At the end of every quarter-long course at UC Santa Barbara, thousands of students await the single letter grade that many see as the sum of their hard work and mastery of the material. However, the process leading to those grades is far more complex. Factors such as how long an instructor has been teaching and faculty responsibilities often correlate with grading patterns. Other factors – such as grading styles and instructional methods – also affect the grade distribution among courses.

81% of UCSB professors have taught for at least three of the past five years. It is worth exploring how their teaching styles evolve over time, how they assess their own effectiveness and how their approaches impact students.

When asked about how long it takes for a professor to solidify their instruction style, economics lecturer Coby Harmon, who is in his 37th year of teaching, talked about his experience over time with student grading.

“In your first few years, you’re always trying to figure things out, but everything kind of averages out over time,” he says. “And you see consistently where grades and students are and what the proper measure is [with] experience. You can kind of tell when the average GPA of the class is too high, and you can kind of tell when it’s too low. And you can course correct.”

Harmon elaborated, explaining that GPA may not be the best indicator of student comprehension.

“If the new teaching style just doesn’t increase the learning but increases GPA, that’s not such a good thing,” he continued.

Furthermore, he explained that there are better measures of student learning.

“A better metric is like, seeing the amount of students that pass and don’t pass over the years, and see if maybe that increases over time.”

In addition to adapting according to experience, professors also discuss grading strategies amongst themselves. Jonathan Balkind, an assistant professor in the computer science department who joined in 2020, discussed how diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) faculty members talk to each other to improve their teaching methods.

“We’re [DEI discussions members] discussing a book called ‘Grading for Growth: A Guide to Alternative Grading.’ And this is actually specifically talking about applying other mechanisms for doing grading in your courses so that you can recognize contributions from students that aren’t just like, you know, setting a point-based rubric.”

Eric Beltz, a lecturer in the Art Department with over 30 years of teaching experience at UCSB, incorporates both faculty-to-faculty conversation and adaptation according to experience.

“One of my first classes that I taught for the first time in 2005 I still teach now. The only difference in how I teach what I teach is that I teach more. I have tried to learn how to pack more into my classes.”

Beltz also writes about the change in students over the years.

“Students change over time and I change over time. One of the biggest challenges as a teacher is to stay connected to your students while they get younger and you get older. If you listen to them, honor their experiences and adapt to your observations, I don’t think you’ll have a hard time with this,” Beltz wrote.

This begs the question of whether the variable in professors’ teaching is not the content that they teach, but instead to whom they teach.

“My average GPA, you know, it can vary over the years. COVID was the only time we kind of experienced anomalies in our average GPAs … My classes are pretty consistent. The GPAs are fairly consistent,” Harmon said.

Between 2020 and 2023, approximately 56% of courses showed a decrease in GPA. Of the 692 GPA trends identified, 303 exhibited an upward trajectory. Among 11 departments — chosen based on popular majors and the professors interviewed for this article — only art and psychology saw an overall increase in average GPA, while computer science showed an even split between rising and falling trends.

While GPA trends provide one perspective on grading patterns, they may not fully capture teaching effectiveness or a student’s mastery of course material. Harmon raised concerns about using GPA as a singular metric.

“Does the GPA represent the actual knowledge of the individual student?” he said. “I think as instructors, our focus is on [the] knowledge.”

In line with professors who prioritize learning over GPA, those who maintain consistent grade distributions or use nontraditional grading scales present additional reasons why tracking GPA over time may not accurately reflect teaching effectiveness. For instance, a professor who consistently assigns grades so that 20% of students receive As, 30% receive Bs and so on, regardless of overall class performance, will have the same grade distribution every quarter. Thus, there will be little change in average GPA in this professor’s course over time, even if their teaching methods have improved.

Balkind, reflecting on grading practices within the computer science department, also suggests that GPA in a given course may not be closely tied to a professor’s experience or teaching effectiveness. Rather than a traditional grading scale, Balkind considers his grading to be a more iterative approach to learning — one where students are given the opportunity to revise and improve their work before submitting by the deadline.

“The professor wouldn’t make a significant difference in terms of the grades that students are assigned because we’re not trying to necessarily follow a very traditional mechanism. Ideally, we’re evaluating at the deadline what they’ve learned by that point, as opposed to just saying, ‘You get one go, submit the thing.’”
This approach, he adds, enables instructors to recognize deeper levels of student engagement throughout the course. He also emphasizes that his grading system isn’t limited to his own classes.

“There are many faculty in CS who take this kind of approach to teaching and grading. Even if I were to teach another course, I’d likely put in the effort to build a similar system,” Balkind said.

In addition to GPA, pass/fail rates can offer another way to evaluate the impact of a professor’s teaching experience. They help reveal deeper trends, such as how differing faculty responsibilities may influence teaching outcomes that GPA averages alone may not capture.

A majority of departments saw an increase in pass rates over time — far more compared to average GPA trends. For example, the Department of Statistics and Applied Probability exhibited a steady upward trend in pass rates despite mixed GPA trends. The main outlier to this trend is the computer science department, which showed a consistent downward trend in pass rates over time.

Overall, professors want to emphasize students’ learning and the knowledge they gain, Harmon said. GPA and pass rates are just two measures of that.

“We don’t just give grades,” Harmon stated. “GPA should be a byproduct of learning. It should be a reflection of your knowledge, what you’ve gained on some sort of scale. And, you know, all [professors] kind of evaluate that slightly differently but that’s what it should be.”