IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/jfr/ijhe11/v11y2022i5p70.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Changing Bimodal Grade Distributions – A Missed Opportunity?

Author

Listed:
  • Karamjeet K. Singh
  • Tara Allohverdi
  • Steffen Graether

Abstract

Bimodal grade distributions indicate a gap in learning, where the highest quartile of students is skilful in the subject matter, but the lowest quartile is not retaining course material that demonstrates a good level of understanding. Students in the lower quartile do not necessarily have the same challenges as remedial students (i.e., those that do not meet the minimum course requirement) and should therefore be directed differently. We suggest that it is important to consider which elements of the course can be modified to reduce or eliminate bimodality. We provide here an approach to detect bimodality, explore the causes, and provide potential solutions that could be applied to any course. Our case study is on a third-year biochemistry course where several semesters showed a bimodal grade distribution. While student composition and timing of the course may have contributed to this result, underlying causes that can be controlled by the instructor include the lack of student engagement and academic motivation. Increasing the opportunities to earn marks and receive feedback, adding online components using social media, implementing seminars, and training teaching assistants to lead seminars can help reduce this problem.

Suggested Citation

  • Karamjeet K. Singh & Tara Allohverdi & Steffen Graether, 2022. "Changing Bimodal Grade Distributions – A Missed Opportunity?," International Journal of Higher Education, Sciedu Press, vol. 11(5), pages 1-70, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:jfr:ijhe11:v:11:y:2022:i:5:p:70
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.sciedupress.com/journal/index.php/ijhe/article/download/21606/13940
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.sciedupress.com/journal/index.php/ijhe/article/view/21606
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. P. M. Hartigan, 1985. "Computation of the Dip Statistic to Test for Unimodality," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 34(3), pages 320-325, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mariani, Fabio & Pérez-Barahona, Agustín & Raffin, Natacha, 2010. "Life expectancy and the environment," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 798-815, April.
    2. Deversi, Marvin & Ispano, Alessandro & Schwardmann, Peter, 2021. "Spin doctors: An experiment on vague disclosure," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    3. Graham Elliott & Nikolay Kudrin & Kaspar Wüthrich, 2022. "Detecting p‐Hacking," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 90(2), pages 887-906, March.
    4. Utz Weitzel & Michael Kirchler, 2022. "The Banker's Oath And Financial Advice," Working Papers 2022-13, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    5. Suren Basov & Svetlana Danilkina & David Prentice, 2020. "When Does Variety Increase with Quality?," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 56(3), pages 463-487, May.
    6. Beth Fairfield & Ettore Ambrosini & Nicola Mammarella & Maria Montefinese, 2017. "Affective Norms for Italian Words in Older Adults: Age Differences in Ratings of Valence, Arousal and Dominance," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(1), pages 1-22, January.
    7. Donald R Cantrell & Jianhua Cang & John B Troy & Xiaorong Liu, 2010. "Non-Centered Spike-Triggered Covariance Analysis Reveals Neurotrophin-3 as a Developmental Regulator of Receptive Field Properties of ON-OFF Retinal Ganglion Cells," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(10), pages 1-16, October.
    8. Weitzel, Utz & Kirchler, Michael, 2023. "The Banker’s oath and financial advice," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    9. Cheng, Ming-Yen & Hall, Peter, 1998. "On mode testing and empirical approximations to distributions," Statistics & Probability Letters, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 245-254, August.
    10. Jose Ameijeiras-Alonso & Rosa M. Crujeiras & Alberto Rodríguez-Casal, 2019. "Mode testing, critical bandwidth and excess mass," TEST: An Official Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, Springer;Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa, vol. 28(3), pages 900-919, September.
    11. Feng Zhu, 2005. "A nonparametric analysis of the shape dynamics of the US personal income distribution: 1962-2000," BIS Working Papers 184, Bank for International Settlements.
    12. James Flamino & Alessandro Galeazzi & Stuart Feldman & Michael W. Macy & Brendan Cross & Zhenkun Zhou & Matteo Serafino & Alexandre Bovet & Hernán A. Makse & Boleslaw K. Szymanski, 2023. "Political polarization of news media and influencers on Twitter in the 2016 and 2020 US presidential elections," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 7(6), pages 904-916, June.
    13. Shehadeh, Karmel S. & Cohn, Amy E.M. & Jiang, Ruiwei, 2020. "A distributionally robust optimization approach for outpatient colonoscopy scheduling," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 283(2), pages 549-561.
    14. Jozef Barunik & Jiri Kukacka, 2015. "Realizing stock market crashes: stochastic cusp catastrophe model of returns under time-varying volatility," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(6), pages 959-973, June.
    15. Jamie Cross & Lennart Hoogerheide & Paul Labonne & Herman K. van Dijk, 2023. "Bayesian Mode Inference for Discrete Distributions in Economics and Finance," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 23-038/III, Tinbergen Institute.
    16. Geissler, Dominik & Beiderbeck, Daniel & Schmidt, Sascha L. & Schreyer, Dominik, 2024. "Emerging technologies and shifting consumer motives: Projecting the future of the top-tier sports media product," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    17. Mikael Juselius & Nikola Tarashev, 2022. "When uncertainty decouples expected and unexpected losses," BIS Working Papers 995, Bank for International Settlements.
    18. Cars Hommes & Kostas Mavromatis & Tolga Ozden & Mei Zhu, 2019. "Behavioral learning equilibria in the New Keynesian model," DNB Working Papers 654, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    19. Gregory Rozál & J. Hartigan, 1994. "The MAP test for multimodality," Journal of Classification, Springer;The Classification Society, vol. 11(1), pages 5-36, March.
    20. Aiyesha Dey, 2008. "Corporate Governance and Agency Conflicts," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(5), pages 1143-1181, December.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • R00 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General - - - General
    • Z0 - Other Special Topics - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:jfr:ijhe11:v:11:y:2022:i:5:p:70. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sciedu Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cepflch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.