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  • Ask My Readers: Pluses and Minuses

    By Dean Dad November 8, 2007 8:29 pm

    Becky Hirta's recent post about grades got me thinking. My college doesn't give 'plus' or 'minus' semester grades -- you can get a B, but not a B-plus or a B-minus. The topic comes up for discussion about once a year.

    The argument for pluses and minuses is basically that they offer greater precision. There's some distance between a B-plus and a B-minus, but in our system, that difference is erased. By the same token, if a student is on the border between two letters, there's more at stake in the decision which way to go.

    The argument against, as near as I can tell, is based on false precision. The greater the number of gradations, the harder it is to get it just right. There's also the persistent ambiguity of the C-minus.

    Since this argument is raring up for its annual go-round on campus, I'd like to get my readers' perspectives. Does it make sense to go with pluses and minuses, or are we better off sticking with blunt, whole letters?

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Comments on Ask My Readers: Pluses and Minuses

  • Get rid of the letters
  • Posted by T-bone on November 9, 2007 at 5:15am EST

  • If I had a recommendation, it would be to eliminate letter grades altogether and go with a standards-based (student learning outcome based) report card that is better at describing what students have learned and can do.

  • Plus/Minus grades
  • Posted by John W on November 9, 2007 at 11:50am EST

  • My previous institution converted to plus/minus grades, and the only real impact was in those programs (including financial aid) that required a grade of C or a GPA of 2.0. If a C- is 1.7 (as we set it), then students who had previously done low-C work and had been OK, suddenly were cut off--which may not be a bad tradeoff.

  • I've always favored +/- on letter grades
  • Posted by Henry , Professor Emeritus, Coord of Special IT Projects & at NC State Univ. on November 10, 2007 at 9:35pm EST

  • For many years I supported changing my university's letter grades to +/-, and finally the change happened and the sky didn't fall.

    My main point was that there is too large a gap between letter grades, and cutting it in 3 gave a more reasonable way to differentiate between students's performance. I, and my students, felt that there is a *big* difference between an A and a B. What should I do with a grade that doesn't quite merit an A, but which is clearly better than a B? A- or B+ can be used and that avoids giving what I consider to be a clearly wrong grade.

    Well, what about the difference between an A- and a B+. I try to get it right, but then the impact is only .3 Quality Points. So I had less worry, and my students seemed to feel less pressure.

    There are small glitches (e.g. not only the C- mentioned, but also the A+) but they are an artifact of the letter grades themselves and can be handled with no more arbitrariness than the letter grades themselves.

  • Reject + and - grades
  • Posted by Dean at a Community Collge on November 12, 2007 at 9:30am EST

  • Our college has rejected + and - grades as they will actually bring down students' GPAs, as discussed by John W. above. The question comes up about every 3 years or so, with the same outcome.

    My opinion: we can't measure in the precision required by + and - grades. No test (can we be sure that every test question is perfect??), no graded paper/project (subjective grades), etc., can be measured to such great precision.

  • Clarification
  • Posted by John W on November 13, 2007 at 11:25am EST

  • Actually, we found that overall GPAs remained right where they had been--for every student who went down by getting the C-, another went up with a C+.

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