Grading
Grading Strategies
Explaining General Strategies & Minimizing Students' Complaints
About Grading
How We Understand: Using Student Writing to Assess Insight: Final Report
How do the students explain their insight?
Evaluating Learning: Alternatives for Testing and Reviewing (PDF
file)
As you consider how to evaluate your students' learning, you may
want to consider these options:
Addressing Plagiarism
Many teachers may confuse listing the consequences of plagiarism with
explaining the seriousness of the practice and its ramifications. It
is important that students understand the penalty and the consequences
to their grade, but they also need to know the potential significance
to their careers as students and as professionals, and even to the field
of study. * Teach the Role of Research * Design Assignments that Discourage
Cheating ...
Grading Practices
There are no hard-and-fast rules about the best ways to grade. In
fact, as Erickson and Strommer (1991) point out, how you grade depends
a great deal on your values, assumptions, and educational philosophy:
if you view introductory courses as "weeder" classes–to separate
out students who lack potential for future success in the field–you
are likely to take a different grading approach than someone who views
introductory courses as teaching important skills that all students
need to master. The suggestions in this page are designed to help you
develop clear and fair grading policies.
Testing and Grading: Assessing Student Performance (PDF file)
This section will provide some general guidelines for formal tests,
focusing on the examinations as they are used most routinely - for the
purpose of assessing learning at the end of an instructional segment.
Assessing student writing, both essay tests and papers will be reviewed.
Finally, guidelines for performance assessment will be offered.
Assessment VS Grades
Assessment VS Grades
Grading
Standards
Grading Standards sample for the Living Environment Class
Responding
to Student Writing
Students look for instructor comments. In fact, in our assessment
work at the Manoa Writing Program, we find that no other topic generates
more student comment than what professors say about their writing. Here
are a couple of typical comments from students:
Ten Pointers on Responding to Student Writing
Ten Pointers on Responding to Student Writing
Evaluating Issues
(Grading)
Assigning grades is one of the most difficult tasks you will face
in teaching. Teachers must combine a variety of disparate elements of
student performance into a single course grade: verbal skills, ability
to memorize, retention of factual information, ability to synthesize
material, ability to make reasoned judgments about the material, etc.
It is difficult to devise a grading method in which the final grade
fairly reflects all aspects of a student's performance.
Grade
and Go
One of my friends describes grading as being nibbled to death by ducks.
The final ritual of a long semester may well feel that way. Pressed
to wrap up other jobs, uncertain about teaching successes, and having
to find energy for one more big job, grading papers and exams can become
a thankless chore. Yet, your responses to students' work is the last
contact you will have with many of them. Effective teachers use grading
as one final teaching moment
Testing and Other
Forms of Student Evaluation
As the title of this section implies, testing is only part of the
evaluation of learning. Every time you ask a question in class, monitor
a student discussion, or read a term paper, you are evaluating learning.
Moreover, the evaluation process (whether it involves examinations or
not) is a valuable part of the teaching process. The primary purpose
of evaluation is to provide corrective feedback to the student, the
secondary purpose is to satisfy the administrative requirement of ranking
students on a grading scale.
Grading Papers
The following remarks are intended to give you a sense of criteria
for grading papers. Note that four topics recur: thesis, use of evidence,
design (organization), and basic writing skills (grammar, mechanics,
spelling). In courses with multiple graders or teaching fellows, it
is essential that a uniform grading standard be discussed and adapted
by those grading students' work.
Responding to Response Papers
Responding to response papers is a necessary though time-consuming task.
It is necessary because, if you do not, most students will stop putting
effort into them. But how can you respond to every paper without expending
vast amounts of time and labor?
Commenting
on Student Papers (PDF file, pg. 107)
Comments on essays, problems, reports, and other written assignments
should teach students rather than simply justify the grade. Writing
on student papers is one of your few opportunities to give individual
instruction. In the following essay, Marie Secor discusses the importance
of this aspect of instruction, explores some of the relevant issues
of grading, and analyzes the various roles we play as teachers when
we grade.
Constructing Grading Systems
Do you know how to construct a grading system that is fair to students
and properly reflects student achievement?
Grading (PDF file)
Grades reflect personal philosophy and human psychology, as well
as efforts to measure intellectual progress with standardized objective
criteria. This chapter discusses grading philosophies, presents suggestions
that will help to maintain fairness and consistency in your grading,
and discusses issues that should be addressed in course planning.
Grading
Standards
Published grading standards make expectations visible, and subject
to assessment.
Sample Evaluation Chart
Sample Evaluation Chart
Grading Class Participation
Grading class participation is one of the most difficult aspects
of student evaluation. We know that active involvement in learning increases
what is remembered, how well it is assimilated, and how the learning
is used in new situations.
Grading Students
Some instructors record letter grades for tests and assignments,
and others record numerical values, often the percent correct on tests.
Later, under either method, the grades are averaged, often employing
a weighting process designed to make some grades count more heavily
than others. Discussion of the merits of different approaches usually
centers around the question of whether it is better to average letter
or numerical grades or around some feature of the weighting process.
