A question going through academe these days is whether students should be graded pass/fail this semester due to the disruption of the coronavirus. (Many rules usually govern pass/fail, such as only two courses per semester at most and no course from the major, at least at SMU.) Some universities, such as Duke, have even moved to blanket pass/fail for every student. I was asked by a student preparing an article for the university newspaper what I thought about it over the weekend after SMU moved to online teaching for the rest of the semester and essential operations until April 3, so here are my thoughts. (The City of Dallas has since announced shelter-in-place starting tonight, although people are still allowed to go to the store.)
For my current course, which is a 5000/7000 course including a distance section and thus is already taught online for distance graduate students, I would prefer to keep the regular ABC grading scheme but perhaps modify the remaining deliverables and/or the grading scheme and give the students the option to take the course pass/fail, even if they are in the major. Some of my students have worked very hard to master the material and I would rather be able to give those students an A.
On the other hand, some courses, for instance in the Meadows School for the Arts, may be exceedingly difficult to teach online. I have a hard time believing that online instruction can achieve the same course objectives in, say, dance or art. How do you practice a series of jumps in an apartment? (and obviously, forget about partner work.) Where do you fit a large-scale canvas? What if some of the tools you need are only available on campus? For those courses, I could imagine that pass/fail would be more appropriate because the online version of the course would be so different from what the course was originally intended to be.
So my opinion is that pass/fail options should be expanded but pass/fail should not be the default. I also think it is important for instructors to communicate with their students to help them manage their stress, to show empathy as some students may be worried about relatives or friends sick with the virus, and to adapt their course requirements and deliverables to this great challenge that we are all being confronted with. I believe that the primary goal of faculty members this semester should be to help students build resilience in face of unprecedented adversity and this might include some revision of what represents reasonable expectations this semester when it comes to letter grades. We are all resilience teachers now.
My heart goes out to our students, who are in for a very different experience than what they signed up for. I particularly think of our graduating students (especially the theater and dance students who really should be on campus rehearsing with fellow students to hone their craft, and have spent thousands of dollars paying tuition for something that just isn't going to be the same thing) and the exchange students from Monterrey Tech, who only had one semester to spend on campus and experience the United States, and this is the semester they came.
It is normal to be disappointed, but it is also important to process those emotions and rebound. How can you make this semester epic, transformational, and full of experiences that you wouldn't have had otherwise? Maybe shelter-in-place is the perfect time to read Principles by Ray Dalio, or start a meditation practice, or research companies you want to work for, or take an online course on edX or Coursera, or binge on TED talks, or interact with your friends in a more meaningful ways by scheduling regular Zoom calls and committing to self-improvement tasks with each other and holding yourself accountable. Or many of those. Or dye your hair a new color. (Just remember shelter-in-place is supposed to be for only ten days! I hear blue dye is hard to wash off.) I tell my students that not only we will get through this, but let's work together to make this semester a game-changer, because that's what world-changers do.
Here are some additional resources. Emotional Agility by Susan David is a good book, although you'll get just as much benefit from reading her Harvard Business Review article (my regular readers know what I think about puffed-up magazine articles turned into books). Also, the article was the subject of an HBR podcast. You may have heard about David because she gave a TED talk. She will be the first speaker of the TED Connects series today at noon EST. I also liked Resilience by Eric Greitens. Although he is now the disgraced ex-governor of Missouri, his book was well-written and interesting. But my favorite is probably Principles by Ray Dialo, because the part of the book about his life story shows how he rebounded from setbacks, instead of just writing generalities about it, and his principles are spot-on.
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