Truthfully, I do not offer extra credit because I find that, to the students, extra credit is an assignment they so in lieu of what I have asked. I will give ec points when a student does more than I expected, however.
Stacy
The biggest challenge I see when setting up the grading system is being fair to the students without being too lenient. I tend to use the standard system A=90-100 and so on. However, in one class I teach, I use a point system instead, and sometimes it's hard to determine how many points to give to a students because it seems he understood a good portion of the content or concept, but did not answer the questions as I had hoped. It's hard to be fair and not be too easy.
the biggest challenges is to make it fair all type of learner.
The biggest challenges for me were to find a method that was flexible while still providing consistency. I have found that using fixed percentages for each segment combined with a 1000 point scale gives me a lot of flexability and is easy to explain to students. In my system home work is worth 20% of the final grade. No matter if I give 10 or 15 assignments. The total will be 20%. This allows me to increase or reduce assignments based on how the students are progressing and what is happening in the world... storms, mandatory meetings, holidays... etc.
Hi Burke:
Yes, different students can be tested in different ways to demonstrate they've learned your material. Using a variety of assessment methods will provide the broadest of assessment choices.
Regards, Barry
Hi Daniel:
Many good teachers will use a grading rubric. These help assign weights and provide fair and consistent despritions for assigning grades.
Regards, Barry
The biggest challenge I see is to be fair to all students. I have found that different students due better in one type of testing versus another.
I think the biggest challenge is how to proportion the point system to the various aspects of the class (participation, tests & exams, research papers, and group projects).
Hi Douglas:
Great. A good evaluations system assess if the student has learned what they're supposed to and to, and how well. What you've described is a good basic way of approaching this important task.
Regards, Barry
I would say making sure that the grading system is balanced in a way so as not to put too much wieght on one part of an assessment. For instance in our culinary kitchen classes, there are professionalism scores, quizzes, skill tests, final tests and practical exam. In writing these tests and scoring it is important that these assessments won't count too highly to affect the over all total score or balance of the total score. By doing this they should also then be preceived by the students as fair and doable.
Hi Aimee:
Good thoughts. Clear rubrics shoud assure fair and consistent grading.
Regards, Barry
making the scoring a fair assesment of the material covered and the necessary outcomes of the students. creating a clear and solid rubrics can give students a good understanding of how to suceed in the course.
If your school doesn't have policies in place, trying to divide points fairly and effectively. However, my school already has a policy and system in place, so I find the challenge can be more in working with it.
Hi Blake:
I agree the course could emphasize the use of grading rubrics, as they can an invaluable tool to assuring fair and consistent grading. I have discussed at length in my responses to class participants over the years (read through some of the dicussion posts). Thanks for your summarized list.
Regards, Barry
I feel the largest challenge in developing a grading system is grading subjective material. That is why I am surprised this module didn’t provide any information on Rubrics! A rubric allow the instructor a way to grade subjective material like projects and papers or any other item where the instructor may end up being the arbitrator as to how well a student accomplished an assignment.
For those who have not heard about rubrics or how to develop one I have included some basic steps to aid you.
1. Make a list of what you want the students to accomplish with their assigned task. These should be clearly defined and understandable.
2. Organize your list from the most important to least important or chronologically.
3. Decide on an overall point value.
4. Assign each item on your list a partial point value, when all items are assigned a point value the combined total should equal the overall possible points that can be attained.
5. Distribute the rubric to the students when you explain the assignment.
Once you have developed a rubric the students clearly understand what the requirements are and you should find grading items with a rubric will be much less personal and fair to all.
Hi James:
Experienced educators can often times use their creative talents to assess their students different kinds of learning that has occured. One approach is to simply think about "what was the the student supposed to learn?" Then think about "how did I go about achiving that learning". After these two steps, the creation of an assessment should be a little bit easier.
Regards, Barry
I find for my field of instruction it is hard to deveople a combine assetment to evaluate knownledge and motorskill testing fairly.
Hi James:
By your comment I assume your institutional policy is organized such that you can only have one final test. If that is the case, you can get creative with your test questions, such as providing scenario's that the students have to analyze and apply multiple kinds of questions derived from the single scenario. It's a version of using words to describe and depict skill or application-oriented information.
Regards, Barry
The biggest challenges I have is having a single test that will evaluate the technical knownlegde and the physical ability to applied the technical knownlegde.
Hi Luke:
You've decribed a good system. Many instructors in these classes do not have the ability to arbitrarily change the grading components or their weight in classes. In these instances just trying to be as fair as possible is about the only option. Good thoughts.
Regards, Barry
