Comments

• • Mark A. McCutcheon@mccutcheon

  

  Mark A. McCutcheon September 2, 2011 - 12:49pm

  @jond writes:

  Interesting. Not sure about the 'not getting any smarter' argument though. The Flynn Effect appears to have been operating for at least 100 years and would seem to explain much of this change (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect). Of course, it is possible that both course grades and IQ score inflation are the result of the same underlying mechanism and that neither tells us anything of value beyond illustrating the utter uselessness of grades/scores/marks as ways to differentiate people.

  I think I'm more skeptical of IQ testing than of grading; the latter at least seems more transparent in its cultural specificity. You really have it in for grading this week ;)

• • Jon Dron@jond

  

  Jon Dron September 2, 2011 - 12:58pm

  re rendering of the image - I think that's caused by your browser. The image has no specified dimensions so the browser decides for you what would work best. Most modern browsers do that - if you view the image without the surrounding page you'll see much the same thing happening though some (e.g. Opera) will try to show it at full size straight away.

  You can force it to be bigger if you like by selecting the image, clicking the little tree icon and setting height and width. I'd generally advise against setting that to anything other than the actual size of the image as browsers are notoriously poor at re-sizing images, but it's up to you.

• • Mark A. McCutcheon@mccutcheon

  

  Mark A. McCutcheon September 2, 2011 - 1:06pm

  Thanks; tried that -- will leave it as is.

  And as an off-Landing comment notes, it would be nice if the chart specified its data sources and parameters. Presumably it's data from the USA only. (I presume that because it presumes we don't need to know.)

• • Martin Connors@martinc

  

  Martin Connors September 2, 2011 - 1:47pm

  There used to be an advertisement on US TV saying "stay in school: take the hard courses". Unfortunately, if one does that, one risks not getting marks quite as high as those who are taking the easy courses. So downward we go in terms of learning and upward we go in terms of grades...

• • Jon Dron@jond

  

  Jon Dron September 2, 2011 - 1:51pm

  The terminology used (college, president, public school, private school, high school, semester, GPA, program) situates it firmly in the US and/or Canada but, in its defence (or defense) it does mention that it is talking about the US somewhere near the bottom when it mentions doctoral programs (or programmes). Most of the references seem to come from news sources rather than peer reviewed studies - just a slight offchance that this might not be 100% reliable. Interesting though.

• • an unauthenticated user of the Landing@speak_freely_user1

  

  an unauthenticated user of the Landing September 2, 2011 - 2:09pm

   

  A lot of our 'top' students win scholarships and gain entry to graduate and professional schools by working hard but also by being careful about the courses they take. It is a specious form of perfection, indeed.

  
  
  - Mark

• • Heather Clitheroe@heathercl

  

  Heather Clitheroe September 2, 2011 - 8:44pm

  I have a hard time with an infographic that says G.P.A's instead of GPAs.And I'm a wee bit skeptical. Yes, students are more careful to 'game' the system. But I don't think the graphic takes into account the increase in literacy rates, the advent of educational technology, adaptive learning for students with disabilities, the participation of diverse communities in post-secondary education...but that wouldn't make for a very interesting graphic, I think.

   

• • Mike Sosteric@mikes

  

  Mike Sosteric September 4, 2011 - 8:54am

  Well first of all, it's an open question how closely "marks" correlate with attainment. There's an undetermined amount of random "bias" in all the marking we do.

  Second, the bell curve is a statistical construct and not a representation of reality, and can therefore never be used to prove anything other than statisticians know how to manipulate statistics to generate pretty landscapes.

  Third, there are reasons to believe that students may be getting smarter, or more capable. As Heather says, technology may play a role here."

  Fourth, there are reasons to believe that instructors have inflated their grading in response to the need to generate positive student evaluations.

  So what do you do? Recognize the irrelevancy of the bell curve 9so you don't feel your grading has to conform to this statistical construct), get rid of student evaluations, and construct others ways to more accurately reflect student attainment that is free of bias.

   

  my .02 cents

   

   

• • Vanessa Clarke@vanessakl3

  

  Vanessa Clarke September 4, 2011 - 9:59pm

  There are other factors besides students becoming more smart that can lead to inflated IQ scores and course grades.

  1) Teachers/Instructors seem to be under greater scrutiny and must be able to justify the grades given to learners.  This can result in very direct instructional techniques. If you do/learn a, b, and c, you will achieve a very high mark.  Instructors/teachers even have to provide structure for project-based problems in which students are expected to use "logic" or "higher order thinking skills" to solve an authentic problem.  The result of this can be a lot of hand-holding, but also in higher grades since students can often be given a road-map of the minimum they must do to achieve certain grades.

  2) It's possible that the types of questions on standardized IQ tests become over-exposed and by the time a person actually takes an IQ test, they have been exposed to a number of similar questions.  Media outlets like bookstores and the internet make it quite easy to "practice" for an IQ test. 

  3) Some teachers/instructors I've worked with believe that grades can be "positive reinforcement" for students.  Thus, slightly increasing a grade might make students work harder than if they were given a lower grade. Slightly increasing grades regularly may lead (over time) to a huge change average grades given.

  4) I wonder if students today are "getting smarter" or just have different information to process.  Equally smart but knowledge based on an era (?).

  These are just a few thoughts I came up with.

• • an unauthenticated user of the Landing@speak_freely_user1

  

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