Members of the University of Wyoming’s Faculty Senate voted 27-15 to urge a change of university regulations which would force all professors to give straight letter grades — and not grades that include a “+” or “-.”
Whether courses include “plus/minus” grading varies by department, and UW administrators are currently looking to standardize the practice.
The Faculty Senate vote echoes the position advanced by officer of ASUW — UW’s student government — who said plus/minus grades can be “super arbitrary.”
ASUW Chief of Staff Bailee Harris said a recent poll of students found 81 percent are in support of UW moving to straight letter grades.
John Willford, a lecturer in molecular biology, said converting to plus/minus grading would be more likely to hurt the grade-point averages of his “top tier” students.
“It does more harm than good,” he said.
Most students who receive As under a straight letter grade system have grade percentages closer to 90 percent than to 100 percent.
Willford also said mandating plus-minus grading would make entering grades using UW’s Banner software even more cumbersome.
“It’s not like like Banner is easy to use to enter grades,” he said. “If I have to do that with 15 categories, very quickly, I’m going to lose the desire to teach very large classes.”
Other faculty members said they felt their grading methods weren’t exact enough to use plus/minus grading.
Faculty members opposed to nixing plus/minus grading said they feel it’s important for GPAs to distinguish between a student earning 80 percent in a class and a student earning 89 percent in a class.
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