An "in-progress" grade concept was added to the grading policy of Harrisburg Area Community College (Pennsylvania) in November 1971. The "in-progress" grade, or Y grade as it is designated, signifies that a student has not successfully passed a course, but that with the agreement of the instructor he/she will repeat the course…

Inconsistent grading can be frustrating for students and embarrassing for teachers. To make grades more intelligible and systematic, a standard evaluation form such as the Diederich Scale can be valuable. Such a scale increases the teacher's responsibility and forces him (1) to define the meaning of the terms on the scale; (2) to define standards…

The report provides information concerning the variety and content of secondary social studies electives in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. The main goal of the report is to encourage the exchange of ideas and curriculum information among educators. Questionnaires, inquiring about the social studies curriculum for grades 7-12, were mailed to the…

This paper describes a modular program at a community college for instructing non-science majors in college algebra. The two-course sequence is comprised of four modules each and successful completion of a module is required before a student proceeds to the next. Placement, grading policies, and scheduling are all discussed. A formative evaluation…

The articles in this volume address the teaching of composition. Chapters include D. G. Kehl's "A Rhetorical Question--With or Without an Answer," which examines the import of the rhetorical question, "How can I prepare my students for freshman English"; Arthur Donart's "A Behavioristic Approach to Teaching Freshman…

Previous reports from the office for student affairs at the University of Minnesota have contained a review of the literature on programs for high risk students, a description of the overall progress of students in the Martin Luther King (MLK) program, and a description of MLK students academic records. The present report continues this series and…

A learning-for-mastery approach, recommended by Bloom and based on key points suggested by Biehler, was used in large lecture sections of undergraduate educational psychology. Quizzes were composed of completion items; one or more alternate forms could be taken until mastery was achieved or grades raised. Students also did short papers on readings…

The purpose of this study was to review the methods currently used to report pupil progress and to evaluate report cards used experimentally in Vancouver schools during the 1971-72 school year. Five report cards were developed for primary grades and five more were developed for intermediate grades. Secondary schools were permitted to use any of…

The proposal in this document is based on the assumption that learning to learn is the most important outcome of professional and all formal education. It is suggested that a primary task of instruction is to assist the student to move from external motivation to internal motivation for learning and continuing to learn. It is proposed that these…

The final publication of the Commission on Undergraduate Education in the Biological Sciences provides one answer to the question, "Given the state of our society, of our institutions of higher education, and of the science of biology, what should be the goals of biological education in the years ahead?", by examining biology departments…

This study compared external proctoring and student self-grading in a personalized child development course. The experiment used a counterbalanced experimental design and two traditional control groups. Survey data and objective preferences indicated that students preferred self-grading to proctor-grading. However, students reported that…

Designed to assess the effects of self-grading on undergraduate learning and evaluation in a one semester constitutional law course, this study indicated that self-grading had no significant impact on learning but that it did encourage self-graders to evaluate themselves significantly higher than instructor graded students. (Author/DB)

For lack of "distance," many teachers respond too strongly to the wrong things in student papers.

Discusses how standard scores which are called T-scores are used in grading large courses. The article includes: (1) procedures for calculating the class mean, standard deviation, and the standard score; (2) grade distribution; and (3) validity of an examination. (HM)