A few days ago I asked people's opinions regarding drop deadlines for students who decide they no longer want to be in a class. As usual, I forgot a few qualifiers, and nobody used the categories I gave, but after sorting the answers into roughly the categories I gave, here are the results:
A drop deadline four weeks into the ten-week term is the clear favorite, with just over half of the votes (I eliminated one "students should never be allowed to drop, ever," which would've made it exactly half). How does this map onto what we actually do?
Amusingly, our actual drop deadline is in the gap at 8 weeks, which nobody liked. To clarify a bit, this is the deadline for students to drop a course with no real need to give a reason, and get a grade of "W" on the transcript. After the end of the eighth week, students need to get permission from one of the Deans to drop, and the grade is recorded as "WP" or "WF" depending on whether they were passing or failing at the time.
There's an earlier deadline, at the end of the second week, for dropping a course and not having it show up on the transcript at all. None of these methods provide any tuition remission, as we operate on a "comprehensive fee" system, where students pay the same tuition no matter how many (or how few) classes they take.
Eight weeks seems excessive to me. It's also sort of silly for most students to drop at that time-- by the time you're eight weeks into the term, you've completed enough of the work that you might as well just stick it out for two more weeks, and get full credit for the class. I don't believe I've ever given an "F" to a student who stuck the class out to the end, handed in all the major assignments, and took the exams-- a couple of D's, sure, but if students put in the work, they'll get a passing grade, and be able to count the course for credit.
I'm also not wild about the fact that the students don't have to talk to the professor teaching the class before dropping it. The first I usually hear of a student dropping a class is the note from the Registrar informing me that they've been dropped. Most of the students who drop this way are looking at a grade in the "C" range, but have convinced themselves that they're failing. If they met with me, I'd be able to correct that impression, and advise them to stay.
I can see the argument for not requiring faculty to sign off on a drop, though-- if there's a sufficiently bad personality conflict, or something creepy going on, you don't want to force students to talk to the faculty member who's the source of the problem. Still, it's be nice to get a little more notice.
The other thing about this that I think causes a few problems is that it contributes to "grade inflation." A couple of years after the 8-week drop policy went into effect, a colleague in another department created a bit of a stir by pointing out that the average GPA had jumped up, and that the fraction of A and B grades had increased, which he felt indicated slipping standards. That's exactly what you expect if you start allowing later drops, though-- the students who are getting A's and B's don't drop, but the students who are getting D's do.
If you set up a toy model of a normal-ish distribution, with a class of 30 students, 5 getting A's, 10 B's, 10 C's, and 5 D's, the average GPA for the class is 2.67, a B-, and A's account for 16.7% of the grades. If you allow the D students to drop, the class average is now a 2.80, and A's are 20% of the grades. This looks like grade inflation, but it's really just evaporative cooling-- you've taken out the students at one extreme, so the average shifts toward the other extreme.
Anyway, those are the results of the totally scientific study we did on Monday. Thoughts, comments, requests to change you answer?
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Hey, at least you get a note from the Dean saying someone dropped. People just stop showing here, and I never know if they've dropped or just gotten ill or just decided it's not worth their time to come to class anymore.
"where students pay the same tuition no matter how many (or how few) classes they take."
Really? In my days at Union, the tuition bought you 3 courses and you had to pay extra for a fourth, with a few exceptions (engineers had to take extra some terms and "Union Scholars" were allowed to take extra).
In my days at Union, the tuition bought you 3 courses and you had to pay extra for a fourth, with a few exceptions (engineers had to take extra some terms and "Union Scholars" were allowed to take extra).
The policy changed a few years back. Now, students in good standing are allowed to take four courses with no extra fee. They might be limited to one or two a year, and those courses can't be used to graduate early, but the old fourth-course fees are mostly gone.
At my school, there was a straight fee for a "full-time" student and we could take anywhere from 12 to 20 credits per term. If we took more than 20, we had to pay extra per credit. If we took fewer than 12, we would lose our full-time status for that term only and I think students would then be charged per credit. I never took fewer than 12 credits because then I wouldn't be covered by my mom's health insurance and I think it would make work-study and student loans more complicated. I usually needed to take a lot of courses just to get all the required classes, but my senior year I had to take an easy filler class to stay at 12 credits.
I've definitely seen the effects of 'student evaporation' on grades. Even worse here (UAlbany): as I discovered last semester, a student who is on the class roll but never comes to class is deemed to have withdrawn retroactively, rather than failing. I figure that should earn an F, but SUNY won't allow such.
I would welcome your thoughts on teaching to _very_ mixed abilities. Right now I have a (very) small number of the class clearly flailing, despite having taken the prereqs, and a larger subset getting increasingly aggrieved at the first set's constant requests for restatement :-(.
Chad - Interesting. I have to admit that one of the reasons I read your blog is to catch these hints of how Union has changed. I think I graduated a few months before you started at Union.
To Ewan @5:
You are facing the problem I call "failing to comprehend the concept of prerequisites". My blogs about it are tagged in the category "prerequisite". Students easily confuse "taking a course" and "learning the material" because HS only required doing the former. Missed or forgotten material was extensively reviewed, often for a major part of the year. An interesting discussion on my blog last summer led to the idea of using "basic" instead of "prerequisite" for some things to avoid multisyllabic brain fade.
On Chad's topic:
I still say 4 weeks is too short to ensure at least one grading opportunity in each class. Seven weeks would seem like enough time to ensure a midterm grade, and better than 8.
In either case, you should consider limiting the number of times that students can use the W. You might see completion rates drop if it gets used too much.
"if students put in the work, they'll get a passing grade"
What if the work they turn in is not of passing quality? Shouldn't they have to actually demonstrate competence in the material to get credit? I keep explaining to my students that I don't grade effort, I grade products, and working hard is merely the condition of possibility of passing. Some of them seem to think they should pass just for showing up and turning in work. I don't know where they get this idea. My 14 year old son is currently failing 2 classes in 8th grade even though he turns everything in, because 8th grade (at least in this district) is judged based on standards not presence.
I've always been baffled by this attitude, both among students and some faculty. Would you be willing to explain why you think showing up and turning in the work is sufficient to pass? I'm not trolling, just confused.
ECW - most students, if they do the work (including reading, attending class, etc) will absorb a certain amount of material. How true this is will depend on the class - facts are much easier to learn passively than skills, and it's easier to mindlessly regurgitate answers to an essay question than it is to practice derivatives without learning how to take a derivative. It is also dependent on how well the assignments are written, what the student's knowledge level is coming in, etc. But as a rule, if you do the homework and go to class, you're going to be able to answer some of the questions on the exam.
I'm actually a bit concerned to hear that your son can do all the homework without the skills required for the class. It reminds me of the 'busywork' of my own middle school days.