Below is another excerpt from my handbook for our graduate student teachers.
We should already have assignment descriptions and rubrics for every
single assignment, so this task is already accomplished to a large degree. Will
students read this rubric before beginning work on their speeches? You’d think
so, but surprisingly the answer is often “no.” This is where you come in; part
of your job in making these expectations clear is draw their attention to,
explain, and answer questions about the assignment. You will also do activities
in class to help students explore and hone one or more skills required by the
assignments.
As I noted above, you should be explaining assignments to
students. And part of your teaching philosophy should include clarity. But when
it comes to a grading philosophy, an additional way to think about explanations
is the feedback you provide students along with a letter grade. This feedback
will serve several purposes.
First, this feedback will save you a lot of headaches. When
students question you about their grade, complain about their grade, and
attempt to persuade you to change their grade (and some will), you can rely on
your detailed feedback as justification for why they received the grade they
did. Obviously, this feedback should be related to the course objectives,
assignment objectives, and/or the skills we want students to acquire. This feedback
will also help me when these students come to see me to complain about said
grade (which some do). This may seem like a cynical way to approach grading,
but it’s just one of the practical uses of clear, detailed, explanatory
feedback. In short, it can save us time and effort. And doing so save us from
repeating ourselves.
Second, doing so contextualizes a letter grade into concrete
suggestions for improvement. Although students may seem only concerned with a
letter grade on an assignment, we must be sure to giving them concrete
suggestions for improvements. Ideally, students will read these suggestions and
use them to improvement their performance on future speeches. I’ve sat with
many students in my office looking over a GTA’s completed rubric trying to
explain to the students where the GTA was coming from, why the student got the
grade he or she did, and what the student can do better in the future (Remember
that time and effort we wanted to save?). By providing detailed feedback, we
not only justify the grade given, hopefully circumventing any complaints, but
we offer students something to think about for future speeches and assignments.
The third of our “three E’s” of grading also has to do with
feedback. The feedback you provide will hopefully be encouraging. We need to
tell the students what they’re doing well as well as what they can improve
upon. Like suggestions for improvements, these encouraging remarks should be
concrete as well. And like suggestions for improvements these encouraging
remarks should be related to particular learning outcomes and skills.
An often-used synonym for balance, our fourth “E” of grading
refers to finding a balance between critique and encouragement, rigor and reasonableness,
and fairness and compassion. As I explained above, your grading approach should
include constructive criticism and encouragement. What I’m going to focus on in
this section is reasonable rigor. To grade with rigor means you are demanding
and fair, and reasonable in what you expect from your students.
Talking to many first-year students about grades, you might
get the impression that they received all A’s in high school. This may be the
case, but more often than not it usually not the case. Students may be trying
to manipulate you, but what’s most likely is that they simply have to adjust to
the rigorous standards we employ in our class and in university-level classes.
When weighing how tough we’re being in our grading, there are a few tricks we
can employ. I will detail these below.
As
long as you’re being clear, rigorous, and reflexive about your grading, you’re
doing great. But as a way of entering the conversation, let’s consider what the
average GPA of first-year students are. You can find the most recent
information on SDSU student GPA by class level here. For years 2007-2011, the
average GPA for male and female first-year students was 2.77[1].
When considering the own cumulative GPA of your own sections, whether on a
particular assignment or at the end of semester, it’s sometimes useful to ask
yourself, “What is the likelihood that my class will be much higher or lower
than this?” The answer is, “Probably not very likely.”
For example, in a class of 24 students, if the average GPA
is 3.2, you’re essentially communicating to me that I could walk into your
class, pick a student at random to speak, and I’d see an above-average speaker.
While that may be the case—some of us just get lucky and have a class of
awesome speakers—my 20 years of teaching experience tells me that is not
usually going to happen. As such, you can probably conclude that you’re not
being rigorous enough in your grading.
Does this mean that you change students’ grades? Not at all.
It just means that you should be reflexive about your grading process,
continually asking yourself if you’re being too lenient, too hard and unreasonable,
and how you might evolve in the future. But, keep in mind this rule of thumb: it’s better for classroom management,
morale, and rapport with students to get easier with your grading as the
semester goes on rather than harder.
No comments:
Post a Comment