Grading Strategies

In their classic text on grading at the college/university level, Walvoord and Anderson (2010) suggest that too often, instructors waste valuable time reading through papers or assignments when the student has not even met the basic requirements of the assignment, or has not put any effort into it. To eliminate this frustrating and unnecessary work, the authors recommend instituting a gateway requirement, whereby an assignment that has not met the basic requirements is returned to the student with very little or no instructor time spent on it. Walvoord and Johnson (2010, 100) further remark that “you can give it an F, or hand it back with instructions to revise and resubmit, perhaps with a grade cap or penalty for the resubmission. But you need not spend time on careless student work”.

However, to use a gateway approach, you need to be very clear with the students about what the minimum requirements of the assignment are, and what will happen if the gateway is not met. Gateway requirements could include a variety of elements, depending on the nature of the assignment. For a paper, examples of gateway requirements could be any of the following:

• a particular page length, double-spaced
• proper use of English
• correct sentence structure
• paper divided into well-labelled, logical and meaningful sections
• a complete and properly formatted reference list
• correct in-text citations
• a hard copy submission, etc.

All the gateway requirements need to be made clear to the students prior to the assignment. For instance, if a particular citation style is required, students need to be made aware of where to find information on that style, and how to use it correctly. Some class time may need to be spent to ensure that all students understand the gateway requirements, because the stakes can be considerable if they do not. Gateway requirements can also form the basis of an assignment checklist, discussed previously in section 1.

One of the most time-consuming aspects of grading for any course is providing comments on student papers. On the one hand, you want to give feedback on both great work and any noticeable problems/issues, but too many negative comments are discouraging for the student and may actually work against learning. Positive and negative comments need to be balanced. How do you provide worthwhile comments to students while protecting your time? There are a few ways to approach this problem.

• Consider using shorthand comments: One suggestion is to use shorthand comments on papers and hand back papers with a guide to that shorthand. Indeed, often we make the same comments over and over again on many papers. Rather than repeating those comments in full sentences, a shorthand comment of perhaps a word or acronym, keyed to a guide can save considerable time for professors. That’s not to say either that all comments should be “cookie-cutter” in this way, but using this technique for half of one’s written comments can shave hours off the grading process.
  
  
• Develop a short comments thesaurus: Along the same lines as shorthand comments, you could develop a thesaurus for yourself of short pithy comments that are fast and easy to use, and convey either praise or concern. For instance, underline a point made by the student and write in the margin – “Good point!”, “Great insight!”, “Nice approach!”, “Good analysis!”, “Well written!” etc. Short pithy comments with underlining and exclamation points convey to the student that you have considered the paper in detail, yet you haven’t had to write paragraphs of comments.
  
  Praise and encouragement can also be conveyed by slightly longer phrases such as: “Good point – bring this up in class”, or “Worth developing in another paper”, or “Do you think this perspective is the key?”. Keep track of the comments and phrases you use and add them to your thesaurus.
  
  As for comments on problematic areas of the work, short comments work equally well here. For instance, you could say “Watch your sentence structure!”, “Illogical reasoning”, “Too verbose!”, “Needs better flow”, ‘Basic premise missing”, “Needs clearer articulation”, etc. Try to capture the essence of the problem in as few words as possible, while still making it clear to the student what is needed.
  
  
• Limit comments on grammar and punctuation: When grammar and punctuation are poorly done, many instructors feel compelled to make corrections, but this is a losing game. Walvoord and Johnson (2010, 101) are adamant that grading time should not be spent on grammar and punctuation problems. Rather, they suggest that you could edit a paragraph showing what needs to be done, or select one or two of the most problematic areas, circle some examples and make a comment like “You often misuse the apostrophe – please consult a handbook or go to the Writing Centre to learn the rules”.
  
  
• Develop grading rubrics: By utilizing a detailed grading rubric or checklist for papers and other assignments, you can streamline the grading process and reduce the need for extensive written comments. Rubrics can also obviate problems of inconsistency when you’re dealing with more than one TA grader. Rubrics can be shared with the students so that they have a clear understanding of what they need to do and how their work will be scored. Effective rubrics can thus facilitate a faster grading system that is also fairer for students.
  
  See: Grading with Rubrics
  
  If you are not using a rubric or checklist, give students a handout of what the grade ranges are, and what is required to achieve particular grades on their assignments.

There is no rule that says you need to grade, or comment on, everything the student writes or produces for a certain assignment. Your assignment learning outcomes are your guide here. Once you have decided what you want the students to demonstrate, you have the option to limit most of your comments to just those elements, and grade accordingly. Walvoord and Johnson (2010, 103) further suggest that you use your comments only for “teachable moments” (i.e. those instances where the student could make an improvement for the next essay etc.). Commenting extensively on a final product when there is no further chance to improve does little for the student and even less for you.

Another way to build a steadier stream of graded feedback into your course without making grading a full-time job is to maintain a simple grading system for short assignments. For example, you can grade papers on a three-to-five point scale, with specific pieces of information required for each point. For example, on a short paper, you could assign points for a clearly stated thesis or goal, a well structured and coherent argument, appropriate coverage of the topic, good use of citations, a range of readings etc. etc. A five-point scale can also be used numerically, such that 5 = 90-100%, 4 = 80-90%, 3 = 70=80%, 2 = 60-70% and 1 is basically inadequate. Not only is grading faster with a limited scale, but it also cuts down on student grumbling about small percentage differences on papers (i.e. my friend got 85% but I only got 82%).

A Check/Check-minus/Check-plus system also makes your job as a grader quicker and easier while providing feedback to instructor and student alike. You can quickly go through the assignment and use checks, or checks with pluses or minuses, for various points made by the student, thus avoiding the need to make comments on all those points. If you are using a Check Plus/Minus system, you will need to decide how to convert the checks to grades. For instance, a majority of Check Pluses on the paper could be A, a majority of Checks could be B and Check Minuses could be C, or something similar. Fewer than a certain number of checks would be a failure. It’s important to realize that you need not grade everything on a 100-point scale with copious comments.

Summative assessment can impose a heavy burden on the instructor (and TAs), especially in large classes. To cut down on the grading required, one option is to split students into groups. In a class of 200, organizing your class into 50 groups of four students to work on weekly homework assignments or papers reduces your grading load by 75%, while still giving students a chance to practice their skills and receive feedback. This substantial difference in workload may make collecting homework assignments or additional paper assignments feasible in these large classes. Such group work also has value in promoting the kinds of communication skills that represent critical learning goals in so many of our classrooms.

However, group projects also raise different challenges in cultivating fair and equitable groups that you will need to address. To help promote active contribution by all group members, there are a number of tactics that you can try, such as:

• assigning each member of the group a role in the group
• building a peer review element into the group work so students feel accountable to one another
• offering small bonuses on exams for those groups whose members all maintained a certain average, in order to promote positive interdependence.

For more information on group work, see our resources on Teamwork/Group Work.

Don’t put off your grading until you absolutely have to do it. Rather, plan for enough hours to accomplish the task in smaller chunks. Remember that not all assignments have to be graded in one sitting, and in fact, grading this way may lead to tiredness, lack of focus and grading inconsistency.

Set a goal for yourself such as, “This morning I will grade xx papers”. Then give yourself permission to do something else whenever you are finished (maybe do a bit of writing or research reading?). In the afternoon, resume your grading and tackle another xx papers. It may take a few extra hours to grade this way, but in the end, you will feel less tired and frustrated, and your grading will be more consistent throughout.

After you have graded a certain number of papers, review your rubric or checklist to ensure that you are grading consistently. If you are working with TAs, recommend that they do the same.

Take periodic breaks (say every 10 papers, or every 15 short reports etc.) where you get up and move around. This helps to keep the grading task manageable and less overwhelming.

Curving grades (referred to as “norm-referenced” grading in the assessment literature) means that a student’s performance is determined by their relative standing to their classmates. In other words, a certain percentage of the students receive each grade, such as 10% get As, etc. Here, student success depends on how well other students in the class perform (Parkes & Zimmaro, 2017).

A fundamental assumption of curving grades is that the population in question (a class in this case) is distributed normally (i.e. is a representative sample). Yet we know, for example, that Western undergraduates have amongst the highest entering high-school averages in Canada. It’s fair to conclude that our undergraduate students are not representative of a general population and, in turn, any curving will not correct equally for variance. When class size is smaller (less than 200 students) or in upper-year courses, it is also fair to assume that there is no representative sample. If there is no representative sample, then grading on a curve is fundamentally flawed and unfair.

Walvoord and Johnson (2010, 122) are also opposed to grading on a curve. They comment that grading on a curve reduces the instructor’s role to one that “focuses on awarding a limited number of grades by a formula, rather than a role that includes rewarding all learning with the grade it deserves.” The authors also point out that there is the “possibility that standards for a grade will be lowered, to enable a certain percentage of students to receive that grade.”

Another significant negative impact of norm-referenced grading identified by Schinske & Tanner (2014) is increased competition amongst classmates for grades. This, in turn, has unintended impacts on learning, as a competitive classroom environment has been shown to lower rates of student learning and retention. Increased competition will also largely rule out opportunities for peer-based pedagogies.

The best way to promote grading consistency among your TAs is to meet as a group soon after collecting an exam or paper. If you are grading essays, identify and photocopy an exemplary essay, a few mediocre essays, and a poor essay and distribute these examples to each member of the group. Prior to the meeting, have each TA grade and comment upon these essays. At the meeting, go through each essay one-by-one. Ask each person what grade they gave to each essay and why. Ask them about the best and worst aspects of each piece of writing. Such a meeting provides a wonderful opportunity for your graders, especially inexperienced graders, to think about how they’re approaching their grading. The meeting can also serve as a forum for you to explain your expectations for exams or papers. It is unfair to assume that your TAs will simply know what you’re looking for on any given exam question or paper topic.

A carefully designed grading rubric can both minimize the amount of time spent grading, an important consideration in large classes, and serve as a common standard for your TAs (see our article on Grading Rubrics). You can even enlist TA support in constructing a grading rubric. Such an exercise can be valuable to TAs because it facilitates the grading process, but it also gives them an opportunity to play a major role in student assessment, a valuable experience for those TAs who hope to teach courses of their own at some future time. It also gives you a new and unique perspective on class exams, papers, and assignments that may ultimately enrich the course.

You can better ensure consistency by assigning different grading sections to different TAs. This is more challenging with essays, but is a common approach for exam-grading. What this technique entails specifically depends on the makeup of your exam, but for example, perhaps one TA grades the short-answer section, a second TA grades the first essay, and a third TA grades the second essay. While there still may be some inconsistency in the “harshness” of grading between sections, with this method, students can hardly argue that their particular grader is tougher: everyone’s exam is graded by the same graders!

If you have TAs who are also grading, consider having an informal grading session where you all grade together. This approach is particularly effective with exams, where issues that arise with exam answers can be discussed and dealt with together. Consider adding a pizza lunch or dinner as a value-added element for the group.

Besides exams, grading papers and other written assignments together also can be beneficial. It’s not necessary to grade all the papers together, but you might ask your TAs to spend two hours with you grading together to see what issues arise, and then finish the rest of the grading individually. This can be very helpful for inexperienced TAs, and also helps to promote consistency in grading across all the graders, particularly if a rubric or checklist is being used.

Instructors of large classes approach grade complaints in a variety of ways. Some insist that undergraduates come directly to them with their concerns. Others suggest that undergraduates speak to their TAs first before consulting the professor. Still others give full authority to their TAs to handle all grade complaints. The important thing is that you have a formalized system, preferably outlined in your syllabus. Students should know what is expected of them, and what their options are if they feel that they have been graded unfairly. Tell students up front what the protocol will be.

One common technique to avoid frivolous grade complaints is requiring a written explanation of the complaint at an early stage in your protocol. Oftentimes, upon starting this piece of writing, undergraduates with a visceral reaction to a bad grade will see that the grade was deserved. By requiring this piece of writing, students are forced to confront the written comments on their exam or paper. Sometimes, students simply see the bad mark and seek out the instructor, rather than reading and mulling over grader comments.

Another way to ensure that students are carefully considering the grade and comments, and aren’t simply going with a visceral reaction, is to have a 24-hour rule. What that means is that students are required to take 24-hours before contacting the TA or professor with a grade complaint. This 24-hour period often serves as a “cooling off” period in which students can read and think about grader comments.