Should Pass/Fail Be an Option?
With Penn State’s switch over to online classes, a concern of most students is how they will adapt to this new way of learning. As seen in my other posts, online learning is most definitely not a one-for-one replacement for physically being in the classroom, as there are more drawbacks than advantages. It is because of this fact that the question of whether students should be graded the same way while taking online courses as they would if they were still in the classroom. The two options are to remain with the current grading system or move to a pass/fail option. Each have advantages and disadvantages that I would like to discuss now.
If Penn State keeps the current grading system, there might be a trend seen that shows students not performing as well as expected. This could be from the stress of switching to online courses or even from students just not adapting to the online courses. There definitely is a learning curve in trying to learn through this medium. On the other hand, keeping the present grading system would not give any particular student an advantage over another in regards to comparing GPAs. You will see were this point comes in when I pick apart changing the grading system.
As mentioned above, Penn State could switch to a pass/fail option for classes, other schools are looking into this option, too. This would help relieve some stress faced by students for having to switch up their learning process, but this option would not effect a students GPA. This option has actually been brought up in a bill that the PSU Senate will present. The Senate’s idea is to have students work with their advisers to pick and choose select classes to switch to a pass/fail option. So, it would not be school wide. This does offer some advantage to those who choose to go this route. When comparing a student who has all A’s to a student who has all C’s, both are passing, but the former will have a higher GPA at the end of their semester and a high cumulative GPA overall. At this point, if both were juniors or seniors partaking in job search, on paper the A student would look better to companies than the C student. Now, lets say prior to this semester both student’s cumulative GPA’s were equal. At this point if each chose to stay with the current grading system, the A student would pull away GPA-wise from the C student. However, if the C student were to switch their courses to pass/fail, then their cumulative GPA would still be equal to the A student’s.
I am still on the fence about how I feel about the pass/fail system. It will definitely make things easier on students, but in reality it could hurt them in the future, especially for first year students. Also, along those same lines, I was wondering about how this would effect entrance to major GPA requirements.