Exam time is here and, if there is one student concern I found in every region of the world, it’s grading !
So much to say about that. Today, I will reflect my experience with students, next time, I will speak about how profs see it.
It’s strange to see how much importance students generally give to marks and grades. Even in adult education, when I’m teaching to professionals way above 20 yr old, it seems that students (we call them “class participants”…) are getting to “back to school” time: they even care about grades…
Why is that ? Where does it come from ?
People prefer to be graded than evaluated. They feel reassured. They need to compare to peers. At the same time, they’re anxious, sometimes overanxious. They don’t think about what they learn, they think about what they think they are and they think about what other people think about them.
This is all bullshit ! Marks are per se a wrong estimation of a person value. You can study for days and fail that exam day. You can be a brilliant debater and a bad writer. Or just the opposite. The questions of the exam may be wrongly addressed by the prof, etc.
Of course the extremes of the Gauss curve (top 15% and low 15%) reflect some reality: hard working smart students consistently score high and those who never work enough or are for some reason demotivated are always in the low. But for the 70% in between, what’s the deal….?
I ‘ll tell you more about it in another post, but for now, if you happen to be in exams now, just think about one thing: yourself ! You’re studying for YOURSELF, not for the prof, not for the others ! It’s just a deal between you and you !
Bye for now
Be inspired !
Jean-Pierre Baeyens 
it’s sadly true. Nowadays, people ,and students especially, are more focused on there grades rather then the knowledge they should earn from their studies. It’s so sad but that’s how our generation is.
In my opinion, exams don’t reflect the real knowledge that we acquired during one year. Maybe permanent evaluation would be better.
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