mockbee wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2020 10:12 am
Hype wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2020 9:27 am
uh... no, that's.. ah forget it. C-.
Is that the lowest grade you are allowed to give?
Does administration explicitly tell you how many students are allowed to fail, or is more of an understood thing, other pressures hold more sway to pass the vast majority of students?
There are departmental norms about grading curves that are broadly expected to be maintained unless extraordinary justification is provided. And in my experience, given normal-sized classes, especially in the first two or three years, students generally fit the bell-curve pretty accurately.
For argumentative essays, generally a failing grade is reserved for an assignment that is incomplete, completely off base, plagiarized, or otherwise just completely fails to do anything the assignment required, or fails to do any of it passably well.
I'd say that generally a C- (equivalent to an American B- in some places) is a signal that you technically did the assignment roughly as required, but you made some pretty bad mistakes, had some profound confusions, and/or didn't do anything exceptionally well.
I tend to think of it this way:
A = Exceptional, like, top 2-5% of the class, at the upper levels, potentially publishable. (Generally one or two A+s out of 30-100 students is about the most I tend to see.)
B = Good, better than most, and not really missing anything specific, just not stellar.
C = Satisfactory. You did the assignment as required to do it, but you didn't show a clear grasp of everything you dealt with, and/or you can't write very well.
D = You should probably think about dropping this course because you don't get what you're supposed to be doing, but you clearly tried.
F = ... gtfo with this garbage.