Return the Favor

This time of year, the various campus figures are asked to send out countless e-mails imploring students to fill out their Q evaluations. After final examinations are over, professors will get to read their students’ evaluations of their work. Students, on the other hand, often never see feedback on the final projects or papers they did at the end of the semester, their grades on final examinations, or section participation. This oversight—often justified by logistical constraints at the end of the year—is necessary and not that difficult to fix.

The College should mandate that professors and teaching fellows return all final exams and final papers that are handed in at the end of the year. TFs should be required to communicates grades and comments on all papers and projects to students, whether by making it possible for students to pick them up before the end of finals period, by e-mail, or by snail mail. Since written comments are often also important feedback, all work that is not directly returned to students should be preserved over the summer so students can see it when they get back in the fall.

All students should receive e-mails from their professors or TFs with a personal grade breakdown for the year, as well as a class-wide grade distribution on finals in larger classes. This would allow students to understand grades they haven’t necessarily kept track of, such as homework and midterm scores, as well as grades they often never see, such as those for final exams and section participation. Seeing what areas of the course they needed the most improvement in would help students learn more from the class.

These kinds of feedback are important because the process of taking a class should be not only about learning the material, but also learning from your mistakes. The end result should not be a mysterious grade, but a body of feedback that teaches you but also prepares you for future, more difficult work. Since in many classes 80 or 90 percent of your grade is determined during reading period and finals, the lack of feedback on the last work of the semester is particularly egregious. Never knowing why you got the grade you did, what you did well, and what you should have done better is not only unfair but also damaging to the learning process.

Furthermore, allowing students to see their grades helps them catch mistakes or unfair grading practices. TFs and professors are not necessarily held accountable for grades they administer at the end of the semester, and it should not require special determination and drive for a student to determine why he or she received a particular grade. Standardizing responsible practices across all departments would ensure that all students have a means of recourse for grades that they think might be unfair.

TFs and professors might argue that this requirement would be difficult to implement, but it should require very little additional work, since these assignments must be graded anyway. Writing detailed comments on student work is part of responsible grading, and is something professors and TFs should already doing. This is simply a matter of communication, and hardly a great sacrifice for better education and increased transparency.

Students deserve more than just a letter grade for their work throughout the semester, especially if the way in which the grade was determined is unclear. If professors and TFs receive evaluations from an entire class of students, then they should be required to return the favor and give students feedback on what is often the most important work they did in the class.