Probably the bane of every instructor at every level of education is when a student pleads for extra credit to boost their grade. It’s an annoying question because it seems like the student is effectively asking for special consideration and wants to get “regular” credit for the course without doing the “regular” work. It’s also extra work for the instructor and if she lets one student do it, then she has to let all students do it.

Some students have a motivation different from boosting a failing grade to a passing one when asking for extra credit. For some students an A- comes with strict consequences at home. And still for some students education is competitive. They have to keep up with the other “smart” kids and that means keeping that GPA up any way possible.

Now, some instructors will take a zero-tolerance stance and decree “there is no extra credit.” Others will pander a little. And others will consider it on a case-by-case basis. But there’s another way to look at extra credit. The sole reason for an extra credit request is to positively alter a grade and here is where the instructor has some leverage. The role of an instructor is to facilitate learning. The role of a student is to learn. Grades and everything else are a mucky-muck by-product of organized mass education — a “need” to quantify the degree of understanding. Grades and grading don’t look like they are going away in the foreseeable future and they can, for now, be considered to be a part of the nature of education. The instructor’s leverage is that she can use this request for extra credit as yet another opportunity to facilitate learning. To quote Eiji Yoshikawa’s character, Musashi, in the namesake book,

Then it dawned on him suddenly. Unconsciously, he had been trying to create a neat, square field like those common in other parts of the Kanto Plain, but this was not what the terrain called for. Here, despite the general flatness, there were slight variations in the lay of the land and the quality of the soil that argued for an irregular shape.
“What a fool I’ve been,” he exclaimed aloud. “I tried to make the water flow where I thought it should and force the dirt to stay where I thought it ought to be. But it didn’t work. How could it? Water’s water, dirt’s dirt. I can’t change their nature. What I’ve got to do is learn to be a servant to the water and a protector of the land.”
In his own way, he had submitted to the attitude of the peasants. On that day he became nature’s manservant. He ceased trying to impose his will on nature and let nature lead the way, while at the same time seeking out possibilities beyond the grasp of other inhabitants of the plain.

So, why not then? Offer that extra credit and make it so that the student learns. Here is how an instructor can go about doing this in a meaningful way:

• Explain the “extra credit” policy at the beginning of the course. Don’t introduce it mid-way or haphazardly at the end. Let students know that it exists, in what capacity, and how they can earn extra credit.
• Forget about grades for a minute and remember about facilitating learning. The student may be motivated by grades and the instructor should use at least that motivation to motivate learning. So give an assignment that does require the student to make an effort and demonstrate proficiency in the topic at the core of the extra credit request.
• Remember that the student is not in control, so no matter how much begging or pleading that is done, the value of extra credit shouldn’t be cheapened. Maintain high standards.
• Don’t worry about grade inflation. Grade inflation is, for example, redefining “average” to a value higher than “C”. If all students learned the material to an “A” level, why shouldn’t all students receive an A? Don’t fall into the trap of relative grading. Relative grading is nonsense. The only person a student should be competing with is herself.
• Remember that students learn at different paces and with different styles. Just because a student didn’t learn the material by the time of the first exam, doesn’t mean that at the end of the course, the student won’t have learned the material. If the student can demonstrate he’s learned the course material to a certain level of proficiency by the end of the course then he should receive a grade appropriate to that level of proficiency (though, the author still cringes at this notion). Let extra credit be used this way — for a student to demonstrate that while they scored a C on exam one, they actually now know that material to the level of an A. There is nothing wrong with that, everyone wins.
• Always use the word “earn” when discussing extra credit. Extra credit is not “given.” “Jimmy, you’ve earned three extra points. Great work!”

Here are some ways students can earn extra credit. While this is centered around a math course, the same logic / philosophy can be used in other subjects.

• Extra credit should mean “extra” work. If the student is requesting extra credit so that they can make up an assignment on which they are delinquent, then first have them complete the assignment on which they were delinquent and then provide an extra credit assignment.
• Have students present their work in class.
• Let students fix their mistakes on problem sets or exams for partial “reimbursement.”
• Give students a research topic that is a “reach.” For example, if teaching a pre-calculus course (author cringes) a “challenge” problem may be to prove that $$\frac{\sum_{i=1}^{n}c_{i}}{n}$$ minimizes $$f(x) = \sum_{i=1}^{n}(x-c_{i})^{2}$$ Then the instructor, if so willing, can discuss the importance of this in Statistics.

In any case, the request for extra credit while generally unpleasant for instructors can, ironically, be a great device for keeping the focus on learning. Instructors should use a student’s craving for a modification to their grade (rightly or wrongly, the craving exists) as an entry point to make sure that the student has yet another chance to learn.