A questionnaire on grading systems was sent to the 287 members of the Council of Graduate Schools. Of the 240 responses, 127 indicated that they used systems other than the A-F traditional system, either in part or in toto. Other systems used include pass/fail, satisfactory/unsatisfactory, pass/no credit, and some variations of the A-F traditional…

As far as students are concerned, the real tyrrany exercised by the university is in the classroom where grades may decide a student's fate. The grading system has, therefore, become a major target of radical students and faculty. Significant changes in the grading system will probably not be made until provisions are made for the maintenance of…

The impetus for modifying or eliminating the A-F grading system has come primarily from students. Faculty reaction has been more one of bowing to pressure than that of a carefully considered response. Arguments for and against the traditional grading systems each have merit. It seems illogical, however, to repeat on the graduate level a grading…

A questionnaire on the pass-fail grading system was sent to the 276 deans whose institutions belong to the Council of Graduate Schools in the United States. Of the 230 deans who responded, 214 preferred to evaluate a student for admission to graduate or professional study on the basis of a letter graded transcript, 7 preferred a pass-fail…

Discusses the benefits of a "Pass/Revise" grading system. (DD)

Author suggests that undergraduate colleges and universities should seriously consider the consequences before expanding the use of satisfactory- unsatisfactory grading systems. (Editor)

Cautions are listed following an examination of the difficulties inherent in the teacher's task of student evaluation and distribution of grades on specific testing devices. (JS)

Letter grades should be abolished in favor of personalized and detailed evaluations of each student. (CK)

An application of conversational programming is described by means of which an instructor may use the computer for the calculation of course grades for a class of up to 100 students in a course with up to 10 components of varying weights. (Author)

This paper presents a grade 10 mathematics teacher's in-depth description of the process she uses to determine the final grade for the report card within a standards-based context. Her case was part of a three-year comparative study of grading practices of teachers from two Canadian provinces that differ in their level of standardization of…

Students at the University of Edinburgh do almost all their work on computers, but at the end of the semester they are examined by handwritten essays. Intuitively it would be appealing to allow students the choice of handwriting or typing, but this raises a concern that perhaps this might not be "fair"--that the choice a student makes,…

For an inquiry-based alternative to lectures and recall tests, I encouraged learners to become "geotourists"; that is, learners researched and developed a geologic guidebook to a United States National Park of their choice. Over the course of a semester, students wrote chapters on plate tectonics, the rock cycle, geologic history,…