace the old one. That will reduce the incentive of cheating substantially. Even before this online exam, we see many students pretending to be sick during final exam dates. All these happened partly because that the specific exam is the only chance for them to pass or get a good grade for the course. For the continuous assessments (projects, online quizzes, homework), most of them are not so different from the online exam we have now, cheating is just so common. Yes, all because GPA is so important for all opportunities at HKU. Allowing additional chances to re-take the course will reduce such incentive of cheating, and pretended sickness during in-hall exams.
Such policy also helps uphold some standard of our graduates. I am told by a former student, TUM (Technische Universitat Munchen of Germany) regularly have 30-40% failure rate but students are allowed to re-take the course and the new course grade will replace the old course grade. I am sure there are many more examples.
As we had switched from norm referencing to standard referencing, we are committed to grading according to a pre-specified standard, supposedly consistent across years, at the very least. If our eyes are on standard and the learning outcome, we should not be afraid to let students retake a course so that a specific standard is achieved and maintained. Knowing that students would have a chance to retake the course without affecting their GPA, teachers are more willing to uphold the standard. I am sure if we consult our colleagues to get a sense whether the standard of passing a course or graduating from the University has been lowered over the years, you will get almost an unanimous "yes". Standard is important, especially for a lot of professional programmes. A lower standard for our engineering graduates will lead to shaky bridges, buildings and unreliable trains. Similar consequences are expected for accounting, actuarial sciences and many other professional programmes. I hope the university will consider my proposal as a way to keep our standard at reasonable level.
I made such proposal to the university five years ago (see my "Teaching Journal". http://kafuwong.econ.hku.hk/teaching/journal/index.php?s=&e=&m=102&\#102) and did not get any support. Please kindly reconsider my proposal with the other Faculties.
Sincerely,
Ka-fu WONG
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