To fail or not to fail: That's the question I struggle with at the end of each semester
It's the end of another semester, and I'm in the throes of grading. Once I'm done, I know I'm going to be in the position of disappointing some students, telling them the bad news that they just haven't demonstrated a mastery of the learning objectives for my course, that they're going to have to take the class again.
Worse, mine is a required course. In other words, if they don't pass my class, they can't graduate no matter what their GPA is or what post-graduation plans they've made.
Now, I long ago learned to shrug off the guilt trips students inevitably try to send you on when they're first confronting the news that they didn't pass my class. I rest comfortably enough, knowing that I do absolutely everything in my power over the semester to help students reach their goals. I've never seen my role as a gatekeeper to prevent the unworthy from entering their chosen field. Rather, I see my role as a nurturer, someone whose job is to coach students all the way to the finish line. I genuinely want to see every one of my students succeed!
Nevertheless, some students just don't get there in the end, and I feel strongly that, when they don't, they are best served in their professional development by taking the class again.
Some students, though, manage to fall into a gray area. For instance, what about the student who passes all of their writing assignments, including the capstone project, which encapsulates all of my learning objectives, but who does poorly on all of the participation grades such as group discussions and peer reviews?
That's much murkier territory for me. Discussions and peer reviews are relatively low-stakes grades. I include those activities because I believe they help students master the material, and I weigh them just heavily enough to encourage participation because, to be most effective, those activities require some give and take between students. And most of the time, even if students don't do well on these participation grades, they still do well enough on their major assignments to pass the course.
Most of the time.
So what do I do when they don't? The easy answer is that the expectations for the class were explicit and clear from the beginning. If a student ends up failing the course because they didn't participate enough, well that was their choice. Passing them is out of the question. Indeed, it wouldn't be fair to all the students who did participate.
That's fine as far as it goes, and I think it's a perfectly legitimate position to take. At the same time, though, participation is a means to an end. It isn't one of my learning objectives. Is it fair, then, to penalize a student who demonstrates mastery of my learning objectives simply because they got there along a path I hadn't anticipated? Is it just to say, essentially, "I'm sorry, but while your capstone project demonstrated that you learned what I had to teach you, I can't let you graduate because you didn't speak up often enough in class?"
That just doesn't sit right with me.
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