The proposal to implement a grading system that includes plus and minus grades was passed at the University Faculty Meeting Wednesday afternoon.
The proposal still needs to be approved by the president before it is officially implemented as university policy. If the president approves it the new grading system, it will not be in use until the fall semester of 2023 in order to allow current students to remain unaffected by this change and give time to inform incoming students.
Kenton Bird, a professor in the school of mass media and journalism, spoke in favor of the proposal, saying he voted for a similar proposal in 2005 when it came before the faculty.
“I thought it was a good idea then, I think it is an even better idea now,” Bird said.
Kenton Bird | Courtesy
The proposal was vetoed by Tim White, the university’s president at the time. Bird said he wishes it hadn’t taken so long for the proposal to get through the various committees at UI and come back to the University Faculty Meeting.
Bird said approving the proposal will make the University of Idaho more consistent with the grading systems of its peer institution. He said he looks forward to being able to more precisely award grades to his students based on their performance.
Jennifer Johnson-Leung, a professor in the department of mathematics, said she had heard that student opinion about the proposal was negative and asked if someone could speak to that.
Terrance Grieb, a professor in the department of business and vice-chair of the Faculty Senate, said he has worked closely with ASUI to gauge student opinion about a plus and minus grade system. He said, as a faculty member, he has his own opinions about the proposal but said it was important to consider the student point of view.
He said in his interactions with undergraduate students he has come to understand that they are generally strongly opposed to a new grading system with plus and minus grades. He said students feel like plus and minus grades would add more stress to their college experience.
“Particularly, going into finals, students are afraid professors will be splitting hairs on final points and that adds a lot of pressure for them,” Grieb said.
Grieb said some students are concerned professors will not use plus and minus grades fairly in all cases. Grieb said this concern echoed feedback he heard from some faculty that a plus and minus system might make grading too precise and professors won’t be able to make fair distinctions between what their grade is on the new grading scale.
Grieb said students feel like it is already hard enough to get a good GPA and students competing for 4.0 GPAs believe the new grading system will make it even more difficult. He said some student feel like the decision to hold off fully implementing the new grading system until 2023 is a way to avoid addressing student preference on the policy because current students won’t be affected, he said some students are perceiving the choice to do that as disingenuous.
Grieb said one of the main reasons White vetoed the proposal in 2005 was student opposition. Grieb said students largely feel the same way about the proposal now as they did in 2005.
Stephen Flores, a professor in the English department and a member of the Teaching and Advising Committee, said the one student who voted in favor of the proposal on TeAC was the ASUI vice-president. He said this student was engaged in the research on plus and minus grade systems and Flores said that influenced this student to vote in favor of the proposal.
He said having finer gradations will allow faculty to award grades they feel accurately indicate student performance and provide a more nuanced understanding of student success. He said he understood the concern for students who want to maintain perfect GPAs but said over the last several years at UI students who have graduated with 4.0s make up less than 3% of the undergraduate student population.
Flores said most studies across other universities have shown that introducing plus and minus grades usually do not have a significant impact on student GPAs. He said the new system could also help keep students engaged throughout the course of a semester, if they don’t think an A is attainable, they might still be able to get a B plus and that could motivate them to keep trying in their class.
Flores said he did not believe the proposal was disingenuous for pushing back implementation to 2023. He said that decision was based on studies that show once a plus and minus grading system is part of the culture at an institution, it is no longer an issue for students.
The decisions to introduce the grading system later is an attempt to make it a part of the culture at UI in order to avoid making it an issue for new students, Flores said. He said this would make the grading system change a smoother transition.
Gavin Green can be reached at [email protected]