In an attempt to reduce grade inflation and provide a relative context regarding the coursework of different majors, UNC will finally implement a contextual grading system.
This system will be far more detailed than the current system in terms of the information recorded on transcripts. In addition to the course name and the student’s grade, class size, the median grade for each class and the percentile range of students’ grades will start being recorded as well.
Due to the significance of this change, it is important for the University to ensure all students understand what exactly contextualized grading entails.
This can be achieved with some type of brief explanatory material informing students of the new information that will appear on their transcripts and why this information is significant. It is of utmost importance that students be kept in the loop because contextualized grading will impact them in numerous ways — most notably factoring into what classes students decide to take.
Incoming freshmen and transfer students will likely be coming from schools that use the more standard, basic transcript. Therefore, a further explanatory measure that should be implemented is an informational session notifying incoming students of this system and how it varies from the previous one. This could easily be included in these students’ orientations.
Contextualized grading will go into effect next fall and will affect all students, not just incoming freshmen. For current students, grades reported before fall 2014 will not be contextualized.
It is important UNC heavily publicizes any decision that affects students because students need to be prepared to actively account for these changes.
