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"Despite
all of its problems, grading is still a deeply entrenched mode of
evaluating student learning in higher education. It is the basis of
a college or university's decision about who graduates. It is the
most universal form of communication to employers or graduate schools
about the quality of a student's learning. Grading systems implemented
in classrooms powerfully shape students' expectations and experiences."
(Walvoord
and Anderson, Effective Grading: A Tool for Learning and Assessment)
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A November 2001 survey of College of Engineering faculty on the subject
of grading found that the three most commonly-cited grading concerns
are:1) the amount of time required to do it well; 2) avoiding arbitrary
and/or inconsistencies in grading; and 3) uncertainty about what grades
actually indicate (i.e. are they predictors of future performance,
do they reflect absolute knowledge or a rank in a class, etc.?).
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Below are suggestions for some strategies to make grade more effective
and efficient:
Decide on the types and amounts of evaluation to be done
- Know your department’s standards.
- Increase the number of quizzes and decrease number of exams (but not
down to one).
- Consider credit/no credit assignments (students get credit for completion)
and/or student peer grading for some assignments to save time.
Decide on the type of problem
- Use more questions with simple answers rather than fewer questions with
longer answers makes exams easier to grade.
- Multiple choice items are efficient to grade (but more time-consuming
to construct) than other item types. For an overview of how mutiple choice
exams are constructed in Physics, click here.
Preparing the test/problem items
- Break the problems into as many parts as possible to let students show
what they know.
- Try to make the components of the problem independent (e.g. for part
B to be correct, the student does not need to solve part A correctly).
If you can’t make the components independent, use a student’s
mistake(s) and re-calculate the rest of the problem.
- Think and work through the item very carefully before the exam. Have
a colleague go through the items.
Preparing the scoring
- Define the ideas/concepts that students should get for each concept
and assign points accordingly.
- Assign point values for each step of the problem (partial credit).
- Look at a sample of exams before grading them to anticipate wrong turns,
common mistakes, etc. and come to a consistent grading scheme.
- For multiple choice, allow partial credit by circling more than one
answer (e.g. +4 for each circled correct answer, -1 for each circled incorrect
answer).
- Discuss grading schemes, expectations, and other issues with graders
and students.
The grading process itself:
- Work through the items yourself first.
- Read through a set number of assignments before beginning the grading
process.
- Cover students’ names or use some other scheme, like assigning
students numbers so that grading is anonymous.
- Grade all of Problem #1 before moving on to the next. (Similarly, with
multiple graders, assign one problem per grader, rather than dividing
up the separate papers.)
- Use software (e.g. CCSO Campus GradeBook) to keep track of students’
grades. To find out more about GradeBook, contact Diana
Steele at OIR.
Try something new…
- Ask students to submit test questions.
- Explicitly align your class objectives with test items.
- Check out Effective Grading: A Tool for Learning and Assessment
(Walvoord and Anderson, 1998) for ideas such as creating a table of specifications
and/or a primary trait analysis
- Explore contract grading (based on contract learning). Faculty members
negotiate the learning goals, standards, and criteria with the students.
The personalized nature of contract learning allows tailoring of work
to students’ needs and goals, and can increase student motivation.
- Get feedback on and evaluate your grading policies and procedures. Avoid
these "Top-10" grading errors!
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