Who's Been Paying Attention

I just turned in my class's final exam grades for the semester, which means I'm home free for the next two months. Woohoo! 136 students took the final exam and 10 got an A while at the bottom end 5 got an F. It means that 7.3 percent got an A and 3.7 percent got an F, which I guess is neither good nor bad. In other words I'm neither too strict nor too lenient. In a general sense though, if I'm allowed to make a rough extrapolation of students who were really paying attention in my class and prepared well for the final exam (I use grades B and above as my benchmark), the number is actually less than half of the total students (63 students or roughly 47 percent). This seems a bit disappointing.

Considering that I gave my students the essay questions and terms-to-identify list two weeks before the final exam I had somewhat expected that more students would do well. Also I didn't originally plan to give out any grades less than C- but some students just didn't make any effort at all and simply couldn't care less. 14 students or about 10.4 percent received grades less than C-. The final exam grade makes up 60 percent of the overall grade, so it is hugely significant. I have no way to compare the students' final exam grade with their coursework grade (the other 40 percent) since the final exam was graded via the students' index numbers, not their names.

But the rule of thumb suggests that generally those who did well in their coursework would also do well in their final exam but there was no way to tell for sure. Overall I think I did a fair job in grading their coursework and final exam and I tended to err on the lenient side by bumping those with borderline grades to the next highest ones. Anyway I'm glad that all the paperwork's done and now I can fully focus on my research proposal and the upcoming World Cup 2010.