It's difficult to differentiate one paper from another at the graduate student level. This writing is generally at a high level, so determining levels of papers in graduate school courses is a much finer point than in undergraduate courses. What I see students working on is fine-tuning their responses more than any other issue. In a graduate class, the differences are typically between a ten and a nine or a nine and an eight, as opposed to a ten and a five. I gave one seven to a student who couldn't write well in English. It is pretty common in graduate classes that students have the necessary writing skills and put in the effort needed to get an “A” on a paper. “B” papers fall short in one category. For example, in the travel account essay, students may fall short in addressing questions such as, “Does the essay draw on the preparatory readings in a meaningful way” or “Is the travel account revealed as a useful or problematic document on the history, customs and landscape of the city or cities under review?” A few students will just give up, for whatever reason, such as deciding graduate school isn't for them, etc.
What I would prefer to do is use a high pass, pass, and no pass system to explain how I differentiate among graduate students. That is pretty much what determines grades for me, and I think it provides a better distinction than A, B, C, etc. If I used this system, I would have given five high passes, four passes, and one no pass. The overall grades I did give out were seven solid “A” grades, one A- (for lack of effort, not skill), one B (for lack of skill, not effort), and one incomplete for a PhD student who just fizzled.
The highest possible score a student could have received was 410 points, and the top score recorded was a 402 that was given to a first year graduate student who had previously been an honors undergraduate at the University of Kansas. The second highest score, 389, went to another first semester graduate student. One student from Latin America also had a high score; he is now off doing research. In his papers, he tried different strategies, which sometimes worked well and sometimes didn't work so well.
When I looked at the rubrics for the papers, two areas stood out where students lost points. A key factor that often delineated “A” papers from “A-“ papers was comparison. Because this idea was central to the class, I especially asked the students to look carefully at how they developed their comparisons. I also noted some weakness in using background readings, more often early in the semester. What I noted regarding this factor was that a student might not include enough references to the background papers given in class as preparatory material. Again, this is a matter of fine-tuning and not an egregious writing error.
To a lesser extent, but still important, I looked for how the student dealt with documentation. I also looked at research skills—all the papers combined skill and effort, but it is hard for me to tell whether lack of skill or lack of effort caused a problem in this area as I have only the product to use for judgment.
