Would students graduate faster, if teaching was better?
Hannula, the headmaster of TUT, says that the more university improves its teaching the more probable is that students enter working life before graduating. [...]
The amount of funding universities receive from the ministry of education partially depends on how many people graduate from there.
Purpose
Due to the shortcomings of the Kaiku system, this web app was created.
For example, if a course has a grade of 3, what does that mean? That's pretty good, right? In reality, it is not. The overwhelming majority (89.8% to be exact) of courses have an average Kaiku rating between 3 and 4.5. With this app we now have the ability to compare courses and with the new ranking system we have a full scale again.
Grading
As long as there is sufficient data, this calculator grades every course the same way they are graded in Finnish matriculation exams (YO-exams). Any deviations are due to rounding. From best to worst, the grades are:
| Grade | Full name of grade | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| L | Laudatur | Best 5% |
| E | Eximia Cum Laude Approbatur | Following 15% |
| M | Magna Cum Laude Approbatur | Following 20% |
| C | Cum Laude Approbatur | Following 24% |
| B | Lubenter Approbatur | Following 20% |
| A | Approbatur | Following 11% |
| I | Improbatur | The rest |
For more information concerning this type of grading, see the related article on Wikipedia.
The "work" grade represents the effort/credits ratio. If everyone on the course though that it was fine, the grade is 0. If everyone chose option "too much work per credit" the grade is +100%. If 20% of participants judged the course to be to intensive and 15% too effortless, the resulting grade is the sum of these, in this case +5%.
Methodology
Courses excluded:
- All courses taught in English that have a Finnish equivalent
- All courses with less than 5 Kaiku votes because data is too unreliable
- All KIE (language center) courses because practically all of them are good
- All PLA (Pori) courses because I don't like Pori
Only the ones with 21 or more votes are graded. This is because during empirical testing it was concluded that if the course has at least 21 votes, the grade is at least somewhat reliable. The ones with fewer votes were still left in as a curiosity and for you to see what I'm talking about. Absolute grades from the Kaiku system were also left in for reference. If the same course is held in Finnish and in English the English entries are attempted to be removed. This is because the English variants seem to somehow have much better scores than the equivalent Finnish courses.
Faculty-O-Meter
Faculty-O-Meter lets you compare faculties with each other. Course ratings with same course code prefix were combined for use in the Faculty-O-Meter. All courses with 21 or more participants are included in Faculty-O-Meter.
Official badges available now
