Right Now
First Exam
The First Major Graded Assignment
About a month into the semester, many classes will have a first quiz, exam or paper.
When it comes to exams, students care about fairness. Some issues to consider:
- Is the exam/quiz/paper representative of the material you've covered so far?
Are the questions in proportion to the time spent or emphasis placed on concepts?
- Are exam questions (or paper expectations) clear and unambiguous?
- Can you develop an objective grading scheme that will enable you to explain to students
exactly how points were awarded (or deducted)?
After grading the exam/paper, did you find student performance was what you expected it to be?
Better? If so - be sure to praise them! Worse? If so, why might that be? Some
questions you might ask yourself:
- Was the exam/paper assignment as clear as you thought?
- Are students preparing appropriately? If not, how can you help them to prepare more fully?
- Are your expectations reasonable for the students you're teaching?
Discussing graded assignments with individual students
After the first major graded assignment is returned, you may be visited by students who
want to go over the exam with you. Some students want to go over the exam or paper so they
can learn how to do better in the future. Others come in to argue over points -- and many
of these are students who have worked hard and are used to being high achievers.
It's delightful to have motivated, earnest students -- but the dealing with discussions
over points can be challenging.
The first step, of course, is to be as consistent and fair as you can be when you grade.
Make sure you apply the same criteria to all papers and exams. You may find it useful when
grading papers to have a template with a list of the elements you're looking for and a rubric
for how you evaluate each. When grading exams, on your grading key, you may want to note how
many points you award (or deduct) for particular answers. You may also find it's easier to grade
one question (or a page of questions) for the entire class, rather than grading exams
start-to-finish for each individual student.
If you're confident that you've been consistent with your grading, it's easier to
be firm with a student who is looking for additional points on a question or paper.
Of course, it's always possible that you made an error in grading (or adding!) and you
should make adjustments to grades when that happens.
The issue in the mind of the student may simply be the grade, but it may also be about self-image.
It's important to emphasize to students that grades don't necessarily always reflect what they know;
anyone can have a bad moment on an exam or not express a thought as clearly as intended.
But even more to the point, we're not all right all the time - and we're still "okay."
That's as important a lesson as the content of any course. Learning how to recognize
our own mistakes, how to face them and to come up with ways to make fewer in the future
is an important part of learning and of life.
For more tips on grading, see
http://www.bu.edu/cet/class/grading_tips.html#finaltips
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