The Pedagogical Utility of Half Credit

I structure most of my courses around what I call reading responses — short writing assignments on journal articles that students complete outside of class. These assignments fulfill several objectives:

• Students read, think, and write outside of class, making them better able to actively engage with ideas during class. As a consequence, I don’t have to lecture as much and the dynamic of the class moves away from me delivering facts while students try to memorize them.
• Students are able to exercise a limited degree of choice, which increases their sense of ownership and investment in the course (I typically have about fifteen assignments but students are only expected to complete ten of them).
• Students have repeated opportunities to practice constructing written arguments that contain evidence from “experts in the field.”

It’s easy for students to earn full credit on these assignments. They must be:

• turned in on time (before class, via course management software),
• present an argument that addresses the question,
• contain specific, properly cited references to the assigned reading.

I do not allow rewrites on these assignments because the requirements are very simple and the responses are the basis for class discussion on the days that they are due. Invariably there are some students who cease including cited references to readings in their responses about three-quarters of the way through the semester. I suppose the practice of completing these assignments becomes so routine to them that they get lazy about how they construct their arguments. In these cases the students automatically earn half credit. Receiving a score of 50 percent on an assignment usually wakes them up and gets them back on track fairly quickly.