Grade Reform, Law Professors, Law Schools

New Law Professor Devises Grading System Bewildering To Children, Annoying To Adults

Can somebody please stop this rookie professor from ruining his own class?

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UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW SCHOOL — PROFESSOR JONAH GELBACH’S GRADING ADVENTURE

Fall 2013 Gelbach CivPro Grading Policy, Explained

1. I will explain how I plan to grade the complaint writing exercise when I distribute it.

2. For your class participation grade, here is what I wrote in the syllabus:

Class participation will be comprised of your performance and preparation when I call on you in class, and perhaps including voluntary participation. It might also include some quick-reaction take-home assignments (typically a paragraph or two, due in the next class). Regarding the on-call system, I will randomly choose students to call on each class date. Of course, if you are absent, you cannot perform well when I call on you. I recommend not being absent.

Let me break this into distinct parts.

(a) First, regarding “your performance and preparation when I call on you in class,” my plan has never been to assign finely grained grades to what you say. As I explained on the first day of class, I use the cold-call method because it provides incentives for students diligently to do the reading. Civil procedure is entirely new to you all, and I believe there is no substitute for reading, and reading carefully, before class.

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So, the point of the on-call system—and the point of having your performance be included in your grade—is primarily to give you incentives. I continue to believe that is a good idea, though I am not unmoved by the level of genuine angst some of you have about on-call performance and grading.

In hopes of reducing this angst, and in the interests of providing the clarity that I failed to deliver earlier, here is how the on-call part of your grade will work.

(1) You all will be deemed to have begun the semester with 100 class participation points.

(2) If you do a reasonable job when I call on you, you will keep all your points. I will conclude that you did a reasonable job as long as

(A) you are present in class when I call on you (or have an acceptable excuse to miss class);

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(B) you appear to have done assigned reading; and

(C) you take seriously whatever questions I ask you.

(3) If you do an unreasonable job, you will lose 10 of your class participation points. (As a side note, no one would have lost points based on participation so far.)

(b) Voluntary participation.

(1) The syllabus states that voluntary participation “perhaps” will be part of your grade.

(2) In light of the substantial amount of stress that this possibility seems to have caused at least some of you (something that was neither my intention nor my prediction!), I have decided to use the discretion inhering in the word “perhaps” to exclude voluntary participation from any part of the grading of this class.

(c) Mini-writing assignments.

(1) Mini-writing assignments believed helpful to legal education.

(A) I believe it is very useful for you to have the experience of writing about what you’re learning, even if the writing is short.

(B) I believe it might also be useful to you to receive written feedback on the writing you do.

(2) Substantial disagreement among students. Through the feedback you’ve given me (which I requested and which I very much appreciate!), you have made it clear to me that there is substantial disagreement among your ranks concerning the better way to arrange writing assignments.

(3) Syllabus suggests discretionary powers. The syllabus states that your class participation grade “might also include some quick-reaction take-home assignments.”

(4) Resolved. In light of (2), I have decided to use the discretion inhering in the word “might”, as discussed in (3), to exclude anything having to do with writing assignments from your grade entirely.

(5) However. I really do believe in both (1)(A) and (1)(B), however. As such, I will try to provide several additional optional, ungraded mini-writing assignments (I’m going to shoot for three, not including the complaint exercise). Here is how feedback will work:

(A) Each of you now has 3 assignment-feedback credits to spend.

(B) Turning in an optional, ungraded mini-writing assignment that you do all by yourself costs 2 credits and buys you feedback on your individual work.

(C) Turning in an optional, ungraded mini-writing assignment that you do with a single team member of your choice (previously announced team assignments are irrelevant) costs 1 credit and buys you feedback on your team’s joint performance.

(D) If you run out of credits, you will no longer have access to assignment feedback.

(E) However, if you can find one or more classmates willing to transfer you enough credits to entitle you to additional feedback according to (A) or (B), you are welcome to do so. A student’s assignment of credits does not become effective unless the assigning student notifies me via email or Canvas message, before I am done providing feedback.

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