Understanding Student Perspectives on Grade Weight Allocation

Teachers and students tend to have different views about grades. In this study, I investigated the beliefs and attitudes that students have about grade weights (i.e., % of grade things are worth) by having them select grade weights for grade components and select their preferences for proportional or inversely proportional grade weights depending on assignment characteristics. Students ended up choosing grade weights that benefited their grades. Students who do not do well on exams choose a lower maximum grade weight for exams. Most students preferred grade weights to be proportional to time spent, difficulty, and length of assignments, while inversely proportional to strictness of grading. Overall, these results show that students would like grades to reflect the effort they put in. While they do not mind the difficulty of assignments, they do care whether something will be graded strictly.