Using a variety of social media tools, students in Peter Frölich’s Intermediate Programming class at John Hopkins University skipped the class final and all got A’s. The plot was made possible by Frölich’s curved-based grading system, in which the highest test score is always given the equivalent of 100 percent. The students reasoned that if the highest grade was a zero (which everyone would receive), everyone would have to get an A. So they contacted one another through social media outlets to encourage the boycott and used Google Drive’s spreadsheet program to track how many people had bought into the scheme. Believe it or not, it worked. “The students learned that by coming together, they can achieve something that individually they never could have done,” Frölich said. “At a school that is known (perhaps unjustly) for competitiveness, I didn’t expect that reaching such an agreement was possible.” The professor did, however, say he’s since changed his grading scheme. (InsideHigherEd.com, 2/12/13)
Paul Asay has covered religion for The Washington Post, Christianity Today, Beliefnet.com and The (Colorado Springs) Gazette. He writes about culture for Plugged In and wrote the Batman book God on the Streets of Gotham (Tyndale). He lives in Colorado Springs with wife, Wendy, and two children. Follow him on Twitter.