Confidence assessment marking

Mark InflationThe harms of mark inflation are not that marks are higher, but that marks become more concentrated. For instance, higher marks don't make it harder to tell the good from the bad, or send people false signals, but marking a good student with a mark closer to a poor student will. The problem is that under my opponent's model, you can't tell the difference between a student who didn't want to "effectively guess" but got 50%, and a student who got 0% (in other words, my opponent is giving poor students a head start of at least 50%)! That means that marks from poor students are artificially inflated to non-zero grades, while students who don't "effectively guess" are artificially deflated to be nearer to the poor students, if not given a zero grade. Indeed, until you get more than about two-thirds of the questions right, it makes sense to "effectively guess" by picking 1, and until you get more than about three-quarters right, it makes more sense to pick '1' than '3'. If you don't get >~80% right, picking 3 is a very foolish decision. The problem is that unless students pick, on average, above 2, they cannot reach more than 66% on their final grade- students are FORCED to take big risks. In addition, my opponent proposes a minimum mark at two-thirds of the mark range. Introducing a minimum mark like this, and forcing all other grades to tend towards it, is precisely what causes grade inflation. The poor students' marks really do increase, but with a minimum mark and a skewed mark range to trick people into believing that they don't. That's not solving the problem. It also ignores the fact good students do no better, as I told you. There is a problem with recklessly changing the mark range, however. As the harms of grade inflation, people also cannot tell how badly they have failed. You couldn't get, for instance, a D- if every fail score was a 0. That's bad for students, and is not to mention the fact that with their 50-66% head start, students who "effectively guess" get much higher average grades than students who don't "effectively guess," making the exam much easier for the guessers. As a rebuttal to this, my opponent said it's OK because the system is based on risk and return. First, basing your system on risk and return does not offset the harm of mark inflation, and second, even if it did, forcing people to wager on all of their answers is terribly unfair for the reasons I have described already. Then he said smart people better know their lack of knowledge. I've already told you that dumb people don't need to study the whole course to do well, but if you try to study the whole course you are less likely to know what you have and have not missed. Therefore, the message my opponent wants to send to students is "it's OK to not be diligent and learn the hard stuff, so long as you can do the easy part. " Imagine if doctors had that attitude. System ComplicationsMost of the time, the errors creep in with inputting the data (and occasionally exporting, as different systems can sometimes be unexpectedly incompatible). If you use a scanning system to input your data, there are issues with recognising odd forms of handwriting (short answer exclusive problem, but a problem nonetheless), sheets inputted backwards or back-to-front, sheets appearing smudged because the scanner is slightly out of calibration, and so on. Even so, adding extra steps to the process always introduces the potential for more errors in the program. This is well-known to teachers. Recently in England, switching to a system with computer and Internet based marking to ensure fairness led to a drastic increase in marking errors (. http://www.dailymail.co.uk...), despite the best efforts of the smartest computer programmers in the country. Today, nobody has been able to fix the marking errors, which has led to top students missing out on university placements (. http://www.guardian.co.uk...). It's wrong to assume that computers are always more reliable than humans just because your "friend" said so. Extra PressureIt's no wonder students would need extra time to compensate for the pressure. When you're faced with double the number of questions on your paper, and only five minutes of extra time to calculate your "risk and return" for each one, you're faced with a daunting task. Second, while unprepared pressures exist in real life, that's not what exams are for. Exams are for testing your understanding to make you as prepared as you can be. If students are incentivised to study less of the course, they can get much higher marks for being less prepared. It is better to have a correct but uncertain doctor than an utterly wrong but confident one, but the exam results reflect the opposite sentiment! Finally, it is wrong to assume that every graduate will be under that pressure. People who study math, for instance, may end up being an engineering consultant, which has ample time to check and revise answers. "One size fits all" doesn't work in education. On the survey, they did it after five years of running confidence assessments. People who don't like those kinds of assessments are not exactly going to sign up for UCL, are they? They therefore surveyed only those people who willingly signed up to do confidence assessments. No problem to fixI wonder why my opponent wants to introduce an assessment that heavily penalises taking risks? One of his rationales was to stop doctors and scientists from taking too many risks - they don't, and his system wouldn't fix that problem anyway. It's not an "improvement," it's a step back from a system that's already working. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Statistical ReliabilityThe fewer questions you have, the more the distribution of grades is skewed towards zero. Therefore, what your sources are effectively saying is that the most "reliable" test marks a greater number of students as stupid on the basis of fewer questions. It doesn't take a genius to work out that you can more easily guess 10 questions than 20 questions, so effectively they want to make it even easier for guessers and more demoralising for hard-working students. Why? UCL is an exclusive, prestigious university (only 12,000 undergraduates - . http://en.wikipedia.org... - my own university has almost twice that number and I'm from New Zealand! ), so they have to fail most of their students. They want to admit lots of students, however, because universities are funded for each student. This marking system makes average students just as good as guessers, so the average student looks bad, meaning less graduation, maximising funding for elitist professors. It isn't fair for average students, but the university will never tell you that. More on GuessingThe reason why smart student's don't over-estimate is that they pick up on the dumb people's system and don't study the whole course. Students absolutely do think in probabilities if that will maximise their chances of passing - and by guessing a proportion of the questions, they can do so. That's bad, because you mask the problem of student's weaknesses. Rote Learning. .. is absolutely encouraged over critical thinking! Thinking critically is more likely to make you less confident an answer is correct (because you critique your answer), which leads to lower grades. Stops rush answersOnly if guessing isn't a "rush answer"! We're not making students think about their answer, we're making them wager on it. Students who get -6 won't improve their answer, they'll just put a 1 by it next time and study something else! Besides, who is dumb enough to rush an answer with confidence '3'? Students under the status quo can see where they need to improve - assessing self-esteem does not improve this process. The resolution is negated.