MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Committee on the Undergraduate Program
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Memorandum

To: CUP Subcommittee on Pass/No Record Grading and Advanced Placement Policy

From: Professor Robert L. Jaffe, Chair of CUP

Date: 28 November 2000

Subject: Requests for further consideration

I am writing on behalf of CUP to ask your help in clarifying some of the issues raised in your report. We feel that your committee has done an excellent job of formulating the issues and we largely support your recommendations. We would like to continue to use you as a resource for perfecting the proposals we expect to pass on to the faculty early next year. These are the areas where we would appreciate some additional comment or clarification:

1. Exploratory Subjects

• Dates: when should ES’s be designated? How late could they be dropped? An interesting suggestion was to replace the ES option with a "drop after final option" for a single course in the sophomore year. It was asserted that this would not be likely to be "gamed" because students rarely have more than one "expendable course on their schedule.
• Simplicity and the 3^rd and 4^th year: It would be much simpler to have a single option for each year after the first. Would you consider expanding your proposal to include an ES option in place of the present junior-senior P/F option? On the other hand, what about the option of P/F in the sophomore year in place of the ES option?
• Advising: We are concerned about the role of the advisor in designating and tracking exploratory subjects.
• How would you react to separating the freshman grading proposal from the exploratory subject proposal, for example as two separate motions? Do you regard them as integral?

Please note the memo from the Registrar, Mary Callahan, that addresses these issues (Appendix A)

2. Prerequisites

We have interpreted your proposal as follows: The faculty should have the right (and mechanisms should be provided) to designate strict prerequisites for their subjects and to refuse registration to students who don’t meet them. If so, this do es not require new wording in Rules and Regulations of the Faculty. Rather a motion approved by the faculty could direct the appropriate faculty committees and administrative offices to make this possible.

• Is this consistent with your intentions?
• We think it will be necessary to provide this option in all subjects whether they are aimed at freshmen or not, although we do not expect it to be used much in advanced courses. What is your reaction?

3. "No external record"

We could use some clarification of the meaning of the phrase "No external record." We recognize that this problem already exists with the present freshman grading system, but believe you may have a clear perspective.

• Who can access the "internal record?" Is it still the intent that these are for advising purposes only? Can others within the MIT community (prospective UROP employers, ROTC, scholarship reviews) view internal grades without explicit permission from the student
• Who holds the official record of hidden grades? It would help to have some clarification in this area, particularly with respect to the role of the Registrar’s office and the academic departments. Should a new, more uniform standard exist for assigning, recording and tracking hidden grades for (first semester) freshmen? Once there is clarification on this point, an implementation team can draft the new guidelines for the use of hidden grades.

4. GPA

We understand that you intend that the student’s GPA would begin to be computed in the second term of the freshman year. Students seem to be particularly uneasy with this recommendation and ask that you clarify for us the benefits of this change.

5. AP Credit

We have interpreted your report as a validation of the current system with some important qualifications and recommendations regarding faculty oversight and standards. Is this correct? Can you summarize your overview of the AP credit system in a brief form that could be communicated at the Faculty Meeting?

We understand that some of these issues may go somewhat beyond either the charge to the subcommittee or the specificity with which you feel comfortable, but they are coming up in the discussions underway and any insight you may wish to provide will be most useful.

Appendix A

To: Robert Jaffe, Chair of CUP

From: Mary Callahan, Registrar

Re: Report on Freshman Pass/No Record Grading and Advanced Placement Policy

Date: October 31, 2000

Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the recommendations outlined in the report of the CUP subcommittee on freshman grading and advanced standing. Many aspects of the Registrar’s Office work are woven into the report so implementation is an important issue for the office and the Institute. This memo will outline some of the issues relating to the implementation of the ABC/No record system, the Exploratory Subject during the sophomore year, the recording of individual examinations for which students receive General Elective Credit, and the prerequisite enforcement.

A/B/C/No External Record

The A/B/C/No External Record recommendation is clearly stated and straightforward. At this time, the Office does not have any major implementation questions or issues except to make known the resource impact of such a change. As you know, to implement a change in the freshman grading system impacts many processes contained in MITSIS (MIT’s student information system). MITSIS is very flexible, but is tightly integrated, so a change in the grading mode for freshmen impacts

• Registration
• Grading
• Transcript
• Degree Audit
• GPA calculation
• Grade Sheets
• Term Summary
• Catalog
• Advising

It will take two analyst programmers and two Registrar’s staff members six to nine months to analyze, rewrite, test and implement.

Exploratory Subject

The implementation of the Exploratory Subject raises a broad set of issues related to a student’s internal record, advising, reports, grading, end-of-term procedures and review process. These issues include:

Whose approval is needed for the set of decisions made by the student throughout the term — when the student chooses the option by Add Date, when the student decides to drop the subject prior to drop date, when the student decides to forfeit the final grade and credit? What is the involvement of the advisor and instructor?

The student’s external record (transcript) is not affected by this subject. It either is forfeited or displays like a regular subject with no indication of its being exploratory.

In terms of the student’s internal record, however, a number of questions arise. What should display during the term on class lists regarding the choice of this subject as exploratory? What should display on term summaries when the student’s term record is being reviewed in departmental grades meetings and by the CAP? What should display on the internal grade report? Even if the student ultimately forfeits the subject, what information regarding the student’s enrollment and final grade should be retained and used for future advising? In summary, what information is needed on the internal record and for how long in support of advising and evaluation of the student’s progress?

What happens between Drop Date and receipt of the final grade if the student decides not to continue putting effort into the subject, especially if it might jeopardize work in other subjects? Would there be a mechanism for this such as a petition?

What deadline would be placed on the decision to keep the subject or forfeit it? How would that decision be conveyed to the Registrar’s Office? The Office cannot be in a position to guess about the student’s intent or to wait for some student action. The CUP report states "At the end of the term in which an Exploratory subject has been taken, the student will then have the choice of accepting the grade received, along with the credit, or re-designating the subject so that "Listener" status is indicated, in which case the grade and the credit are forfeited." It seems like the most logical route is to assume that the student is accepting the grade unless the student tells the Registrar’s Office they wish to forfeit it. What did the subcommittee mean by "at the end of the term"? Is that a definable date? Does the student need to fill out formal paperwork to have the exploratory subject changed to "listener" status?

The situation would be further complicated if the student were to be awarded an I or O/OX in the subject. What then would be the deadline for forfeiture? It should be expected that some students will try to "recover" the grade and units they originally gave up if the credit is needed for graduation. What will be the policy for this?

Should a student forfeit the grade and credit after the term, in a small number of cases, this may have an adverse effect on the student. For example, the reduction in load could jeopardize the student’s loans or eligibility for athletics.

The report says that a sophomore can designate one "Exploratory subject". Is the committee’s intent that if a sophomore in the fall term takes the exploratory option but does not take the grade and credit, that the option has been exercised? If the student chooses the exploratory option by add date but drops the subject by drop date, does that constitute use of the option?

To track the use of the Exploratory subject option by sophomores and to distinguish its use from other subjects taken as Listener, exploratory subjects would need to have a unique indicator. Such a change would require programming and would need to be thoroughly tested.

Recording of Individual Examinations for General Elective Credit

If specific subjects are created for general elective credit, the student’s transcript will list these subjects separately. This would seem to give disproportionate emphasis to elective credit when viewing the student’s term on the transcript. (We have a visual aid to show this if you would like a copy). Three nine-unit subjects of elective credit is normal with some students recording as many as five or six separate AP subjects (for example, in the case of one student: AP American History; AP European History; AP Gov and Pol: American; AP Gov and Pol: Comparit; and AP English Lit/Comp).

Is the intent of the committee to replace the general elective designation with an existing equivalent subject number or to create a series of numbers assignable only to AP credit?

Is it really double-dipping to equate examination results with taking a subject offered at the college level?

Prerequisites

Whose responsibility is it ultimately to enforce the prerequisites? For every prereq, will there be a way for the student to fulfill the prereq without actually taking the subject (i.e. 8.02 in the spring)? As stated in the CUP report, "It may be appropriate, in a limited number of cases, for students without prerequisites to take a subject nonetheless." How will the Registrar know what to do?

Preventing a student’s registration in a class appears to be in conflict with Faculty Rule 2.41 which states that "Prior to the opening of each regular term, every student shall register for the desired subject and, when necessary, the desired Course. Initial registration and all later modifications of registration in each term require the approval of the Freshman Advisor of Faculty Advisor of Registration Officer."

How can we "systematize" or "program" a prerequisite mechanism when there is a "variety of opinions among the faculty about whether prerequisite subjects should be enforced or whether they are merely guidelines"? As we have already done for certain subjects, we can provide lists of students who have not completed the prerequisites (and even detailed which prerequisite is missing) is that a sufficient mechanism?

Again, thank you for the opportunity to share with the CUP some of the implementation issues to the Freshman Pass/No Record Grading and Advanced Standing Policy report. We appreciate how much work the committee has done to date and look forward to working with them in the upcoming months.

Copyright © 2000 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Comments and questions to cup-www@MIT.EDU. Last updated March 12, 2001.