Re: students grade themselves

[Steve Krause <skrause@bgnet.bgsu.edu>]

On Wed, 3 Jan 1996, Lynne Belcher wrote:

> I agonize over grades.  Grading is the only thing I really hate about 
> teaching.  I just don't know what to do instead of assigning grades.  

Personally, I am not as bothered about being graded or doing the 
grading.  I don't know if this is just a little weird quirk about me or 
what, but from the very beginning of my teaching career, I never really 
agonized about grades (except for students who were failing in one 
fashion or another-- those are still hard grades to give, most of the 
time). To me, the whole "secret" to all of this is to let students 
know where you think they stand frequently throughout the term (as 
opposed to one big "surprise" at the end) and to give students as much of 
an opportunity to respond or provide input as possible.

I did recently try a little experiment:  I taught a writing-oriented 
class where I never gave out a grade the whole term, just responses more 
or less targeted toward revision.  At the end of the class, I asked 
students to grade themselves and write a brief explanation as to why they 
ought to get that grade.  In every case, the students gave themselves a 
grade I was comfortable with, so that's what they got.  It seemed a 
pretty painless process to me...
> 
> Some of you have suggested collaborative writing projects, but when I 
> was a student I hated collaborative projects because a few people did 
> all the work while the others did nothing.  The upper division writing 
> courses I teach always contain collaborative projects, and students 
> always complain about having to do the work for others.  I'm anxious 
> for some solutions!
> 
Lynne, when I have collaborative projects of one sort or another, I ask 
each student to also submit a brief explaination of what they did as part 
of the project.  This is hardly a foolproof system, but it too has seemed 
to work pretty well.

==============================================================================
    Steve Krause * Department of English * Bowling Green State University
     Bowling Green, OH * 43403 * (419) 372-8934 *skrause@bgnet.bgsu.edu 
         On the WWW at http://ernie.bgsu.edu/~skrause/CV/Main.html
==============================================================================