Specs grading?

Curious to know if anyone out there has experimented with what Linda Nilson is calling "specs grading"? It seems to be a combination of mastery grading, a pass-fail only system, and grading that reflects accumulated knowledge. I'm intrigued and would be interested to hear directly about instructor experiences with this.

Is it possible to give too much feedback?

Recently, in the course of a presentation I was giving, I made a statement that is evidently controversial:

Many conscientious instructors give too much feedback to students on their work.

(I'm thinking mainly about student essays here.) Several audience members were taken aback (and this post at Philosophers' Cocoon suggests that at least some philosophers share such sentiments). But in my own defense, here's my rationale.

A Chance to Try Again

This semester I asked students in my classes to give presentations on their papers. I've been very generous in grading these presentations. And I realized that part of the reason I was being so generous was because I was only giving them a chance to present once. In the past, when I've had students present I give them a chance to do it twice and I am much more critical in my grading. This made me think that I operate under the following grading policy: Only grade a particular assignment harshly if students had a chance to try that kind of assignment before. So, for example, if you are going to grade papers harshly, then you should have more than one paper due a term (or a draft in which you give them comments) so students can learn from the mistakes they make the first time around. Thoughts? 

[Edited: The original post didn't quite capture what I meant. Thanks to Sarah Paul for pointing this out.]

Mastery-based grading

At NewAPPS, Mark Lance makes a sensible point about one of the oddities of how grading is typically done at the college and university level: Students' grades are usually calculated based on the work they do across a course instead of based on the level of ability or mastery they've achieved by the end of it. This has the somewhat perverse implication that two students could end up with very different grades despite the facts that (a) each of them manifests the same level of ability or mastery by the end of the course, and (b) one of the students has, arguably, accomplished more in the course in terms of learning:

Free advice to students about talking to professors about grades, part I

I just finished my grading for the term, and as is typical, a number of students approached me as the term wound down to discuss their grades and how to improve them. These discussions generally focus on these two concerns:

1. Students want to improve their grades by having me change the grading standards or expectations in some ways.
2. Students want to improve their grades by performing better in class.

In my experience, students often handle these discussions poorly, especially in regard to concern 1. Here I have some advice for students about concern 1 — I'll save advice about concern 2 for another post.

Grading anonymously

The folks at NewAPPS are having a worthwhile discussion of the merits of anonymous grading: its capacity to counteract the halo effect, how to deal with work that you can associate with a student anyway, etc. I've used our university's LMS for anonymous grading and found it to be a welcome reform. Do check the New APPS discussion.

Approaching the dreaded 'I deserve a better grade' conversation

No one looks forward to that conversation with a student seeking a better grade. Maryellen Weimer at Faculty Focus has some good advice. Most centrally, she's emphasizes being open to the student's case for a better grade and figuring out how to make the enterprise a learning experience for both students and instructors. I appreciated these remarks in particular:

'Pick your best work'

I'm going to be trying something new this quarter and would be interested to hear initial reactions to my plan.

In my interdisciplinary Gen Ed course on death and dying, the students receive a weekly writing assignment. They are required to complete five of the assignments during the term. The assignments themselves will be ungraded, but I plan to give collective feedback along the lines I described in an earlier post.

I'm then requiring the students to tell me which three of the five completed writing assignments they'd like me to count for their term grade. In short, they pick their best work to be counted toward their grade.

Reflections off Lake Wobegon: What faculty see about grade inflation when we look in the mirror

I'm utterly fascinated by this study on how faculty perceive grade inflation. The researchers interviewed 25 faculty members about grade inflation. The main findings:

• "faculty thought grade inflation was more of a problem at their institution than in their department, and only two reported that grade inflation was a problem in their courses. Those perceptions aren’t particularly surprising, but then it starts to get really interesting. More than three-fourths of the faculty in this cohort reported that they were tougher graders than colleagues in their department. The researchers note that although it is possible that some in the cohort might be tougher graders, given criteria used to select participants “there is no reason to believe that the interviewees as a group actually were ‘tougher’ than others in their own department.”
• The explanation for this discrepancy is that faculty routinely think they assign lower grades than they in fact do: "Nearly all of the interviewed professors believe their grades were lower than they actually were: they underestimated the number of A’s and overestimated the number of lower grades in their classes. In the most extreme case a professor estimated grades equivalent to a 2.31 GPA when in fact the actual GPA was 3.53.”

Better teaching = better grades?

The PEA Soup folks have had a lively discussion of how to adjust students' grades when we improve as teachers. Doug Portmore sets up the question:

Suppose that I’ve become a better teacher. Suppose, for instance, that I’ve used the same bank of test questions over the years and that, due to implementing certain non-substantive changes in my PHI X course, students taking that course from me this year are doing a better job answering those questions than students who took the same course from me in previous years. So the material that I’m trying to get the students to learn and the technique that I’ve been using for assessing whether they’ve learned it hasn’t change, but I’ve become more effective in that my current students are, on average, leaving the course with a better understanding of the material than students who took the same course from me in previous years. 

The question, then, is: Should I (A) adopt higher standards with respect to what level of understanding I expect from them so as to earn certain grades or (B) keep the same standards and give higher grades on average than I had been giving in previous years?

One more time: Grading on 'effort'

We had a lively discussion a while back on the merits of grading students on effort. Now Maryellen Weimer at Faculty Focus reports on studies comparing faculty and student attitudes about whether grading should depend on effort. The upshot: Students think about 40% of their grade should depend on effort, whereas faculty thought 17% of a student's grade should depend on effort.


The obvious problem in discussing this issue is figuring out what we mean by 'effort'. As Weimer puts it:

Finkish FIDeLity feedback

Last week, I attended a very informative seminar on course design given by Dee Fink, one of the most prominent experts on designing courses to enhance student learning.

The seminar offered me a number of ideas I'd like to pursue in designing my courses (though I was pleased to note I'm already following some of Fink's suggestions). But I thought I might share some of the seminar content with the readership, parceled out over the next few weeks.

The simplest takeaway from Fink's seminar was the FIDeLity mnemonic concerning feedback to students. The feedback we give should be:

Discussion of grade inflation and the disengagement compact at New APPS

New APPS has a nice discussion going of the incentives for, and explanations of, grade inflation. Our own Becko moved the discussion along nicely with her invocation of the disengagement compact. Do go read!

I'll teach, you grade?

Ye olde Chronicle reports that a few instructors, and a few institutions, are divorcing the responsibilities of teaching from the responsibilities of grading. In some cases, the grading is done by a robot, in others, by a paid 'evaluator'. Here's how the latter works at Western Governors, an online university:

Sharing paper assignment rubrics

An ISW loyalist writes:

I am a philosophy professor and have long followed and profited from In Socrates Wake - thanks for sharing your wisdom!  I use rubrics for paper assignments; I've found them very useful - both pedagogically, and for grading - and I am constantly tweaking them from semester to semester.  I wonder what other peoples' rubrics look like - it would be nice to have a collection of them with comments from their creators about what they like and don't like about them.

Certainly- grading rubrics are a great topic. The writer sent along this rubric to get the discussion going. Please share the rubrics you use, and let's hear feedback about the merits of different rubrics. Thanks!

Panagiotis G. Ipeirotis's Experience with Plagiarism

Many of you will by now have heard the controversy stirred by Panagiotis G. Ipeirotis's post Why I Will Never Pursue Cheating Again. The original post has been removed. Inside Higher Ed describes the post, why it was removed and some of the reactions it garnered.

But something seems to have been lost in the mix. According to IHE, Professor Ipeirotis intended to generate a discussion about how to best deal with cheating. His experience called into question what he calls the "arms race," response in which we devise cheating detection mechanisms and students (or those who sell to students) devise cheating mechanisms. His suggested alternative? Using pedagogical techniques that are relatively immune to cheating (e.g., alternative assessment techniques, group work, public work, etc.).

So let's talk about that. Do any of you design your assignments, grading schemes, etc. with an eye towards a classroom in which cheating is either difficult or impossible? Should we do so? Are there pedagogical goods independent of avoiding cheating that these alternative techniques and assignments offer? Can designing a cheating-immune assignment work against good pedagogy? Can doing so be yet another instance of the "arms race" approach to combatting plagiarism?

Putting the brakes on extra credit

Since my spring quarter is winding down, I thought we might revisit an issue Nathan raised a few years ago: extra credit.

With a few weeks left in the term, I'm getting lots of requests from students for extra credit assignments. Typically, this is motivated either by their having done poorly on previous tests and assignments, or in some cases, not having done them at all. Students are hoping I'll provide an assignment or task to help them augment their grades in my courses.

I have a simple policy concerning such requests: No (for reasons outlined below the break).

What "participation" means

Hi, folks,

With the posting of course grades at the end of a term comes the opportunity to have conversations with some students about things that they might have overlooked earlier in the semester. Recently, Chris, Adam, and (somewhat) I were talking about one such example: the meaning of "class participation".

I'll stick to discussing my own experiences. Invariably, at least one student will express surprise at a low participation grade by pointing out, "But I attended every class meeting!" or "But I talked a lot!". In the syllabus, during the first weeks' class meetings, and occasionally throughout the semester, I emphasize that those behaviors are neither necessary nor sufficient for good participation (or for a good participation grade). Instead, I emphasize and evaluate other things as part of my conception of (constructive) participation.

For instance: do your comments demonstrate that you've done at least some of that day's readings? Do your comments build on others' comments in some (respectful) way? Do you sometimes refrain from commenting, knowing that sometimes, being a good participant in a discussion means letting other people talk? If you're too shy or anxious to talk during class, then do you use other means -- such as the class's discussion forum online -- to raise comments and questions that demonstrate your engagement with the readings/concepts?

Key to my participation assessments is a brief conversation with each student about their participation, at least two or three times during the semester. (Surprisingly, that doesn't always forestall the "but I talked a lot!" complaint at the course's end. Even more surprising is that I'm surprised.)

How do you assess/grade students' participation, if you do? How do you define "participation" in the first place?

Grading? Good grief!

Given my longstanding anitpathy toward grading, you can well imagine how 'The Five Stages of Grading' resonated with me!

Requiem for the final exam?

The Boston Globe reports that university faculty are giving final exams less frequently:

In the spring term at Harvard last year, only 259 of the 1,137 undergraduate courses had a scheduled final exam, the lowest number since 2002, according to Jay M. Harris, the dean of undergraduate education. Harris said he’s hesitant to read too much into the numbers, which, he said, don’t include whatever final exams were scheduled in language courses, don’t reflect the other forms of assessment that have replaced exams, and don’t account for small seminar classes, which typically would not have a traditional, sit-down, blue-book final.