My motto is always 'Nothing is perfect under the sun'... Thus, no 100% on assignments... For me.

Same for me Theodora - but what about 90-100%?

Dean,

I might have awarded one of two students 92! The 93 - 95 would be only for the NEAR PERFECT - 95-100 unattainable...

Regards

Again - I agree Theodora - but what is it about that 'last 5%' that is unattainable - and why - and is it a universal phenomenon?

I do not think it is a universal phenomenon - but I believe no matter how great the work is - there will be something missing - and this is evident in the works that I have been marking!

Regards

I think, two approaches are here somewhat mixed up:

I. 100% grade means just an acceptable level - something maybe missing (i.e. open for further investigation/discussion), a reasonable number of small mistakes that do not influence the overall conclusion, one or two useless sections in the structure, no error bars at some plots, etc.

This is how it works in many places. This way, a student getting full mark should understand that this does not mean "outstanding" by definition, this shows that the work satisfies the common standard.

Drawback: no way to mark a really outstanding work. Two 100% marks may be given to two works of different quality (although both above acceptable). Also, as 100% does not mean "no critisism", marks like 95% are not to be readily understood. What does this mean - 12 grammar mistakes instead of 11 allowed? no reference to an important statement? figure missing? poor title?

II. "Just acceptable" is well below 100%. 100% is "no objection", ideal.

Also a possible choice (often used during entrance examination when 5 tasks of 7 may give "passed" mark). Here, marks existing above "passed" allow to give extra benefits to bright ideas or implementations.

Here are two drawbacks:

a) how do you know what is "acceptable" in this or that case? 75% - in this university, does this mean "a little above the surface" (acceptable = 70%) or "twice closer to heaven" (acceptable = 50%). => this scale is not universal, as least currently

b) to give a certain grade, a judge should be above that level to be able to distinct excellent from good and average. Therefore, by definition, no one can get 100% this way, as no judges with 100% in the CV are available so far.

There is no such thing as 'perfect' student assignments or articles. Peer review and professor feedback is essential to scientific writing. Even if the student is given 95-100%, feedback is essential for growth and understanding. It sounds like some reviewers have become busy, lazy or complacent. You may have a higher level of expertise that could account for the ½ page and your 5 pages of feedback.

Evgeny and Margie

Thank you for the comments - appreciated... indeed, knowledge is needed on both sides... but I continue to say 'nothing is perfect under the sun'.

Regards

I think assessment is always subjective but I have given marks over 90% where I have put my hand on my heart and thought 'there is nothing else this student could have done". I think we need to remember as well that we are marking to the student's educational level and to the marking criteria for that level. A paper that is excellent for a first year student might not even receive a pass for a final year student as it might lack that essential ability to use critical analysis.

P.S. To my previous reply. Fiona Meddings at the University of Bradford (UK) is the person to follow on this subject. She is doing her PhD on the topic of assessment in higher education .

Hello Fiona,

Thank you for your entry - indeed, according to the marking criteria... as mentioned earlier, I would give upto 95 but not 100!!!

And I would agree with the notion that the first year is different than third year - when I look back at my assessments (that I have submitted to my lecturers when I was a student) I always feel for the markers! but individual changes throughout the years and even individual him/herself would be critically looking back at their work!

Regards

Theodora Issa

Evgeny, I don't know about marking in Russia but in the UK 100% would NEVER mean 'just acceptable' unless it was some sort of pass/fail grade where the grade indicated that the task had been completed but there was no possibility of making a judgement about the quality of the task. This might happen in a composite grade where for instance a student was required to submit an assignment into an electronic portfolio and part of the learning outcomes for the module were to demonstrate an ability to do this. The student might receive, for instance, 70% for the actual assignment (comprising 70% of the mark for example) and 100% for the successful electronic submission which might comprise 30% of the mark. However the way numerical marks equate to letter grades can be very different. In the UK 70%-100% is an 'A' grade, 60%-69% =B, 50%-59%=C, 40-49%=D and below 40% is a failure. I know this is quite different to the relationship between marks and letter grades in the USA but I imagine that when we judged a paper using only qualitative comments, then our judgements would be similar. I've always thought it would be an interesting exercise to do some trans-national marking and in fact once had my students look at this when I was running a health professional educator programme.

Hello again

Here in Australia we have:

F-IN - incomplete submission

F - 0-49

P - 50-59

C - 60-69

D - 70-79

HD - 80-100

Which is somehow similar to the UK

Fiona - a good reply to Evgeny. In most cases that I can think of, the grading system is as already suggested. The banding for grades, I think, are similar throughout many parts of the world. However, while I acknowledge the notion of 'difference' between years of undergraduate students - I'm not convinced that this is how we should measure top grades in student assignments. For instance, for most universities that I have worked at, the marking criteria remans the same same throughout the life of the degree. So 90% plus in the first-year, requires demonstration of good analytical skills - as it does in the third-year. So - a high-flyer in their first-year is likely to remain the same throughout their course - only being able to 'fine-tune' what they are already very good at. The main difference is that a 'moderate' first-year student is, hopefully, going to acquire new skills from feedback etc to achieve later what a high-flyer first-year student is already achieving.

As for the marking criteria - at our university the undergraduate marking criteria is different than that of postgraduate... previously, we were required to be innovative and create our own - now, we have to liaise with the Teaching and learning in order to have standardized but at the same time specific marking criteria for that specific assessment for that specific year - which is hard work.

In my opinion, the "perfect assignment" does exist if perfection is defined more broadly than the paper it produces. If an assignment/project can successfully turn a passive learner to an "active" learner by engaging the "intrinsic motivation" (defined in the book DRIVE by Daniel Pink), then the assignment/project can be considered perfect. I experienced this first hand when an project I introduced not only engaged the undergraduate students in class such that they kept working on it well beyond my expectations, but also resulted in having students NOT enrolled in my class show up regularly and participate in the project. If we can agree that as teachers we are trying to teach students how to learn on their own and why keeping on learning is so important, then I can argue that there is such a thing as a perfect assignment.

Murat - credit for students who actively engage, 'grow' from feedback and are motivated to strive to do better than their last assignment - should be amply rewarded. I agree - that should be a subjective acknowledgement by lecturers who mark assignments. However, that requires that the lecturer knows the student and actively follows their progress. That could be problematical for some - especially when dealing with larger cohorts of students. Then there is the challenge, by institutions, against that level of subjectivity. Moderation processes, for instance, often dictate that 'generous subjectivity' does not factor in the mark i.e each assignment is 'unrelated' to the last - and a 'mark is a mark' for each individual assignment. 'Progress' is often not factored into the marking criteria. Therefore, often, each assignment is a stand-alone assessment - and that makes offering 90-100% even more difficult.

The last time that I gave 100% for a (real life) assignment was to a student of mine in fourth year because, instead of giving me just a few floor plans, she gave me a whole A4 file, partitioned into all the aspects of the work. I learned later that she was working simultaneously in a construction office, and their professionalism had worn off on her.

Thanks Ian. Of course 'extra' credit goes to those who 'go the extra mile'. Any marks around the lower 90s, for me, is where students have done that.