Effective Grading E-Book

Barbara E. Walvoord

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 424

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

The second edition of Effective Grading--the book that has become a classic in the field--provides a proven hands-on guide for evaluating student work and offers an in-depth examination of the link between teaching and grading. Authors Barbara E. Walvoord and Virginia Johnson Anderson explain that grades are not isolated artifacts but part of a process that, when integrated with course objectives, provides rich information about student learning, as well as being a tool for learning itself. The authors show how the grading process can be used for broader assessment objectives, such as curriculum and institutional assessment. This thoroughly revised and updated edition includes a wealth of new material including: * Expanded integration of the use of technology and online teaching * A sample syllabus with goals, outcomes, and criteria for student work * New developments in assessment for grant-funded projects * Additional information on grading group work, portfolios, and service-learning experiences * New strategies for aligning tests and assignments with learning goals * Current thought on assessment in departments and general education, using classroom work for program assessments, and using assessment data systematically to "close the loop" * Material on using the best of classroom assessment to foster institutional assessment * New case examples from colleges and universities, including community colleges "When the first edition of Effective Grading came out, it quickly became the go-to book on evaluating student learning. This second edition, especially with its extension into evaluating the learning goals of departments and general education programs, will make it even more valuable for everyone working to improve teaching and learning in higher education." --L. Dee Fink, author, Creating Significant Learning Experiences "Informed by encounters with hundreds of faculty in their workshops, these two accomplished teachers, assessors, and faculty developers have created another essential text. Current faculty, as well as graduate students who aspire to teach in college, will carry this edition in a briefcase for quick reference to scores of examples of classroom teaching and assessment techniques and ways to use students' classroom work in demonstrating departmental and institutional effectiveness." --Trudy W. Banta, author, Designing Effective Assessment

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Preface to the Second Edition

Acknowledgments

The Authors

Chapter 1 - Introduction

Grading as a Complex Process

Part One: Grading in the Classroom

Part Two: How Grading Serves Broader Assessment Purposes

Using This Book Individually or in Faculty Workshops

Part One - Grading in the Classroom

Chapter 2 - Clarifying Goals, Constructing Assignments

Establish Learning Goals

Construct Major Assignments and Tests

Construct a Course Skeleton

Check Assignments and Tests for Fit and Feasibility

Chapter 3 - Fostering Healthy Student Motivation

Student Motivation

Students’ Goals: A Key to Motivation

Communicating About Assignments

Chapter 4 - Establishing Criteria and Standards for Grading

Descriptions of Grades

Checklists

Rubrics

Frequent Questions in Developing Rubrics

Criteria Outside the Rubric

Chapter 5 - Linking Teaching, Learning, and Grading

Teach What You Are Grading

Grade What You Are Teaching

Teaching and Grading Class Discussion

Teaching and Grading Group Assignments

What If They All Get A’s?

Chapter 6 - Managing Time for Teaching, Learning, and Responding

Three Steps for Managing Class Time: A Case History

Managing Time in Other Types of Teaching Situations

Time, Stress, and Burnout: What to Do If You Feel Overwhelmed

Chapter 7 - Making Grading More Time-Efficient

Strategy 1: Find Out What the Student Knows

Strategy 2: Do Not Waste Time on Careless Student Work

Strategy 3: Do Not Extensively Mark Grammar and Punctuation

Strategy 4: Address Fundamental Concerns First

Strategy 5: Consider Comments Without Grades

Strategy 6: Use Comments Only for Teachable Moments

Strategy 7: Spend More Time Guiding

Strategy 8: Use Only as Many Grade Levels as You Need

Strategy 9: Limit the Basis for Grading

Strategy 10: Ask Students to Organize Their Work for Your Efficiency

Strategy 11: Delegate the Work

Strategy 12: Use Technology to Save Time and Enhance Results

Strategy 13: Keep a Grading Log

Chapter 8 - Calculating Course Grades

Grading Models

Penalties and Extra Credit

Establishing Ceilings and Floors

Developmental Versus Unit-Based Approaches

Grading Drafts

Contract Grading and Contract Learning

To Curve or Not to Curve

Grade Inflation

Like Coffee to Go, Shopping Carts, and Investment Portfolios

Chapter 9 - Communicating with Students About Their Grades

Principle 1: Make Grading Part of Learning

Principle 2: Respect your Students

Creating an Effective Syllabus

Using Class or Online Discussion to Address Grading Issues

Responding to Student Work

Communicating About Grade Challenges and Plagiarism

Grades and Student Evaluations

Ask for Student Feedback

Chapter 10 - Using the Grading Process to Improve Teaching

Divide and Conquer

Put the Pieces Together

Analyze Students’ Difficulties

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Part Two - How Grading Serves Broader Assessment Purposes

Chapter 11 - Assessment for Departments and General Education

Step 1: Establish Goals for Learning

Step 2: Collect Information About Student Achievement of the Goals

Step 3: Use Assessment Information for Improvement

Reporting Classroom-Based Assessment

Chapter 12 - Case Studies of Departmental and General Education Assessment

Case 1: Using Classroom Work to Assess Thinking and Writing in History Majors

Case 2: Using Classroom Work to Assess Critical Thinking in Finance Majors

Case 3: Using Classroom Exams for Assessment in Health Sciences

Case 4: A Community College General Education Program Assesses Students’Writing ...

Chapter 13 - Assessment for Grant Proposals

Construct an Overall Assessment Plan

Develop Assessment Tools

Conclusion

Appendix A - Examples of Rubrics

Appendix B - Example of Departmental Assessment Report

References

Index

Copyright © 2010 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published by Jossey-Bass A Wiley Imprint 989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA94103-1741—www.josseybass.com

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form orby any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except aspermitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the priorwritten permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA01923, 978-750-8400, fax [phone], or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressedto the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, 201-748-6011, fax [phone], or online at www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Readers should be aware that Internet Web sites offered as citations and/or sources for further information may have changed or disappeared between the time this was written and when it is read.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

Jossey-Bass books and products are available through most bookstores. To contact Jossey-Bass directly call our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 800-956-7739, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3986, or fax [phone].

Jossey-Bass also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Walvoord, Barbara E. Fassler, 1941-

p. cm.—(The Jossy-Bass higher and adult education series)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-470-50215-0 (pbk.)

1. Grading and marking (Students)—United States. 2. College students—Rating of—United States. 3. Educational tests and measurements—United States. I Anderson, Virginia Johnson, 1939- II. Title.

LB2368.W35 2010

378.1’672—dc22

2009029085

PB Printing

The Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education Series

To our children: Lisa, Brian, Randy, Sherry, and BillyTo our grandchildren: Kristen, Bria, Lauren, Liana, and Madison, and in loving memory of KamerynTo our spouses: Sharon Grace and Cliff Anderson

Preface to the Second Edition

THE SECOND EDITION of Effective Grading has the same goals as the first: to help instructors in college classrooms use the grading process effectively for learning and to explore how it can be used for assessment and improvement in the classroom and in broader contexts, such as the department or the general education program

Much has happened since the first edition was published in 1998. New emphasis has focused on learning as the goal of teaching. Research on how people learn has more fully infused the teaching process and the teaching literature. The scholarship of teaching and learning movement has arisen to help faculty conduct systematic inquiry about learning in their classrooms and share that inquiry with others. The requirement by accreditors and others that institutions assess student learning has not gone away; instead, it has become stronger and more insistent.

This second edition addresses those changes. The most significant change is a wholesale rewriting of Part Two, on assessment in the department and general education, to reflect new realities about assessment and build on the latest developments in the field. We added a chapter on assessment for grant-funded projects, because many funding agencies now insist on assessment of learning. In addition, we have revised Part One of the book on classroom grading so that it builds on new research, theory, and practice that have emerged since the first edition and incorporates what we ourselves have learned in the ten years since we wrote the first edition.

Acknowledgments

Our greatest debt is to the hundreds of faculty members in our own institutions—the University of Notre Dame and Towson University in Maryland—and in the many workshops we have led at other institutions and conferences. Our colleagues are our greatest teachers. For whatever in this book is practical, realistic, down-to-earth, and sensible, we profited greatly from their insistence on usable suggestions. For the examples we use throughout the book, we drew from their experiences, generously shared. For the will to revise this book, we drew on their support and encouragement. For the vision that inspires this book, we drew on their hopefulness, gifted teaching, and enthusiasm for learning and for the students who flourish in their classes.

For this second edition, several faculty contributed new case studies that greatly enriched the book: John C. Bean of Seattle University; David F. Carrithers of Seattle University; Mary Elizabeth Camp of Indiana University; Trish Casey-Whiteman of Anne Arundel Community College in Maryland; Theresa Earenfight of Seattle University; Tara Eisenhauer Ebersole of The Community College of Baltimore County; Cindy Ghent of Towson University in Maryland; Joan Middendorf of Indiana University; Susan Robison, a private practitioner and faculty member at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland; and Colette M. Schrank of Moraine Valley Community College in Illinois. Thomas A. Angelo responded to the manuscript of the first edition at a number of points and contributed important ideas to its development, though we, of course, take full responsibility for the ways in which we used his suggestions. We are indebted as well to the anonymous reviewers who provided detailed, thoughtful suggestions for this second edition. Our heartfelt thanks to Sharon Grace for her work with permissions. Aneesa Davenport and Cathy Mallon at Jossey-Bass were attentive and helpful in bringing the book to production.

The Authors

BARBARA E. WALVOORD is professor emerita at the University of Notre Dame. She earned her B.A. degree in English and philosophy at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, and her M.A. degree in English from The Ohio State University. She received her Ph.D. degree in English from the University of Iowa.

Walvoord was named the 1987 Maryland English Teacher of the Year for Higher Education by the Maryland Council of Teachers of English Language Arts. For more than thirty years, she has taught courses in composition, literature, and interdisciplinary humanities at institutions both large and small, public and private.

Walvoord has consulted and led workshops on the campuses of more than 350 colleges and universities and at many national and regional conferences. Her topics are assessment, teaching and learning, and writing across the curriculum. She came to Notre Dame in 1996 as the founding director of the John Kaneb Center for Teaching and Learning, where she worked with faculty and graduate students across disciplines. In 2003, she coordinated the self-study for Notre Dame’s reaccreditation by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, and she continued to work on assessment at Notre Dame.

Before coming to Notre Dame, Walvoord founded and directed Writing Across the Curriculum programs at Central College in Iowa, Loyola College in Maryland, and the University of Cincinnati. She was founding codirector of the Maryland Writing Project (a site of the National Writing Project) and the Baltimore Area Consortium for Writing Across the Curriculum. All of those programs won national acclaim.

Her publications include Teaching and Learning in College Introductory Religion Courses (2008); Assessment Clear and Simple: A Practical Guide for Institutions, Departments, and General Education (2004; second edition in process); Academic Departments: How They Work, How They Change (2000); In the Long Run: A Study of Faculty in Three Writing-Across-the-Curriculum Programs (1997); Thinking and Writing in College: A Study of Students in Four Disciplines (1990); and Helping Students Write Well: A Guide for Teachers in All Disciplines (second edition, 1986). She has also published articles and book chapters about grading, assessment, teaching, learning, and writing. Making Large Classes Interactive (1995), a thirty-minute video of which she is co-executive director, has won two national awards.

Virginia Johnson Anderson is professor of biological sciences at Towson University (TU). A nationally known assessment activist and author, she has presented grading and assessment workshops at more than 180 community colleges, colleges, and universities across the country and abroad. She received her B.S. degree in biology from Lamar University and M.S. degree on a National Science Foundation (NSF) Outstanding Teachers Fellowship at the University of Georgia. While teaching general biology and microbiology for nurses at TU, Anderson earned her doctorate in science education at the University of Maryland—College Park in 1984. She routinely teaches eleven hour contact hours per semester: eight in life sciences and three in an upper-level scientific and technical writing course. She chairs her department’s assessment committee and the university’s subcommittee for undergraduate programs assessment, and she is actively engaged in general education assessment.

Widely published, Anderson has been the principal investigator for two major NSF urban science initiatives and a consultant or external evaluator on seven other national grants. Currently she is the education specialist for Biofilms: The Hypertextbook, an NSF/Montana State University initiative, and an evaluator on a five-year NSF/STEM CoSMiC Scholars grant at TU. She has served as a consultant for agencies such as the American Society for Microbiology, U.S. Peace Corps, Maryland Writing Project, Quality Undergraduate Education project, Appalachian College Association, United Arab Emirates, Mellon Foundation, and extensively over the past five years for the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.

Chapter 1

Introduction

WE WROTE THIS BOOK because, as teachers of English and biology, we have struggled across our careers to make our grading fair, time efficient, and conducive to student learning and to figure out how the grading process can be part of departmental and general education assessment. When Walvoord, as director of four teaching-learning centers, would ask faculty for suggestions about workshop topics, grading was always at the top. And in the hundreds of workshops for faculty that we have led, we have found that workshops on teaching always have to address grading issues. Workshops on assessment in departments or general education always raise questions about the role of grades.

Grading infuses everything that happens in the classroom. It needs to be acknowledged and managed from the first moment that an instructor begins planning a class. Trying to keep students from caring about grades is futile. Trying to pretend that grades are not important is unrealistic. Trying to establish an institutional assessment program unconnected to the grading process is wasteful. Grades are the elephant in the classroom. Instead of ignoring the elephant, we want to use its power for student learning.

Grading as a Complex Process

By “grading,” we mean not only bestowing an “A” or a “C” on a piece of student work. We also mean the process by which a teacher assesses student learning through classroom tests and assignments, the context in which good teachers establish that process, and the dialogue that surrounds grades and defines their meaning to various audiences. Grading encompasses tailoring the test or assignment to the learning goals of the course, establishing criteria and standards, helping students acquire the skills and knowledge they need, assessing student learning over time, shaping student motivation, planning course content and teaching methods, using in-class and out-of-class time, offering feedback so students can develop as thinkers and writers, communicating about students’ learning to appropriate audiences, and using results to plan improvements in the classroom, department, and institution. When we talk about grading, we have student learning most in mind.

For example, a biologist teaching a capstone course for undergraduate majors asks the students to complete scientific experiments and write them up in scientific report form. She chooses this assignment because it will teach and test her learning goals for the course—goals that she carefully discusses with her students and for which she asks the students to be responsible. She sets clear criteria and standards, and she communicates these to her students. Across the semester, she helps students learn the requisite knowledge and skills. She responds to drafts and final reports in ways that help students learn from their experiences. And after grading the set of scientific reports, she thinks, Well, the students did better than last year on experimental design, but they still didn’t do very well on graphing data. I wonder if that would improve if I. . . . and she plans a new teaching strategy. After turning in her final course grades, she analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of her students as a group, considering how their prior training in the department prepared them for the culminating research project in her course. With her report, she goes to the final faculty meeting of the semester and talks with her colleagues about how skills such as graphing might be more effectively developed earlier in the curriculum. At this point, her classroom assessment becomes departmental assessment.

In short, we view grading as a complex context-dependent process that serves multiple roles:

• Evaluation. The grading process should produce a valid, fair, and trustworthy judgment about the quality of each student’s work.

• Communication. The grade itself is a communication to the student, as well as to employers, graduate schools, and others. The grading process also spurs communication between faculty and students, among faculty colleagues, and between institutions and their constituents.

• Motivation. Grading affects how students study, what they focus on, how much time they spend, and how involved they become in the course. Thus, it is a powerful part of the motivational structure of the course.

• Organization. A grade on a test or assignment helps to mark transitions, bring closure, and focus effort for both students and teachers.

• Faculty and student reflection. The grading process can yield rich information about what students are learning collectively and can serve as the first step in systematic assessment and information-driven teaching.

This book is divided into two parts: one for classroom grading and one for wider purposes of assessment.

Part One: Grading in the Classroom

Faculty in our workshops have posed the questions that shape Part One of this book:

• What are the principles of good practice in managing the grading process?

• How can I construct good assignments?

• How can I foster healthy motivation around grades? How should I respond to the student who asks, “What do I need to do to get an ‘A’ [or a ’C’]?”

• How can I establish criteria and standards for student work? Should effort and improvement count? Should I grade on the curve? How should I handle grammar and punctuation? How can I fairly grade students who enter with a wide range of skills and preparation?

• How can I guide students’ learning process in the most effective way?

• How should I calculate course grades?

• How can I communicate effectively with students about their grades? Which kinds of comments and feedback are most useful? How can I help my students without doing their work for them?

• How can I handle the workload and make grading time efficient?

• How can I analyze the factors that are influencing learning in my classroom? How can I tell which teaching strategies work well for my students? How can what I learn through the grading process help me improve my teaching?

Part Two: How Grading Serves Broader Assessment Purposes

As faculty members assess student learning in their own classes, it makes sense for them to work collaboratively to evaluate students’ learning in broader settings: a grant-funded program, an undergraduate major, a graduate degree, a certificate program, or a general education curriculum.

In the context of requirements by accreditors and others, “assessment” is commonly defined as the systematic collection of information about student learning, or programs of student learning, for the purpose of improving that learning. Assessment has three main components:

1. Articulate the goals for student learning.

2. Gather information about how well students are achieving the goals.

3. Use the information for improvement.

In the chapters in Part Two, we argue that students’ classroom work, evaluated by faculty, can be a rich and fruitful component for assessment of student learning in wider settings. Departments and institutions need not, and should not, rely solely on standardized tests or on surveys of students and alumni.

We have shaped the second part of the book around questions that faculty and administrators ask in the assessment workshops we have led at colleges and universities. The chapters in this part address questions such as:

• Are grades themselves acceptable for assessment? If we give fair grades, what else do we need to do? What is the relationship between assessment and grades?

• How can we use students’ classroom work to evaluate learning in an entire degree program or in general education?

• What is the relationship between students’ classroom work and other assessment measures, such as surveys and standardized tests?

• How do we assess the highest kinds of learning, such as originality, global perspective, or ethical decision making? Will assessment force us to “dumb down” what we teach?

• Does assessment have to be “objective”?

• What about portfolios?

• How do we handle the workload of assessment?

Using This Book Individually or in Faculty Workshops

Part One of this book follows a course planning sequence that is as appropriate in planning a course for the first time as rethinking the course after twenty times. At the end of each chapter are suggested activities to help readers apply the suggestions presented in the chapter to their own course planning. Readers can complete the activities by working individually, but the activities are also designed for use in a workshop setting. A group of faculty might read each chapter in turn, complete the activities, and then discuss their ideas with each other before moving on to the next chapter.

Part One

Grading in the Classroom

Chapter 2

Clarifying Goals, Constructing Assignments

THE WAY TO SAVE TIME, make every moment count, and integrate grading, learning, and motivation is to plan your grading from the moment you begin planning the course. To do otherwise—to regard grading as an afterthought—is to create wasted time, dead-end efforts, and post hoc rationalizations as students question their grades.

Beginning with this chapter, we follow a course planning process, referred to as assignment centered or learner centered, that has long been recommended by experts familiar with research on learning and teaching (Fink, 2003; Weimer, 2002). In a review of the research on critical thinking, Kurfiss (1988) recommended that rather than begin with, “I must cover . . . ,” the instructor begins with, “I want my students to learn to. . . . ” Students will still be expected to master facts, concepts, and procedures, but in course planning, the faculty member keeps her eye on the ball: What do I want my students to learn, and how will I structure the course so as to maximize their learning? This chapter leads you through the first steps of the assignment-centered approach to course planning.