No Extra Credit For You

My approach is to, throughout a course, encourage and guide students to
do voluntary work (individual or collaborative) that is relevant to the
course and of academic and personal significance. I don't call it
"extra credit" as I see it as part of the course itself even though the
students initiate it instead of me. Such work can also be presented to
the rest of the class for their benefit as well.
 
  _____

Chronicle Careers <http://chronicle.com/jobs>

Tuesday, May 3, 2005

No Extra Credit For You

By JACK SLAY JR. <mailto:firstperson@chronicle.com>

Personal experiences on the job market

Not so long ago, late on a Friday afternoon, I administered my last
final exam of the semester and returned to my office, paper-laden and
world-weary. Opening my office door and dropping a 10-pound stack of
exams on my desk, I discovered -- as I knew I would -- my voice-mail
light ablink.

The sad rite of passage for every borderline student had begun.

The message was from a student who had finished his exam for me not half
an hour ago. It was just one of the dozen or so similar pleas I usually
receive during every exam week -- as plaintive a wail as that ever sung
by Muddy Waters or B.B. King:

"Dr. Slay, I'm pretty sure I just blew your exam. I really studied but
everything got muddled in my head and I got all the stories and poems
mixed up and I really need to pass this class because if I don't, I'll
lose my scholarship and if I lose that, I can't come back to college."

I flipped through my grade book and discovered that the student had been
precariously balanced between passing and failing for most of the
semester. A good performance on the final would have secured at least a
D (the coward's F, as a colleague calls that particular bottom-feeding
grade), perhaps even a C.

Then came that familiar interrogative refrain: "So I wondered if there
was something I could do for extra credit? I could write an extra essay
or take another exam?"

Finally the kicker: "I could even clean your office for you. I mean I
really need to pass this class, Dr. Slay."

As I always do, barbarian that I am, I deleted the message and settled
down for a weekend of grading. The answer that I gave that pleading
student -- and the one I give countless others -- is one that sets them
to moaning and groaning, to cursing my name and my family.

Hardhearted and conscience clear, I simply refuse to give extra credit,
especially of the last-minute variety. My classroom policy is that the
student will pass or fail the course based solely on the stated
requirements. You get what you earn, I tell each class on the first day
of each semester. Period.

I've seen too many students squeak by on extra credit, students who have
not learned the material or who have learned so little of the material
that it is virtually useless. I can't help wondering, every time I read
about a bridge collapsing or a building falling, whether the chief
engineer was once a student who passed a structural course with extra
credit.

I teach composition and literature, and, yes, I realize that few tragic
accidents result from fragmented sentences and dangling modifiers.

Still it is principle I cling to, perhaps with a bit of spite: I still
occasionally flash back to my high-school chemistry class. I earned a B+
for the year, a grade for which I had sweated and was, consequently,
grateful. The student who sat next to me had also earned a B+. But the
teacher allowed her to come in after class for a week and wash all the
test tubes for extra credit, an opportunity afforded to no other
student. She ended the year with an A.

That unearned A still lodges in my craw, as intractable and unsightly as
Hester Prynne's.

Believe me: I understand the importance of grades, the seeming necessity
of A's and B's. In today's educational climate, grades equal jobs. Good
grades equal good jobs. And good jobs equal money.

What makes my stubbornness seem even worse is Georgia's Hope
Scholarship, a lottery-fueled educational incentive that allows any
state resident to attend a state institution tuition-free. Even students
who choose to attend a private college in the state are given a generous
$3,000 a year through the Hope Scholarship.

The catch? Said students must graduate from high school with a B average
or better. The second catch? Said student must maintain that B average
in college or lose the scholarship. Many of them, unfortunately, lose it
during their freshman year.

So, Atlas-like, I shoulder the burden of causing student after student
to lose Hope. Clearly, my no-extra-credit policy is a barrier to their
success, the axle-snapping pothole in their road to happiness -- a fact
that they enjoy mentioning in essays and on voice-mail messages and in
notes folded and wedged under my windshield wiper.

I am, I often think, one of the few professors immune to the call of
extra credit. The hallways of the ivory tower are littered with the
flotsam of grade-desperate students: toothpick Globe Theaters, Styrofoam
Parthenons, Play-Doh busts of Einstein, even candied cells (Tic Tacs for
the ribosome, jellybeans for the mitochondria, licorice whips for the
endoplasmic reticulum, etc.).

And I have to admit that I have, upon rare occasion, lowered my guard
and succumbed to the seductive song of the extra-credit siren. Only a
couple years ago I taught Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain to a
senior-level group of English majors. So fascinated was I by the strange
and archaic vocabulary (Frazier uses words like "blithen" and "flews")
that I offered the students a chance to explore similarly unfamiliar
words on their own.

All I asked was that they provide the context of the chosen word, its
definition, the part of speech, its language of origin, and the date of
its earliest known use (all of which could be found in a single trip to
the Oxford English Dictionary). The cherry on top of that educational
sundae? I promised an extra five points added to their test average.

Amazingly -- to me anyway -- only two students took advantage (the walk
to the library was apparently too arduous for the rest of the class) and
the two words I got reports on were "shod" and "irrefutable."

My lesson learned, I have since returned to my no-extra-credit policy,
insisting that students get what they earn.

Realizing that there's no chance of extra credit in my classroom, some
students will attempt another angle: pleading for a more ephemeral sort
of credit. Those students believe in the idea that a professor should
give extra credit for effort -- for trying; for, in effect, surviving my
class. This sort of student feels that even though she has received a C
on everything she's done in the course, she should be given a little
grade boost because she has never been absent, she has read all the
material on the syllabus, and she has completed all the assignments on
time. She has truly worked hard and sincerely.

Thus the student deserves a B for working so diligently to earn a C.
"Give me," she will plead, "credit for my effort."

Grade ogre that I am, I refuse. I ask those credit-hungry students if
they plan to give extra credit to the mason who tried to keep their
brick house from falling in (but failed), to the pilot who really tried
to land that plane (though failed), to the surgeon who truly attempted
to patch the hole in their aorta (but failed).

And, yes, I realize that few deaths have resulted from misplaced commas
and misspelled words.

The point, I tell my students semester after semester, is that I am
compelled to give the grade earned rather than the grade that the
student tried to earn.

My policies cause much anguish and despair among some students, much
gnashing of teeth and rending of garments. But I believe it is my job to
toe the grade line, to record on that final grade sheet exactly what
each student has earned in each class.

Occasionally, after exams are marked and filed away, after grades are
averaged and handed over to the registrar, a student will stop by my
office to say thanks. And in those rare and glistening moments, I know
that I have done the right thing.

Jack Slay Jr. is dean of students and a professor of English at LaGrange
College, in Georgia.

 
Alan Altany, Professor & Director
Coulter Faculty Center for Excellence in Teaching & Learning
Western Carolina University
Cullowhee, NC 28723 (U.S.)
Email: altany@email.wcu.edu <mailto:altany@email.wcu.edu>
Fax: 828.227.7340
CFC Web Site: http://facctr.wcu.edu <http://facctr.wcu.edu/>
SoTL at Western: http://www.wcu.edu/sotl/ <http://www.wcu.edu/sotl/>
MountainRise, SoTL eJournal: http://mountainrise.wcu.edu
<http://mountainrise.wcu.edu/>
 
 

------------------------------------------------------------newfaculty-+

You have received this message because you are subscribed to this mailing list. If you wish to be removed from this list, please send an email (in PLAIN TEXT) to:
        listproc@lists.wcu.edu

Leave your subject line blank and in the body of the message, type:
        unsub NEWFACULTY

Or, you may choose to send an email to (a real human being): listmgr@lists.wcu.edu.

------------------------------------------------------------newfaculty--
Received on Tue May 3 09:59:13 2005