Taking Ownership of Learning Performance

Today was the last day for my six laboratory classes, so as a responsible teacher I have to return all their graded paper works and show their grade. I did not show their grades, I allowed them to compute their grades and gave them an opportunity to add value to their class performance. The grading period is that component of teaching that tests a teacher's virtue, beliefs and values for education.

What I am actually doing contradicts the traditional scheme of other colleges and universities as to how teachers evaluate the student's performance. Where I am teaching places high premium on learner-centered grading, that is based on the merits of students' works and not just on how the student look or behave in the class, or in cases as to how the teacher could recall the student's name and faces.

I don't have a knack for looking up the ceiling, casting the die or spinning darts for my students' grades. I do adjust the grades, but when I do, that would be for all. That I think is fair enough without lowering the bar of students' performance measures. Where I graduated from and where I am studying now, the professors have all the rights and priviliges in the responsibility of giving the students their 'due' grade, even to the point that students do not really know how they were evaluated.

To eliminate the bias of grading, I don't put higher weight on my measure of their class performance or standing. The weight of their grades comes from how they completed the tasks done as classroom exercises. This time though, I tried to include one component in the grade, which I asked them to give their selves.

That is a personal evaluation of their class standing based on their attendance, task completion, deportment,skills development, knowledge acquisition and recitation. Here, they can give themselves as high as 30 points which will be computed as an addition to the exercises we did in the class.

I found this exercise reflective for the students to consider a criticism of their self and their learning performance. Then I gave them their papers and compute for their grade. There are some students who changed their self-evaluation scores on class standing to pull up their grade, but of course that one component could only do so little if their grades in other components are really low.

With a small sheet of paper for this evaluation, I also asked them to describe how the course helped them. In their responses I could see how they think they have improved and their ideas on how to improve the course. These questions were rather intended for the teacher's use.

Then there are those students who happened to have incomplete exercises, looking for their papers as if they have submitted them to me. Those students who were reckless not to turn in their papers or to be absent from the class, came forward asking what they are to do.

My response was simple: You should have asked that beforehand not at this time. Here is one conversation that I think teachers would learn from as to how to deal with students who lack the virtue of self-regulation:

Student: Sir, I don't have two activities?
Me: Why don't you have two activities?
Student: I was absent...
Me: Why were you absent in those days?
Student: Pause...
Me: If you had been absent definitely you would missed those activities.
Student: Can I take them now?
Me: When should you have taken those activities?
Student: Before, when I was absent.
Me: Will it be fair others, if I give you consideration because of your unnecessary absences?
Student: No, sir.
Me: Who should be responsible for you learning?
Student: Me, sir.
Me: Have you done it so?
Student: No sir.
Me: That's the fair due, compute your grade then as to what you have done. The least thing that I could do for everyone, I will do.

This student and others have failed in the class. Simply because they did not take ownership of their learning performance with self-regulation. None of them could put the blame on me. I am simply an instructor, a guide, facilitator in their learning experience. It is they who have the responsibility to learn, mine is merely to help them in the process.

While many others succeeded, some did not. Those who did not need to go over the process again until they would have really learned the life lessons that they can not just read between the lines of the lesson content -- responsibility and determination to learn. That I think is the D within an every F student, or is it the discernment of that responsibility in learning?