Last week Jack sent me an apocryphal story about an economics professor who tells his class they will all receive the class average grade on each exam. Predictably, as the term proceeds, the students lose the incentive to perform/learn but start bickering instead, and they all end up failing the course.
It's a good story, but it doesn't ring true. I can't imagine many professors would try this in the first place, at least not on their own; I can't imagine students would put up with it in the second place; and I can't imagine the university would tolerate it. So I snoped the story and found the above link, indicating the story is a "legend".
A better experiment?
The original story involves socialism with closed borders, a la the iron curtain or Cuba. So I began to think about how one might redesign the experiment to make the same point and yet overcome the potential objections from students and admins by "opening the borders for migration", i.e. letting the students opt in or opt out. Here is what I have come up with so far:
- Offer at least two different sections of the same course.
- Announce to everyone that the students in all but one sectin will each receive the grades they earn on the exams. These will be referred to as the "merit" sections and will operate pretty much the way most course sections operate now.
- Announce to all sections that in one special section of the course, students will receive the average grade of the students in that section. This section will be referred to as the "average" section. [alternative name: the Wobegon section]
- Allow students to transfer freely between a merit section and the average section as often as they wish for the first half of the term (or until after, say, the first two midterms have been taken). I typically give two midterms and an final exam in my intro courses, so I would block transfers after the second midterm.
- Transfers: I need to consider using only one of several possible options on the portability of wealth and assets of the migrants (transfers):
- Students who transfer out of the average section take the section average with them if they transfer after the first midterm exam. Students who transfer out of a merit section into the average section will take their merit mark with them, and that mark will then be used to recalculate the class average in the average section.
- Alternatively, students who transfer out of the average section will take their personal mark, not the section average, with them when they move to a merit section. Similarly, students who transfer from a merit section to the average section will give up their own performances and take on the section average. I prefer this option.
Allowing transfers will serve two purposes. First, those who don't like the averaging procedure can transfer to or stay in a merit section where grades will be determined as they always are: on the basis of exam performances. Second, the migration itself will be very revealing and will set up numerous ancillary effects (learning experiences).
- Good students will tend to migrate out of the average section into the merit sections.
- Bad (or otherwise under-performing) students will consider migrating to or staying in the average section...... until they realize that the good students are all in the merit section and the average grade will be very low. This will likely mirror migration movements from Cuba and from behind the iron curtain.
Potential problems with this experiment:
- What if students have a timetable conflict and are unable to change sections? One way to deal with this is to admit students to one section only if they have enough schedule flexibility that they can change to another section if they wish. Another, simpler way to deal with this situation might be to offer a merit section running concurrently with the average section.
- Would the human subject ethics committees have to be involved? I would argue not, since it is more of an educational methods exercise and since no student would be required to be a part of the "average" section. [side note: a friend at another university says he hopes I do this experiment at UWO and not at his place, where he is on the ethical treatment of human subjects adjudication committee].
- Would any department have the nerve to offer an "average" section of a multi-section course? If so, I want to teach it (since I would expect most or all students to transfer out of it).
- Would there be any students left in the "average" section if there were no barriers to migration? My guess is there might be a few who were too lazy or otherwise sufficiently uninterested to change out of the section.
Here's another possible wrinkle to the experiment that might make it even more interesting. Tell the students that those in the top ten percent would get their actual grade plus 5 marks (a la the oligarchs in socialism, cf Animal Farm). The rest would get their average (not including the grades of the oligarchs in the average) AND minus enough marks to make up for the extras that the oligarchs would get?
Wouldn’t THAT be more like operational socialism? And wouldn’t that create some really nasty classroom problems!