Hi there,

Does anybody know what McMaster's policy is regarding marking criteria? I want to understand how my assignment is marked but the TAs are refusing to show us the criteria for how they evaluated the assignment. Is there anything that states they must show us how they were evaluating us??

Thank you!

Nope. They don't even have to release all of your marks to you. Try going to office hours?

i'm gonna go with; you're in immuno

yeah, but sometimes they're nice and give you everything; just get to know your TA and i know they hate it and everything but a little sucking up never hurts lmaoo

what class is this for? most of the time they are really good about telling you what to watch out for just not always what the weight is for each item.

Along the same lines... does anyone know why final exam marks aren't released? Seems strange.

wow, if this is actually for immuno, the course just gets more and more retarded yearly. last year the assignments were either a 0 or a 5 and they gave us the opportunity to correct our mistakes and have them remarked for the 1st assignment.

the ta's were always open to discussion on how to improve though.

the final for that course was brutal - so unfortunately you would have to get used to their ridiculous marking schemes and try your absolute hardest to do what they want you to... how retarded..

They don't have to show you the grading scheme beforehand...I've actually been told outright that that would "defeat the purpose of the assignment"....which I think is total BS. If your entire assignment is based on whether or not I correctly guessed what 5 random points they wanted me to discuss in my 700word summary, AND whether or not I knew ahead of time to completely ignore the instructions they gave us before the assignment, then it's completely worthless anyways.

Afterwards, though, they should be able to tell you where/why you lost marks. I had another prof tell us that he couldn't even give us our homework assignments back, because he needed to keep the documentation to support the grades we got :S

The issue really comes down to the type of assignment. If it is an essay sometimes there is not a marking rubric. If it is short answer often there is. Also remember that many profs do not want answers posted so they don't have to change every assignment every year.

I understand the TA's perspective, that still doesn't make it acceptable.