<p>Ewww, getting graded by your peers in science classes (the same ones who are on the curve with you).</p>
<p>What school is this? Might be good for people to know if they're looking to get into med school...</p>
<p>The lab grade is not actually from the peers. But the critique points can actually cause the grade to be increased or reduced. They do have to justify any sort of points that would cause someones grade to be reduced. Hopefully the prof & TA would have a pretty good idea of who is or is not contributing so presumably there is some safegaurd against messing up someones grade because you don't like them. </p>
<p>I'm not going to mention the school on the off chance that someone might read CC and Mom's whinging and put 2 & 2 together ;) (and this is just Mom whinging - my D has not commented on what she thinks)
But my reaction was the same as yours. The whole thing just does not sit well with me.</p>
<p>My first gut reaction to this idea SWIMCATSMOM - is a lazy prof/ta - this type of science lab approach - IMHO - is not fair to all the students involved - it just tells me that the lab prof/ta doesn't want to take the time to evaluate each student on their own merits - and puts the pressure on the students to do so. </p>
<p>My second opinion may be different - if I take time to think about this tho.</p>
<p>Well, hopefully, some science professor will read this and if that's the policy in his/her class, maybe she'll see how unfair it seems.</p>
<p>Thanks Mikemac. I will relay that information to him. I was wondering why they scheduled classes in rooms that couldn't hold the number of students, lol.</p>
<p>Nope - my second thoughts on this science lab haven't changed - after re-thinking it. My guy had a high school teacher who did this in AP English - she was determined to trim the class of 12 to only 6 - and almost accomplished that - cept for my son who did battle with her - and with the GC - and with the principal - oops....... he won - she had to stop this type of approach/grading as it was deemed unfair to all the students involved - so she ended up with 8 of the original 12 - 4 choose not to put up with her LOL</p>
<p>Large classes for Chem and Bio are normal...I attended a small private U a few decades back and had very large science classes. My DD is at a public U and discovered her bio class is 300...she is taking it in stride. Her other classes--calculus, Spanish, English, are all around 30. Not much you can do about their experience--but that is part of their experience of being launched and becoming adults. Don't fret too much as your child will be absolutely fine!!</p>