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From: spuhler@hplabs.UUCP (Tom Spuhler)
Newsgroups: net.cse
Subject: Re: Grades
Message-ID: <2109@hplabs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 4-Jan-84 15:43:40 EST
Article-I.D.: hplabs.2109
Posted: Wed Jan  4 15:43:40 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 6-Jan-84 02:23:16 EST
References: <19062@wivax.UUCP>
Organization: Hewlett Packard Labs, Palo Alto CA
Lines: 27

Lance Norskog was correct in that UCSC( University of California, Santa
Cruz ) had no "grades", but that is not to say that there wasn't an
evaluation system.  UCSC has NES ( Narrative Evaluation System ) which
means that, as Bill McKeeman described, that  an English language
descriptive evaluation was given.  These tended to be from a few lines
to a half page of text that 1) described the course content, 2) the
student's performance in that course.  I found these much more useful
then a simple letter grade. ( I had both in college ).

There were the effects that Dr. McKeeman did describe however, a major
problem was that there was no Grade Point Average for graduate schools
and prospective employers to plug into their formulas, and reading all
those evaluations was too much work.  Another problem was the sometimes
uneven quality of the evaluations; they went from a 1 line "average, good
excellent" type, to a half page of prose, describing in detail ones
performance.  Dr. McKeeman, as I recall, wrote reasonable evaluations.



-- 

__
                         Tom Spuhler
                         UUCP:  hplabs!spuhler
                         CSNET:  spuhler@hp-labs
                         HPMAIL:  tom spuhler/hp1900/01