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In sum, complete, satisfactory work receives full credit (full value), and incomplete, unsatisfactory receives no credit/value. You can specify basic parameters for creative assignments and not worry about “grading” them. If your objective for an assignment is creativity, simply provide loose specs of the various ways that students can demonstrate their ability to explain and apply the material - such as a 20-minute informational video or dramatic performance, a four-minute original musical performance, a 15-page short story or an eight-minute persuasive speech. If you’re bothered by late work, you can include on-time submission among the specs, too. All you have to do is lay out that formula or whatever part of the formula is important for your students to learn and follow. Too formulaic? Let’s be real: most of our assignments follow a formula. This may mean specifying the organization as well as contents of each section of the work, perhaps even paragraph by paragraph. They must describe exactly what features in the work you want and will look for. You must write the specs for a complex assignment very carefully, clearly and thoroughly. Or the specs may be more complex: for instance, the work fulfills the criteria you set out for a good literature review, research proposal or substantial reflection.
#IGRADE STUDENTS PLUS#
The specs may be as simple as “completeness”: for instance, all the questions are answered, all the problems attempted in good faith or all the directions followed (that is, the work satisfies the assignment), plus the work meets a required length. Rather, imagine that they define truly “satisfactory” as at least B work - maybe even A minus work. But don’t think of them as defining D or even C minus work. Think of the specs as a one-level, uni-dimensional rubric. This is why I call this grading system specifications, or specs, grading. Students earn all of the points associated with the work, or none of them, depending on whether their work meets the particular specifications you laid out for it. Imagine another grading system, one where you grade all assignments and tests satisfactory/unsatisfactory, pass/fail. And you can comfortably make the change in your own classes and not confront your administration. Our grading system is broken, yet we educators keep using it. At the program and university level, accreditors eschew grades and demand independent evidence of student achievement of learning outcomes.
Most employers of our graduates give grades little heed in hiring.
For students, it’s all about maximizing partial credit.Ĭonsider, too, the value that external stakeholders attach to our grading. The way they challenge our grading decisions in the hope of squeezing more points out of us - despite the agonizing care and attention to detail we give to their work. The way students stress over the points their work does or doesn’t get. The way we struggle to be fair in giving the same number of points to works of comparable quality, even though they differ a great deal - and the time it takes us to make these hairsplitting decisions. The way we allocate points on the basis of apparent quality. Pause a moment to consider the way we’ve been grading our students’ work since time immemorial.
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