alt Hacker NewsWhat is the point of grading homework for college students anyway? The objective of exams is to determine mastery of the subject. It makes sense to have a grade act as a certificate of mastery.
Grading homework is a measure of conscientiousness and perhaps a pedagogical tool to force learning but by college perhaps we should have moved out of the need for the latter.
One can simply measure conscientiousness through attendance grade and mastery through exam grade and then we have two grades the universities can certify students for that are no longer dimension reduced into a single number.
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Agreed. It's interesting to me to read about math homework being graded, because in my college math courses (at RPI in the late-aughts), homework was optional. It was "assigned" for students who needed more practice, but not required for those who didn't. It had no bearing on your grades at all.
I distinctly remember for the calculus courses, they told you a set of textbooks were required. By the end of the semester, I hadn't even peeled off the shrink wrap. The professor only used the books to cherry-pick homework problems from, and I personally never felt the need to complete them. I get that everyone learns differently, but making everyone buy that book never really sat well with me.
We did not have homework per se in what we studied but we did have reading that was relevant for the purposes of tutorials and being prepared for lectures. We also had deliverables (assignments, presentations, practicals) that had grading, and proctored exams.
I found having deliverables helpful in knowing how one is tracking with progress and understanding of the subjects and largely reflective of the final exam result.
I've also had studies done that exams were either 80 or 100% of the grading and that was a lot more stressful without any significant added benefit. In fact given that there were fewer or no deliverables, perhaps even worse mastery / retention after exam completion.
Homework grades are supposed to provide feedback and some incentive to do the work.
However, counting homework grades toward course credit also creates an incentive to cheat. It probably makes sense to remove (or at least drastically reduce) that incentive.
I agree, and most of my prof friends in math have switched from graded homework to weekly small quizzes. Graded homework was a way to use the stick as motivation because we've given up on the carrot (the learning of the material itself as an internal reward for completing homework).
Some of them keep the homework grade to like ~5% and mostly grade on completion because, when the student's homework proofs use advanced concepts and proof techniques not covered yet but their quizzes get sub-50 point F grades with barely coherent thoughts, it's a clear sign that they are not actually spending time using the resources the class has given them to work on the material.
It seems like all of them have given up on punishing students for it, largely because they're pretenure and the teaching part of tenure review here is primarily student evals drive (HINT: this is a MAJOR part of many broader problems). But to me it's kinda nuts that in one year or so, we have decided that it's actually ok to admit students into very competitive elite institutions, catch them passing off work that isn't theirs as theirs, and not treating that the exact same as we would have a few years ago if we caught them all sharing solutions.
To provide feedback on mistakes and help them learn. Unfortunately if you use the grade to contribute to their overall marks, some will cheat.
But that's easily solved - just don't reward cheating on homework.