To be honest, the title to this post includes five words that I would never expect to write without including the modifier “not” before “excited.” I really do not enjoy grading. I like developing creative projects and assessments for students, but I really struggle to provide students with time-consuming, detailed responses, the vast majority of which I know will never be looked at. I’m happy to give students a grade, point them in the direction of why they got that grade, answer any questions they have…but I’d generally just rather they put two and two together in assessing why they received a given grade.
But this semester I am excited about grading. I am experimenting in one of my courses, a first-year seminar course on the Anthropology of Food, with phased-in student self-evaluations. It turns out if I am sharing the load in grading, and I know the students are going to read what I write because they are doing the same work, I am much more motivated to give students detailed feedback. For these reasons, I was very happy to read John Bean touting the benefits of giving students limited, targeted feedback as opposed to overwhelming, comprehensive feedback.
A few details for this particular course. First, as a first-year seminar course, I am having students take the course as a mandatory pass/fail course. I have never done this before, but given the student population and the other grading changes I have made, I thought it would work well. Second, the grading is not solely based on self-evaluations. Rather, I am attempting to gradually phase the students into a self-evaluation perspective. The way this will work is that for the students’ first two assignments (already completed), I am giving them written evaluations covering different categories outlined in the initial assignment material (e.g. content, theme, presentation, organization). For the rest of the semester, the students’ will be providing self-evaluations following each assignment, paralleling evaluations that I provide. Finally, at the end of the semester, the students’ final assignment will be a comprehensive self-evaluation of their work throughout the semester.
My goal in approaching grading in this fashion is to explicitly make my students aware of the expectations placed upon their work and to co-opt them into taking responsibility for their end result. By providing the initial evaluations in the semester, and then providing parallel evaluations throughout most of the term, I hope to give them a perspective they can model in their own self-evaluations. I would also like to make myself a better grader, something that is enabled both by co-opting students into the process and by the added freedom to be more critical knowing I am not the students’ sole evaluator.
Ultimately, I want the students to recognize their responsibility in making sure everything they do is done well. Being a good self-evaluator–whether it be of writing, presentations or simply critical thinking–is an invaluable skill. I am hoping the first-semester students I have in this class enter their second semester at Wellesley better positioned to critically evaluate their own work prior to receiving feedback from a professor, colleague or peer.
I had a teacher that did something like that with me (my class) once. It worked well, I think. I liked it. I also, according to him, gave myself a lower grade than what my work deserved, which was odd when comparing to my colleagues, who gave themselves one or two grades too high for their work. It’d be interesting to know if there is such a trend among your students as well. :)
@eloisavaldes