It’s that time of year where I get inundated by email with students asking for a better grade. These requests fall into two categories.
- They’d just like some more. My 2015 response to that is here.
- They’d like to be rounded up. My 2015 explanation of my rounding algorithm is here.
To both those 2015 posts, I note that this year there was up to 10% extra credit available. Students who want a higher grade might think about why they did not make full use of that.
Moreover, all students got at least 1% extra credit (the bribe to get the class SRTE rate return rate above 80%, which it duly was), and many students got more as carrots for time management, phone hand-ins, names in the hat…. That means all students just below a grade boundary got as close as they did because of extra credit — not academic performance. If I took away the non-academic extra credit, they would not be close. Grades are earned not requested.
