As I grade my final exams, I sometimes find calculus 1 students who will pass with a C but lack critical skills like the chain rule. This can be for a number of reasons, for instance:
- They understand the concepts but cannot do the computations.
- They are able to memorize processes well, but they missed this process.
- They understand geometric intuition but their algebra skills are lacking.
When I pass these students with a C, I am doing them a disservice -- without the ability to do the chain rule, or the product rule, or whatever other basic skill they need, this student will definitely be doomed in the next calculus course. However, I don't want to increase the weight on these "easy" basic concepts, since they are critical but they are also just a small part of the material we cover.
How can we structure the grading system in our courses so that students who pass the course definitely have the basic skills required for the next course, without the bad plan of massively increasing the grading weight on these concepts?