Effective Grading: A Tool for Learning and Assessment

Walvoord, Barbara E., & Johnson, Virginia A. (1998).  Effective grading: A tool for learning and assessment.  San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

 Note: The book is divided into two main parts.  Since the second part has more to do with institutional rather than classroom assessment, I'll focus on the first part.

Preface

Grading includes:

• identifying the most valuable kinds of learning in a course
• constructing tests and assignments that will test that learning
• setting standards and criteria
• guiding student learning
• making changes in teaching as a result of information gained in the grading process

Chapter 1: The Power of Grading for Learning and Assessment

Grading doesn't just refer to grades, it refers to the process why which teachers assess student learning, the context in which this occurs, and the dialogue that the grading process engenders.

Grading serves multiple roles: evaluation, communication, motivation, and organization.

Assessment should:

• answer questions people care about
• lead to improvement in teaching and learning
• be embedded in the context of learning
• take place repeatedly over time

Assessment isn't just a fad, nor is it just a classroom practice. It's a national agenda.  The "Age of Accountability" has arrived for education.

Faculty have been doing assessment all along in their classes, but often it's "stealth assessment", not communicated with legislatures, accrediting agencies, and other audiences.

PART ONE: GRADING IN THE CLASSROOM

 Chapter 2: Managing the Grading Process

 Three False Hopes About Grading:

• total objectivity
• total agreement
• one-dimensional student motivation for learning

 Ten Principles of Grading

1. Appreciate the complexity of grading as a context-dependent and socially constructed system.
2. Since total objectivity is impossible, used informed professional judgment when necessary.
3. Know how much time you have to spare for grading, and distribute that time effectively.
4. Be open to changes in grading and be prepared to be influenced by national trends in grading.
5. Grades mean different things to different students, so listen to your students.
6. The grading process involves communication and collaboration with students.
7. Integrate grading with other key processes like course planning.
8. Accept that grading is an emotional issue and use that emotion to "seize teachable moments".
9. Focus on student learning---it, not grading, is your primary goal.
10. True, teachers function as gatekeepers, but be a teacher first.

 Chapter 3: Making Assignments Worth Grading

 From the first moments you being planning your course, plan your grading.

 Six Suggestions

1. Given that you don't have time for students to learn everything about the topics, deeply consider what is most important for them to learn.  From this, formulate course goals and objectives.
2. Select your assessments with an eye to what you value most (since grading is one of the most labor-intensive things you do, why waste it on things that aren't important to you?). For example, don't say you value analysis, synthesis, and evaluation and then proceed to test over basic facts and concepts.
3. Construct a course outline that is assignment centered, asking not "what should I cover?" but "what should they learn to do?"  Make your class do beyond students' taking notes, studying the night before an exam, and regurgitating the "right" answers on a test.
4. Review assessments for "fit and feasibility'--that is, do assignments fit your objectives and is the workload feasible for both you and your students?
5. Set goals through a process of collaboration with students.
6. Make sure that the instructions for your assessments are clear to students; otherwise, students will define assignments differently and confound efforts to measure learning goals.

 Chapter 4: Fostering Motivation and Learning in the Grading Process

 Every class has a motivational structure---does yours serve learning?

 Involvement

• Aim for student involvement; i.e., students putting physical and psychological energy into your course.
• What's the goal of involvement?  To help students achieve more than they could on their own.
• Both student-faculty and student-student interaction are powerful factors in student involvement.

Make sure that students practice skills rather than just memorizing information.

Consider the different motivations of "grade-oriented" vs. "learning oriented" students.

Two Suggestions

1) Teach what you are grading: "teaching to the test" gets a bad rap.  But if the test measures what's truly important, you should be teaching to the test…or at least "…to the criteria by which you will evaluate the test."

2) Rethink the use of class time and devote as much class time as you can to process-oriented learning.  Techniques exist to get students to perform assigned readings before class (e.g., homework = writing short summary or opinion paper on readings).  Then, more class time can be used to engage students in activities that help them process the material.  Additionally, rather than expending valuable time outside the class commenting on students' work, "the class itself can be the teacher's way of responding to the students' preparatory work".

Example

Many teachers find that even if students do the readings, they don't do them well.  To help students do a more effective job, give them specific guides to use or tasks to accomplish.  For example, one physics professor videotaped himself engaging in the process of reading physics problems in the textbook and working out their solutions.  Students had to view and respond to the videotapes and read the book before class, freeing up class time in which they, in groups of three, finished their homework problems. 

Chapter 5: Establishing Criteria and Standards for Grading

Benefits:

• saves time
• makes grading fairer and more consistent
• makes expectations clear
• helps you identify what to teach
• identifies essential relationships among content
• makes students participants in their own learning
• saves you from having to repeat yourself over and over
• helps students help each other
• helps teaching assistants or co-teachers
• provides a solid foundation for class and institutional evaluation

Primary Trait Analysis (PTA) (Lloyd-Jones, 1977)

• Primary trait analysis involves stating a teacher's criteria through the use of assignment-specific rubrics.  Each rubric includes the factors or traits that contribute to scoring along with explicit scoring scales and instructions. Students' PTAs can be used for all, part, or none of the assignment grade.
• Note that such an approach provides far more evaluation data than a simple numerical grade; what's more, this information can be tracked over time. 

Chapter 6: Calculating Course Grades

Calculating course grades isn't just a mathematical formula---it's an expression of your values and goals.

Grading Models

1) Weighted Letter Grades: different assignments are given different weights.  Assumes that different types of assignments measure different things, have different judging criteria, and are differently  valued.

2) Accumulated Points: grades are allocated according to the cumulative total of points for all assignments.  Assumes that good or poor performance in one area can be offset by performance in other areas (which can also allow students to decide how to allocate their effort).  It also is more forgiving in that it allows students to make up poor performance early in the course.

3) Definitional System: to get a given grade, students must meet or exceed standards (e.g., a certain percentage of "pass" in pass/fail grading).

Penalties and Extra Credit

• Any of the above grading systems can be modified with penalties (e.g., for late work or failing to cite sources properly) and/or extra credit. 
• Keep in mind, though, that penalties are perceived negatively and may produce negative emotions and interactions.
• Extra credit can be used to let students compensate for poor performance in one area by extra work in another.

Developmental vs. Unit-Based

a) Developmental: later work is weighted more heavily than earlier work, leaving room for slow starts and early failures.

b) Unit-based: course is divided into units and each unit counts the same as the others.  Less forgiving of slow starts and early failures.

Contract Learning

Contract learning uses negotiations to draw students into the learning process. In doing so, It makes the contractual nature of grading explicit.  It also increases both student choice and responsibility and can produce more student "buy in".

Curving

1) Grading on a Curve:  forces a certain percentage of students to receive each grade.  The authors consider such a system harmful to learning and advocate either allowing more student to earn higher grades or controlling the number of "As" by raising standards. 

Chapter 7: Communicating With Students About Their Grades

A grade isn't just an evaluation---it's a communication.

Suggestions for Effective Communication

• assume that students want to learn
• set high expectations but assist students in reaching them
• make the connection between your course goals and your tests and assignments explicit (begin doing this in the syllabus)
• remind students about course goals, inquire how well they believe they are meeting them, and provide assignments that make students reflect on how events in the course serve course goals.
• discuss your grading philosophy with your students
• discuss your notions of fairness with your students
• clearly explain what is meant by each level of grade
• when students make errors, focus on the learner rather than the error
• whenever comments won't make a difference, save them for the teachable moment
• focus students on global feedback first before they begin making local corrections
• avoid springing surprises on students

Grades and Evaluations

Can teachers "buy" better student evaluations by making their courses easier?  Research suggests no. 

Chapter 8: Making Grading More Time-Efficient

Strategies for Efficiency

1) Separate commenting from grading:  grades need not be given for all work, and comments need not be written on all work.  Save each for where it will have the greatest effect on learning.

2) Do not give grades on an assignment just because a few students get antsy if their work isn't graded (you might, however, offer to give "informal" grades to these few students).

3) Use only as many grade levels as you need:  often, no one says you have to give plus and minus grades (or even grades---you could use pass/fail).

4) Consider whether comments will have the desired effect (often, students focus less on higher-level development and more on "fixing" the assignment to give the teacher what he/she wants).  If comments won't result in change, save them for teachable moments.

5) If student work is careless, don't waste your time---make them redo it before you spend your time offering feedback.

6) Use what students know about their own work (e.g., if a student already knows it's unfocused, you could waste a lot of time going on at length about how it's unfocused!).

7) Ask students to organize their work in ways that aid your efficiency:  e.g., provide checklists,  require tables of contents, and ban paper clips.

8) When possible, delegate.  For example, could some of the grading you do be replaced by peer evaluation using rubrics?

Chapter 9: Using the Grading Process to Improve Teaching

(presents two case studies)

STOP

PART TWO: HOW GRADING SERVES BROADER ASSESSMENT PURPOSES

Chapter 10: Determining Faculty Performance, Rewards, and Incentives

Chapter 11: Strengthening Departmental and Institutional Assessment

Chapter 12: A Case Study of Grading as a Tool for Assessment