I read a great thread yesterday on why Organic is viewed as a weeder class & some discussion on grading that I wanted to comment on. When I teach these classes I strive for two goals, decrease # D/F/W & increase # A. It's easy to move only one, much harder to do both. THREAD. 1/n

IME the average Gen Chem/Organic class ends up with a 2.6-2.8 GPA which has always bothered me. Some of this comes down to assigning grades based on "natural breaks" other explanations are based on assessment or course alignment. My experience says it is the latter two. 2/n

First assessment, almost all of the grades in these intro classes are based on exams, of which most average 50-70%. Why? In organic, many faculty rely on "mechanism" questions which are typically more challenging, worth more points, harder to grade and have a HUGE spread. 3/n

If a student misses 1 of these 12-20 pt questions then they typically fall an entire letter grade. Is this warranted? Perhaps if the specific mechanism is an assigned learning objective, but typically it isn't and instead is a challenging question they have never seen. 4/n

This does not mean that students should not be challenged - one has to properly balance rigor for fairness. Which brings me to point 2 - alignment. Not many organic classes have clear learning objectives - I never had them until I was taught by my wife, a Learning Designer. 5/n

As a result, I have tried to be more specific in explaining exactly what I expect the students to learn & tying those to exam questions. I have also tried to decouple questions, making them more iterative to help with grading. It is not easy, especially in organic chemistry! 6/n

But what if you want to test rigorous mechanisms, which I do! How about assigning a different exam question? I had students record their "perfect" mechanism that was given as a take home exam this Spring, like Khan videos. The goal was to have them practice over & over. 7/n

I asked about orbitals, reaction rate, energy diagrams, etc to gauge understanding and assigned a rubric to clarify expectations. The only downside to this was grading, but when compared to a regular exam it was about the same. The result - a MUCH higher exam average. 8/n

So in closing, the point of this thread is not to advocate for grade inflation, rather new/better ways to evaluate learning in Orgo & to move away from in-class exam structure. The latter is important these days. The end result should be higher grades & better outcomes. 9/9

I would love to hear thoughts from @andrechemist @Teachforaliving @EWhitteck @RissaChem who also have some great insight on the topic!