Are Good Marks Really Needed for Success in the Age of Artificial Intelligence? How to Measure Relationship of Marks with Skills and Success?

Abstract:

Marks or grades have long been considered the standard measure of academic success. However, many experts argue that this is a limited view and that marks don't define the success of a student .While grades may be an important indicator of academic achievement, they do not necessarily reflect a student's ability to apply their knowledge, think critically, or adapt to new situations. Explore why skillsets and mindsets are essential components of success and why students should focus on developing these aspects of their learning.

Keywords:

Marks, Grades, Career, Education, Success, Discover, Apply, Succeed, Percentage, Mindsets, Knowledge

Learning Outcomes 

 After undergoing this article you will be able to understand the following

1. What's percentage in examination system?

2. What is a Grade in examination system?

3. What's Skillset in education?

4. What's mindset on education?

5. What's the importance of percentage or grade in education system?

6. Why Skillset is preferred over mindset in education?

7. What Purpose Do Grades Serve in education?

8. How to convert equivalents of percentage of marks into grade and vice versa?

9. How expectations of a student's are set through a grading policy?

10. How to design assignments and exams that promote the course objectives considering percentage or grade?

11. How to determine establishing standards and criteria for examination?

12. How to calibrate the application of a grading standard for consistency and fairness in examination system?

13. What's the factors making decisions about effort and improvement in examination system?

14. How to decide about which comments would be the most useful in guiding each student’s learning?

15. When to return assignments and helping students understand their grades?

16. What's the advantages of grading in examination system?

17. What's the disadvantages of grading system in education?

18. Conclusions

19. FAQs 

1. What's percentage in examination system?

The Percentage-Based System uses a 100% scale to grade student performance. Each assignment is assigned 100%; individual assignments are grouped into categories, which are then assigned a different percentage or weight to calculate the final course grade. The sum of all the categories is 100.

2. What is a Grade in examination system?

Grading in education is the process of applying standardized measurements for varying levels of achievements in a course. Grades can be assigned as letters, as a range, as a percentage, or as a number out of a possible total. In some countries, grades are averaged to create a grade point average

3. What's Skillset in education?

Skillset refers to a student's abilities, knowledge, and competencies. These can be developed through a combination of formal education, practical experience, and personal development. In today's fast-paced and ever-changing world, having a diverse and adaptable skillset is more important than ever. Students who possess a range of skills, such as communication, problem-solving, leadership, and collaboration, are better equipped to navigate challenges and seize opportunities in both their personal and professional lives.

The Skillset include 

empathy, 

time management, 

conflict resolution, 

adaptability, 

engagement, 

enthusiasm, 

multitasking, 

innovation, 

a passion for self-improvement and 

lifelong learning, and 

just plain old thinking on your feet. 

There are classes you can take for many of these skills.

4. What's mindset on education?

The Mindsets refers to a student's attitudes, beliefs, and values. It encompasses how one approaches challenges, setbacks, and opportunities. Developing a growth mindset, which is characterized by a willingness to learn from mistakes, embrace challenges, and persist through obstacles, is crucial for success. Students with a growth mindset are more resilient, adaptable, and open to new experiences, which enables them to thrive in a rapidly changing world.

Students with a fixed mindset may be more likely to give up when faced with challenges or to shy away from new experiences, which can hinder their personal and professional growth.

5. What's the importance of percentage or grade?

The grading system helps in measuring student progress by providing a clear and objective evaluation of a student's academic performance. It allows teachers and educational institutions to assess the strengths and weaknesses of individual students, and identify areas where improvement is needed.

You can also name your score in percentage. A grade refers to a percentage or a letter, and can be either for a particular assignment or for the class as a whole. For example, you could get a 92 on last night's homework.

In most of the cases the CGPA system is better than percentage system. CGPA is based on the percentile score not the percentage which is a plus point. But sometimes it depends on institutes that what conversion formula do they follow. What is the meaning of the scale in a CGPA system?

6. Why Skillset is preferred over mindset in education?

A fixed mindset settles into what is working and doesn't change. A growth mindset can see opportunities to improve. A skillset, on the other hand, is your range of ability. What training and skills have you mastered to be able to execute the work you need to do well in your business?

7. What Purpose Do Grades Serve in education?

Grades are essentially a way to measure or quantify learning and intellectual progress using objective criteria. They can serve many purposes:

As an evaluation of student work, effort, understanding of course content, skill development, and progress;

As a source of self-motivation to students for continued learning and improvement;

As a means of communicating feedback to students on their performance;

As a means of communicating to students, parents, graduate schools, professional schools, and future employers about a student’s potential in college and predictor for further success;

As a means of organizing a lesson, a unit, or a semester in that grades mark transitions in a course and bring closure to it (i.e. a summative assessment).

As feedback, grades can also inform:

Students as to their own learning, clarifying for them what they understand, what they don’t understand, and where they can improve.

Instructors on their students’ learning to help inform future teaching decisions.

Grades vs. Learning Assessment

Grades on assignments, tests, and activities communicate feedback to students.  How do grades differ from assessment?  Essentially grades are symbols of relative achievement among students in a class section and reflect teacher’s pedagogy and their class’s unique array of student abilities. Whereas, the fundamental purpose of assessment is to determine how effective a course’s assignments and tests are in meeting specific learning goals to understand and improve student learning, the quality of knowledge, skills, attitudes, and beliefs that students have acquired, most often as the result of learning in their courses. While assessment is at certain levels a process that involves goal setting and evidence gathering (at an institution-, college-, or department-level), when viewed in a separate context it can also mean actions undertaken by teachers and students to document student learning in a given course.

8. How to convert equivalents of percentage of marks into grade and vice versa?

Each grade obtained by a student is assigned a grade point value, normally in the range of 0 to 4 or 0 to 10, depending on the academic institution's grading system. For example, an "A" grade may be allocated a grade point of 4, but a "B" grade would be assigned a grade point of 3. The CGPA is then computed by adding the grade scores for all courses taken and dividing the total number of courses taken.

Many educational systems across the world, notably at higher education institutions, employ CGPA. It is used to evaluate a student's academic achievement and is frequently used to determine academic standing, scholarships, and other types of recognition.

How to Compute CGPA from GPs?

Let's examine how to compute CGPA from subject grade points (GPs). First, add the GPs of 5 subjects, omitting the extra courses, then divide the total by 5 to get your CGPA. For instance, if you received a 7 in Math, a 10 in English, a 9 in French, a 10 in Science, and an 8 in Social Studies, your CGPA would be (7+10+9+10+8)/5 = 8.8.

Grading system

The grading system used to assign grade points differs per institution.

Most universities in India use a 10-point grading system. The followings are the grade points and their related grades:

Sr.No.	Grade Point	Grade
1	10	A+
2	9	A
3	8	B+
4	7	B
5	6	C+
6	5	C
7	0	F (Fail)

9. How expectations of a student's are set through a grading policy?

To ensure that grades are fair and to motivate students to improve their performance, instructors should think about the alignment of their assignments to the course’s overarching goals and communicate their expectations and grading practices in a transparent manner. Students are generally highly motivated to improve their work when the instructions of an assignment are clear and achievable, when the standards the instructor uses for grading are clear and fair, and when the feedback is timely and well aligned with the assignment in question. This kind of transparency will also enable students to understand what skills and content they have learned and what they are still struggling with in the course.

It helps to consider grading as a process. It is not simply a matter of assigning number or letter grades. As a process, grading may involve some or all of these activities:

Setting expectations with students through a grading policy

Designing assignments and exams that promote the course objectives

Establishing standards and criteria

Calibrating the application of a grading standard for consistency and fairness

Making decisions about effort and improvement

Deciding which comments would be the most useful in guiding each student’s learning

Returning assignments and helping students understand their grades

10. How to design assignments and exams that promote the course objectives considering percentage or grade?

Here are some ways to design great assignments are:

1. Establish learning goals so students understand what they will eventually need to know.
2. Base grades on academic evidence, not behavior.
3. Reflect current achievement. ...
4. Use scales with fewer gradations, like A–F rather than 100–0. ...
5. Let students know how they're going to be graded.

Here's how to grade assignments:

1. Correct the paper.
2. Determine the number of total questions.
3. Count the number of questions answered correctly.
4. Take the number of correct answers and divide by the total number of questions.
5. Multiply this number by 100 to turn it into a percentage. 
6. Grade ranges often vary among professors and teachers.

11. How to determine establishing standards and criteria for examination?

Standard-setting studies fall into two categories, item-centered and person-centered. Examples of item-centered methods include the Angoff, Ebel, Nedelsky, Bookmark, and ID Matching methods, while examples of person-centered methods include the Borderline Survey and Contrasting Groups approaches.

12. How to calibrate the application of a grading standard for consistency and fairness?

To maintain fairness and consistency, consider using the following best practices:

• Establish clear grading criteria for assignments and exams. Provide a rubric or answer key that defines performance criteria for assignments or exams. 
• Discuss grading criteria with all graders to align perspectives. Will more than one person grade student work? If so, grade a few samples in common and then compare and discuss grading criteria. Doing so will build greater consistency across graders.
• Grade one question at a time rather than one student at a time. Grade all the answers to a particular question on an exam or assignment at one time. This will help you grade the established criteria consistently and maintain fairness across all students.
• Beware of conflicts of interest. Are there students in your class whom you feel you cannot grade impartially because of some sort of shared history, positive or negative? If so, ask someone else to grade those students’ work.
• Avoid grading when you’re extremely tired. You’re more likely to be irritable and inconsistent when you’re tired, so try to do your grading when you’re energetic and clearheaded.

13. What's the factors making decisions about efforts and improvements in examination system?

The 8 Factors Every Student Should Be Measured On:

• Life Factors. 
• Individual Attributes.
• Learning Styles. 
• Technical Competency. 
• Technical Knowledge. 
• On-Screen Reading Rate and Recall. 
• Typing Speed and Accuracy. 
• LMS (Learning Management System) Competency.

14. How to decide about which comments would be the most useful in guiding each student’s learning?

The process of curriculum development and implementation raises issues like:

• What are the objectives of the program?
• Are these objectives relevant to the needs of the individual and society?
• Can these objectives be achieved?
• What are the methods being used to achieve these objectives?
• Are the methods the best alternatives for achieving these objectives?
• Are there adequate resources for implementing a curriculum?

15. When to return assignments and helping students understand their grades?

It is a point of bringing students into confidence that whatever evaluation is done, they must receive feedback on time.

To justify that the Evaluation of assignments serve the following purposes:

• Individual student progress purposes:
  • Discover what the students have learned (knowledge, skills, attitudes, and adjustment, etc.).
  • Ascertain the student’s status in class.
  • Discover where the child needs help, and the nature of the help needed.
  • Analyze data to determine what is needed to guide each student’s overall growth and development.
• Classroom purposes – Evaluation provides data that enables the teacher to determine the effectiveness of teaching. It helps in answering questions such as:
  • Which of the objectives has been achieved?
  • Are the methods and activities relevant and practicable?
  • Is re-teaching necessary?
• Curriculum materials purposes – Are they relevant, usable, appropriate, and affordable?
• School-wide purposes:
  • Assess the overall effectiveness of the institution.
  • Reveal over or under-emphasis in individual classrooms.
  • Reveal learning areas needing more attention throughout the school.
  • Assist the school administration and staff in planning for institutional improvement.
  • Provide data useful for school-wide instruction and interventions.
• Community – What are the attitudes and inputs of the community to the curriculum and the curriculum development process?

16. What's the advantages of grading system in education?

Let us now look the advantages of grading system in education.

1. Takes the pressure off from the students at certain levels:

In a general grading system as considered above, a student’s real scores and it’s associated marks are not accounted on the official transcript, which denotes that their GPA will not have an effect on either a pass or a fail mark category.

2. Simple Grading Pattern description:

One of the main advantages of this method is that the studious children are clearly discriminated from the average and below-average type of students but this led to the development and mounting up of intense pressure amidst the students.

3. Reduction in student's pressure

The advantages of the grading system are that the development of pressure upon the students in terms of studying has appreciably reduced.

3. Gives the students an obvious idea about their weaknesses and strengths

4. Make classwork easier

5. Leads to a better rendezvous of ideas

17. What's the advantages and disadvantages of grading in education - a comparison?

S.no	Advantages	Disadvantages
1	Takes the pressure off from the students at certain levels	It doesn’t instil a sense of competition
2	Grading Pattern description	Not an accurate representation of the performance and the knowledge gained
3	Gives the students an obvious idea about their weaknesses and strengths	It is not an exact scoring system
4	Make class work easier	Lack of incentives
5	Leads to a better rendezvous of ideas

18. Conclusions

While marks are undoubtedly an important measure of academic achievement, they do not define success. A student's skillset and mindset are equally important factors that contribute to their personal and professional growth. By focusing on developing a diverse and adaptable skillset and cultivating a growth mindset, students can position themselves for success in all aspects of their lives.

19. FAQs

References

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3. DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF UNIVERSITY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM THESIS FALL. 

4. COURSE REGISTRATION AND RESULT PROCESSING SYSTEM IN COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA, NSUKKA

5. ATTENDANCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (CASE STUDY 

6. International Journal of Modern Trends in Engineering and Research

"An Implementation Approach for Advanced Management of Examination Section"  2014, Editor IJMTER