Our rationale on the on-partial-credit policy (10/16/97)

A student wrote me "... I know that on tonight's exam that I made a stupid mistake and did not account for the two masses being stuck together in the pendulum inelastic collision. My theory was correct except for the fact that my answer is off by a factor of two. Is there any hope for partial credit?"

There is NO partial credit in our grading scheme. Let me proceed to explain our rationale.

We do work hard to design our exams, to make our grading scheme work. Typically we break up a test into small parts, we grade student's performance based on

• how many small-questions a student has done correctly, and
• give negative points for incorrect answer so that random choices will average out to zero.

Since each small-question tests some aspect of physical principle(s), in a test a student is given many chances to demonstrate his competency in applying physical principles. It is only when we give many small-questions, can we "afford" to adopt the no partial credit policy.

Our belief is that, as long as we grade consistently for all students throughout the semester, we will have a fair assessment on student's performance. More importantly, we believe that the letter grade which we assign to students at the end of the semester, do accurately reflect student's performance in our class. (You may want to talk to students in my class of previous semesters, to get a feel whether they think my grading policy is fair.)

I invite you to email me your comments or put your comments on the comment board.