It’s difficult to grade student’s assignments

Sat, 16 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I have been reading hundreds of student assignments this autumn. In many of these assignments, the students are expected to answer questions. Grading these assignments means deciding whether the answer is “right” or “wrong”. This is sometimes difficult. Most answers are somewhere between “right” and “wrong”. Therefore, the need for grading exposes a deeper problem: Before I can decide where on the spectrum from “right” to “wrong” the students’ answers fall, there needs to be an objective “right” and “wrong”. Otherwise, objective grades are an illusion to begin with (not even considering the problem of how to determine them reliably).However, all our scientific knowledge is preliminary. It is subject to modification or even reversal when new, better data becomes available. So, how can one grade any assignment with any certainty? Luckily, not all of our knowledge is equal. One important hallmark of a scientific statement is falsifiability , a concept that was perhaps first popularised by the science philosopher Karl Popper in his book The Logic of Scientific Discovery . What are examples of scientifically falsifiable theories?

Student Assignments on Michael’s Domain

It’s difficult to grade student’s assignments