The grading in one of my CSCI classes has thrown me threw a loop. Our class got 2 grades discussed with us during lab. Both were up for dispute.
The first one was our homework grade on a c program we wrote. People lost a point for using the wrong kind of comment. I lost 2 points because one of my lines wasn’t tabbed properly, correction.. a line which was tabbed properly but word wrapped. The code ran perfect, and I got a High B. I was lucky. Many people’s ran perfectly and they got a low C. Those who’s didn’t run, got F’s. That’s now how you grade code… Style is not that important.
The second one was a quiz that had a question that read "Is there anything wrong with this code and if so, what is it". We were told to ignore basically all of the code with the exception of 1 line. The code syntax was correct. The overall logic was correct. So my natural answer was, it’s correct. The code would do what was intended. The correct answer was, the code didn’t check for an error that occurs roughly once in a million times. How were we supposed to assume that that was something we wanted to check for in the first place?
Needless to say, I’m going to fight for the 2 points it would take to get me an A. I will also fight on the quiz if it doesn’t result in something I’m happy with. This is not a good way to manange a course.
Grading should be precise, and set before hand. A student should know what they are trying to achieve. I dont care if your going to mark me down for a missing tab, if you let me know your going to do that before hand.
That’s my rant for now, back to the massive things I need to get done.