The 54% Pass Rate: Redesigning a Compulsory Communication Course
A newly appointed assistant professor teaches a compulsory 12-week “Communication Skills” course to 120 students in two sections at a rural degree college. The end-semester examination is 80% summative multiple-choice and 20% internal assessment. Last year’s pass rate was 54%. About 38% of students miss Saturday classes because they work in family shops or attend coaching; the college rule requires 75% attendance for examination eligibility. Students come from Urdu- and English-medium schools, and several report that they can follow lectures but cannot write answers fluently in English. The LMS is mobile-only and bandwidth is unreliable. The head of department suggests solving the problem by “making the final paper easier and lowering the internal pass mark.” The professor has 12 weeks, no teaching assistant, and one weekly one-hour tutorial slot. She must propose a defensible plan that respects the 75% rule and improves learning without diluting standards.
1. Design a 12-week assessment and attendance plan that respects the 75% rule and fits the constraints.
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The 75% rule should remain intact; the problem is not the rule but the absence of a realistic support structure. In week 1, run a short diagnostic and publish a clear attendance policy with dates, a documented absence procedure, and an improvement plan for students who fall below 75%. Negotiate with the head to move one Saturday session to a weekday evening or to provide one repeat tutorial in the existing tutorial slot; do not create an unauthorised waiver. Use the one-hour tutorial for small-group oral practice and doubt clearing.
For assessment, keep the 20% internal component but make it formative and transparent: four short low-stakes quizzes (5% total), one pair oral presentation with a rubric (7.5%), and one structured writing portfolio with feedback and revision (7.5%). Deliver materials as downloadable files for mobile use and provide a one-page bilingual glossary. The summative examination should remain aligned to the same learning outcomes; improvement should come from practice, feedback, and language scaffolding, not from easier questions.
2. Evaluate the head of department’s proposal to make the final paper easier and lower the internal pass mark.
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The proposal treats a symptom as a cause. A 54% pass rate may reflect language barriers, attendance constraints, misalignment between teaching and assessment, or poor item quality; making the paper easier does not address any of these. Lowering the internal pass mark also weakens the meaning of the internal component and may create a mismatch with the summative standard. If the final paper is made easier while the learning outcomes remain unchanged, the result is grade inflation, not improved competence.
A defensible alternative is to conduct item analysis, check whether the paper tests the intended outcomes, and provide targeted support. If the pass mark is genuinely mis-set, that should be justified through standard-setting evidence, not adjusted ad hoc to produce a better pass rate. The head’s proposal may be well intentioned, but it shifts the burden onto the credibility of the qualification.
3. How should the professor handle the language diversity in teaching and assessment without compromising fairness?
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The professor should separate communication competence from unnecessary English proficiency demands. In formative work, use bilingual glossaries, structured answer frames, worked examples, and short oral explanations so students can demonstrate understanding while building academic English. In summative assessment, use clear command words, avoid unnecessarily complex sentence structures, and specify whether spelling and grammar are being assessed. If oral communication is a learning outcome, assess it with a rubric; if written disciplinary understanding is the outcome, do not let incidental language complexity dominate the mark.
Fairness does not mean identical treatment; it means comparable opportunity to demonstrate the same outcomes. Provide the same glossary and format to all students, publish rubrics in advance, and moderate samples of work across sections. Extra language support should be available to everyone who needs it, not used to lower the criterion.