Extra credit is unfair to students
The old joke goes like this:
Q: Why did the undergraduate cross the road?
A: Extra credit!
I’ve known scores of students who would work their butts off for five extra points when they wouldn’t work nearly as hard for a normal 100-point assignment. It’s disheartening to witness such irrational behavior. However, this isn’t why I don’t offer extra credit.
I don’t offer extra credit because it’s inherently unfair.
I treat my students professionally. I respect their time and I expect the same courtesy from my students. When professors decide on an extra credit assignment in the middle of the course, this looks to me like poor planning. Even if the possibility or certainty of extra credit is placed in the syllabus at the start of the semester, that doesn’t make it fair to everybody in the course.
Just because all students are given equal opportunities, doesn’t mean that they are being treated fairly.
When students sign up for our classes, they are expected to attend class at the scheduled times, and complete the studying and assignments outside of class, though not at any particular time because they have other courses, jobs, and private lives. The syllabus says what is in the class and why the class exists. If a professor adds additional stuff to the course, at some point through the semester, then this provides a disadvantage to the student who has more commitments outside of regular class hours.
Maybe there are some ways that extra credit is used that is fair to everyone. I can’t think of any. If there is a regular part of the course that is used for points above 100%, that’s not extra credit, that’s just spreadsheet voodoo. Extra credit, as I consider it, is when students are given a chance to earn extra points by doing some stuff that is outside the typical curriculum of a course, or is scheduled outside class hours, or is connected to performance on an assignment in the middle of the semester.
Let me address different reasons that people might use extra credit, and why I view these reasons as unjustified:
1. Extra credit is a carrot to get students to do favors for their institutions. The most common one that I’ve seen that students get extra credit for attending seminars by visiting speakers. This drummed-up audience prevents anybody from being embarrassed by paltry attendance. This practice is manipulative, and doesn’t show adequate respect for time of students. Moreover, because not everyone may have equal availability to earn such extra credit, this gives some students an opportunity to earn more points than other students. (Assigning written assignments to students who cannot attend an extracurricular event to earn extra credit is punitive.) If students need to attend seminars for their courses, then this needs to be built into the course and scheduled during class hours, or placed in the course description. It’s not right to reward the students who have enough spare time to attend events while others might be working or have other commitments.
2. Extra credit is an opportunity for students to earn additional points if their exam scores were particularly low. I have seen some professors give students extra work, including an opportunity to revise exams, in order to improve their scores on exams. If a professor doesn’t like the mean score on an exam, the proper course of action is to give everybody a boost. If most students in the class performed below expectations, then offering extra credit to everybody is relatively punitive to the students who did perform higher than their peers. Some students did better than other students on an exam for a reason. To respect all of your students, honor those reasons and look to the future when students tank an exam. (For edu-folks: exams are summative assessments. Keep it that way.) The only way students should have a chance to revise an assignment or exam for additional credit is if it was structured that way in the first place and the students were aware of this policy at the outset. Anything else is unfair to those who did their best at the start.
3. Extra credit is assigned to motivate students. If students aren’t working hard enough, and extra credit is the incentive, then I humbly suggest that there is a suite of pedagogical approaches that will increase student effort and engagement that don’t involve the inherent unfairness in extra credit. Extra credit encourages students to obsess over their scores rather than focus on the content of the course. If you have students jump through hoops to get a higher grade than they think they would otherwise be getting, then how does this help them learn?
4. Extra credit keeps students happier. I’m doubt this is true. Does extra credit help professors out by boosting their evaluations? I’m not aware of any evidence along these lines and my anecdotal observations suggest that some students are aware that extra credit is manipulative. Even if extra credit would pacify some otherwise unhappy students, priority should be placed on fairness.
5. Extra credit is assigned because the professor overestimated or underestimated the difficulty of the curriculum. If students are underperforming because the course was harder than the professor intended, then the scale should be shifted. If students are overperforming and extra credit is required to give students enough material for learning, then other curricular changes within the bounds of the course should be implemented.
6. Extra credit is assigned to engage students with the community. If student involvement in the community through some extracurricular activity (such as a beach cleanup, or volunteer tutoring at a local elementary school) is desired by the professor, then it should be built into the required curriculum. It’s acceptable to integrate service learning in all kinds of courses. If you don’t want to require it, but want to provide the option, then you could make this activity one of a variety of things that are worth equal required points, or you could offer the possibility without giving student an academic reward for extracurricular activities.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m all in favor of an instructor calling an audible during the semester to change up all kinds of things. I often have a large amount of points to ‘homework and in class assignments.’ I often don’t know exactly what those are going to be when I start the semester. However, I’m not going to give extra points on top of those assignments. It’s simply unfair and doesn’t respect my students’ time.
When students come see me about extra credit during the semester, I explain that I don’t give extra credit because it’s unfair to students who have their time budgeted to other activities and to those who were able to perform well consistently throughout the semester. Nobody’s argued with any substance, other than, “Are you sure?” Yes, I am sure.
One strategic reason to be clear about not offering extra credit is that some students accustomed to the practice might not try hard to learn the course material in the first part of the course, hoping that extra credit might bail them out in the end. By not having extra credit, and making sure this is well known, then you might get a higher investment throughout the whole semester.
The professor-student relationship is structured by the power that the professor has over the student. By coming up with (seemingly) capricious ways to increase student scores throughout the semester, this looks like an abuse of that power to make things easier for the professor and (seemingly) harder on the students who don’t need the extra credit.
If you are providing a carrot to some students, then those who aren’t able to eat or fully digest the carrot will then see extra credit as a stick. When I start my classes each semester, I tell my students: “The world isn’t fair. But in this classroom, I place a high value on endeavoring to be as fair as possible.” If I offered extra credit, then I’d be undermining that notion.
Many of my students work long hours outside of school, in addition to a full course load, and they also have families to care for. I’m not going to ask anything more of them other than what was in the course catalog and what I made very clear in the course syllabus. Even if I taught a bunch of students on a residential campus, who did not have major family obligations including a paying job, I still feel that extra credit would be an unprofessional manipulation that wouldn’t fairly treat those who did their best throughout the course.