Page 78 - FSTE A5 Handbook

Chapter Five
Articulation Experiences of
Senior Year Students

It is interesting to note that students believed that there were some differences in grading
among instructors. Some instructors were known among students to be generous with marks
and grades. Therefore, the decision to enrol a course was potentially affected by who would
be teaching it:

“But the grades obtained in associate degree study could be interesting; for example, many
students might have been given very good grades in last semester. This, however, would not
necessarily be the case in the following seminar as a result of different instructors teaching it
and grading the assessment. Sometimes, it could immediately turn to a hell to students. So, if
you say we decide to take a course based on the chance of getting a good grade, it actually
means we decide on the basis of who will be teaching it and the likelihood of the prospective
instructor to give students a good grade. In other words, when students enrol, they would first
look at the contents, find out who is the instructor, then decide.”

It is disappointing that students tend to choose a course depending on the instructor, or more
precisely, the possibility to get a good grade, not the chance of learning more from a good
instructor. But this is, nonetheless, the reality. It is not difficult to see that students are grade-
oriented in all circumstances, from course difficulties, self-evaluation and instructor’s style of
teaching to whether one should get credit transfer:

“Initially I was quite disappointed about my prerequisite not being approved for transfer, but
I was given a good grade after the exam. For those who didn’t need to take this prerequisite,
they turned out to envy me because they thought the course was giving out good grade, but
they didn’t need to take it.”

Perhaps the paradoxical position of students has helped to maintain the dynamic equilibrium
of the credit transfer system in place so far. Even if a credit transfer is not granted, the student
concerned may grumble but that would not cause too much of a problem. Their sense of
dissatisfaction is quickly diluted by the possibility of getting a good grade from taking the
course again.

(1) Instructor dependent assessment
Since GPA is a matter closely related to the assessment, learning assessment is another main
concern of students. More often than not, students may not know the assessment standards
and, even if they do, they may not understand the marking criteria for meeting these standards
in their learning assessment:

“The problem is the criteria for each grade fluctuate. I could be doing things like what the
teacher was requested, but different instructors could have as much as two grade differences.
I think this is unfair. If one had never studied the subject matter before, one should have earned
a good grade, say at least B+ for working hard on it. But this did not happen. It really depends
on the instructor and your luck.”

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