Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

reapersdrones t1_j6oj4ra wrote

Reply to comment by lucia-pacciola in Why is 5 stars the go to rating? by iamwhoiwasnow

Yeah one of my professors had our class do an exercise on how we think presentations should be graded. He preferred a 5-level system because it gets harder to objectively define the difference between two adjacent levels when the increments are finer.

Which made sense, he wanted to be fair and objective. I think when you get into the “finer shades” as you say, one tends to rate based on comparison to other books too much. Like “A and B were both great, but I liked A just a teensy bit better, so I’ll rate them 9 and 8.5” Which is fine and all for your personal book ratings if that’s what you prefer. Not so great for students when you give one 90 and another 85 but can’t explain where the difference comes from.

5

lucia-pacciola t1_j6om7aa wrote

I think the important part is clearly defining the 3 in a 1-5 system.

Like if 3 is "bare minimum for success", then 5 can be "perfect in every way we're measuring", and 4 can be "does more than the minimum but isn't perfect". Then 1 can be "absolute failure" and 2 can be "gets some things right, but not enough to satisfy the bare minimum."

That all seems pretty intuitive and accessible. Students who get 2s and 4s can go to the teacher during office hours to get more detailed insight on what they got right, and what they missed to fall short of the higher score. You don't need to be handing out 6, 7, 8, 9, like there has to be these very precise, measurable shades of 4.

3