{"id":154,"date":"2017-10-16T19:08:45","date_gmt":"2017-10-16T19:08:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/catherinedenial.org\/blog\/?p=154"},"modified":"2017-10-16T19:11:21","modified_gmt":"2017-10-16T19:11:21","slug":"making-the-grade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catherinedenial.org\/blog\/uncategorized\/making-the-grade\/","title":{"rendered":"Making the Grade"},"content":{"rendered":"

I saw a tweet sometime last year that suggested if one found grading an onerous task, the solution was to design assignments that were fun to grade.*<\/p>\n

I admit to thinking the idea was preposterous.\u00a0 Grading, for all twenty-two years of my teaching life, had been an uphill battle against the forces of procrastination, resentment, and frustration.\u00a0 This had nothing to do with the quality of the work that my students produced \u2013 their papers were regularly fantastic.\u00a0 But I anticipated sitting down with a stack of work to grade with a consistent sense of dread.\u00a0 It was all so time-consuming and unpleasant.<\/p>\n

And then at this summer\u2019s Digital Pedagogy Lab Institute<\/a>, Chris Friend<\/a> asked those of us in the Intro track why we thought instructors should be the arbiter of grades.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>On the surface, the question seemed silly \u2013 surely we had the training and expertise to measure how well a student was doing in our courses?\u00a0 And it wasn\u2019t as if we could do away with grades \u2013 all of our institutions required that we turn those in.\u00a0 But of course it wasn\u2019t a silly question, it was merely an unexpected one.\u00a0 There was no reason, Chris suggested, why we had to impose grades in a one-way process.\u00a0 Why not allow students to participate in grading? Why not make it a collaboration instead of an exercise in authority?<\/p>\n

Huh, I remember thinking.\u00a0 Good question.<\/p>\n

I sat that day, and the days afterwards, and crafted a syllabus that took up the best suggestions from our group about grading, outlining a collaborative process between my students and myself.\u00a0 Instead of giving my students a grading rubric as something already established, I would give it to them as a suggestion, and we\u2019d talk in class about whether anything needed adding, or seemed unfair.\u00a0 On the day that papers were due, I\u2019d hand out a self-evaluation to each student, with questions based on the grading guidelines.\u00a0 That, along with the paper itself, would become the basis for us to have a conversation, one-on-one, about what their grade should be.<\/p>\n

This past two weeks I put all of that into practice.<\/p>\n

My students were almost uniformly floored by having the opportunity to shape the grading standards for the class.\u00a0 \u201cThis is weird!\u201d said more than one person, so we talked about why it was weird, and why I was trying this approach, and whether they saw it as meaningful.\u00a0 We made changes to the grading standards, shifting a couple of things around, tweaking wording.\u00a0 And we took a vote on whether everyone agreed it was fair.\u00a0 (There were no nay votes.\u00a0 If there had been, we would have kept working until everyone felt comfortable.)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n