I still remember back in college there was outrage at a professor who said he is not awarding partial credit. For those who don’t know, partial credit for an answer is pretty common and what it basically means is the professor looks at your work and if you were on the right track but got the wrong answer, you would get 1/4, 1/2, or 3/4 credit based on how far you got before you made a mistake.
This professor said when you get the answer, circle it as that’s the only thing he will look at. If you get it right, full credit. Wrong, zero credit. This was a college level engineering course and he said partial credit doesn’t exist in industry, you either do it right or you get fired so why should he give partial credit?
Assuming that professor was writing complex questions that were extremely difficult, and that a partial credit for a legit close solution is the difference between passing and failing the course and having to borrow/pay many thousands more for tuition to retake the course bc that professor is out of touch and doesn’t the dire consequences of his actions, I strongly disagree.
My liberal arts STEM education (graduated 2008) was incredible. Never took a scantron. In organic chemistry mechanisms and syntheses we had questions that involved a complex synthesis of a chemical but the lab is missing the obvious and best reagent and you had to devise an alternative route on the spot. He even threw a theoretical chemical on an exam at least once. There had to be partial credit or else most of the class would have failed. And there was more than one ‘rigjt’ answer.
There is definitely partial credit in real world science. I went to dental school and it it was the opposite of undergrad and it was mostly scantron exams. It was awful. Over and over again there were instances of me and other students proposing legit correct answers based on published science that the bullheaded professor wouldn’t accept as correct in their ridiculous exam bc it wasn’t their idea of the correct answer. More than once it resulted me in having to remediate an entire course or getting a full grade lower when I was in gpa danger zone.
I don’t know what type or level of engineering course that professor in your story was teaching, but based on what you described and my extensive experience in academia, fuck that professor. You can tell who studied and gained enough of an understanding of the subject to think critically about it and who didn’t. He sounds like a lazy know it all blow hard
I still remember back in college there was outrage at a professor who said he is not awarding partial credit. For those who don’t know, partial credit for an answer is pretty common and what it basically means is the professor looks at your work and if you were on the right track but got the wrong answer, you would get 1/4, 1/2, or 3/4 credit based on how far you got before you made a mistake.
This professor said when you get the answer, circle it as that’s the only thing he will look at. If you get it right, full credit. Wrong, zero credit. This was a college level engineering course and he said partial credit doesn’t exist in industry, you either do it right or you get fired so why should he give partial credit?
Assuming that professor was writing complex questions that were extremely difficult, and that a partial credit for a legit close solution is the difference between passing and failing the course and having to borrow/pay many thousands more for tuition to retake the course bc that professor is out of touch and doesn’t the dire consequences of his actions, I strongly disagree.
My liberal arts STEM education (graduated 2008) was incredible. Never took a scantron. In organic chemistry mechanisms and syntheses we had questions that involved a complex synthesis of a chemical but the lab is missing the obvious and best reagent and you had to devise an alternative route on the spot. He even threw a theoretical chemical on an exam at least once. There had to be partial credit or else most of the class would have failed. And there was more than one ‘rigjt’ answer.
There is definitely partial credit in real world science. I went to dental school and it it was the opposite of undergrad and it was mostly scantron exams. It was awful. Over and over again there were instances of me and other students proposing legit correct answers based on published science that the bullheaded professor wouldn’t accept as correct in their ridiculous exam bc it wasn’t their idea of the correct answer. More than once it resulted me in having to remediate an entire course or getting a full grade lower when I was in gpa danger zone.
I don’t know what type or level of engineering course that professor in your story was teaching, but based on what you described and my extensive experience in academia, fuck that professor. You can tell who studied and gained enough of an understanding of the subject to think critically about it and who didn’t. He sounds like a lazy know it all blow hard
I disagree with your opinion, but I will still give you the upvote for the very high effort and well written rebuttal.