973. Getting Out of Grading « Tomorrow's Professor Blog: wherein we read of one instructor's attempt to ditch grading by letting the students grade each other.
I didn't even need a bachelors degree to know how inane this idea was. When I was in high school, I did a project for a physics class. The teacher let the students assign the grades. I got a "C" because most of the other kids hated me for wrecking the curve on every exam. As our most recent Economics Nobeleans would argue, there are limits to the rational-choice approach in that rationality has finite limits. Or, there are alternatives to "normal" rationality that completely screw up the model. Or, perhaps, it's what I call "hyper-rationality" or "meta-rationality" that goes beyond the classroom parameters. Simply put, absent a control mechanism the students will all agree to give each other maximum grades. Even a Prisoner's Dilemma control could be subverted (cash!).
But mainly, I just want to tell her Gird yourself up, for Chrissakes! You're a professor, own up to it! Sheesh!
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