Page 38 - EVALUATION ENGLISH

Evaluation Reforms

5. Credit System and Grading

5.1 Introduction
The UGC had issued guidelines to all Universities in 2015 for implementation of the choice
based credit system with a view to offer students choice of courses within a programme with
a flexibility to complete the programme by earning credits at a pace decided by the students
themselves. The system allowed students to choose inter-disciplinary, intra-disciplinary courses
according to their learning needs, interest and aptitude. It was considered as a cafeteria approach
and was expected to provide mobility to students.

Current credit system practiced in institutions needs comprehensive reforms as they offer very
little flexibility, choice and are less learner-centric. Degrees offered today are more self-contained
focusing on a specialization area and depend a lot on knowledge available with the faculty from
the department only. Though the most requisite credit system does exist, wherein students are
given a wide choice and flexibility, these exist as small islands in the vast ocean of thousands of
educational institutes in India. In such institutions, the curriculum is frequently designed which
is learner centric and offering a wide specialization area for students to pick and choose courses
from.

The institutions shall make attempts wherein the design of the credit system and the teaching
and evaluation modes shall be the responsibility of individual course teachers. The students
should have the freedom to opt for courses from other specializations and not just from their
core specialization. For this there has to be stronger collaborations between departments of the
University and outside.

5.2 Grading system
Most institutions follow the absolute grading system which is a simple procedure wherein
the marks obtained by students correspond to a specific grade and grade point. It reflects the
individual performance in a particular subject without any reference to the group/class. The
absolute grading system has limitations and may be susceptible to some inconsistencies.

The relative grading system on the other hand provides relative performance of a student
to a group/class wherein the student is ranked in a group/class on basis of relative level of
achievement. In this system decisions are made in advance by the faculty members as to what
proportion of students would be awarded a particular grade on the basis of their relative
performance and which is done by assigning grades on basis of a normal curve. This facilitates
comparative performance and eliminates negative effect of pass or fail.

Relative grading system may be used if the number of students registered for the course is at
least 30. For a class of smaller size, an absolute grading scheme may be used. The statistical
method may be used with adjustments to calculate the mean (M), median (Md) and standard
deviation (SD) of the total marks (TM) obtained by the students registered for the course. If
the mean and median coincide, the mean may be used for further computations, otherwise the
median may be used. If suppose the mean is used, then the letter grades may be awarded based
on the ranges specified in table below:

Ranges for Relative Grading
Letter Grade Range
A TM ≥ M+1.75 SD
A- M+1.25 SD ≤ TM < M+1.75 SD
B M+0.75 SD ≤ TM < M+1.25 SD

36 Evaluation Reforms in Higher Educational Institutions