Rope Coiling Research Articles

The Meaning of Student Marks

It is the purpose of a marking system to evaluate the academic work done by students in the courses of the various curricula. The marks themselves may consist of a series of letters or, preferably, of numbers arranged in descending scale; the most meritorious work is designated by a character at one end of the scale and the poorest, failure, by the character at the other. On the basis of marks given are awarded academic honors, additional credit toward graduation, prizes, etc.; and continued membership in a class or in a school may be conditioned upon maintaining some predetermined standard. The marks given may be expected to incite students to better work. Fairness in the award of honors, justice in determining upon failures and dismissals, and incitement of the student to better work can be attained only to the extent to which a common standard for the awarding of marks is understood, accepted, and acted upon. In many problems of evaluation two kinds of standards, positive and relative, are possible. A positive standard implies the possibility of defining exactly some unit of measure, a foot, a pound, a calorie, etc., that never varies and that can be recognized and identified. To evaluate a magnitude by a positive standard is to discover how many times the unit is contained in it, e.g., the number of feet in a coil of rope, the number of calories in a liter of alcohol, etc. Relative standards imply no rigid unit. Magnitudes or qualities to be evaluated need only be ranked from greatest to least, or from worst to best. A series of red cards may be ranked in order of brightness to the eye; or a group of men may be ranked according to stature from tallest to shortest without resort to any standard unit of measure; and if only rank in stature is wanted no positive unit of measure is needed. Appreciable differences of degree may 196