I agree a good simplified rubric saves time and confusion. It gives us a format to follow, and students know exactly what is expected of them!
Grading rubrics for class presentations can be incredibly useful for time management. By spending a little extra time to develop a detailed rubric, one can focus more effectively on the presentations themselves and grading becomes a simple process of checking off the presentation requirements that have been met.
In-class reviews are a great time saver Ted. We can administer feedback to students all at once instead of doing it individually while grading. We can also spark discussion of course topics that can engage students and inspire them to learn more.
Test questions are simply marked correct or incorrect to speed the actual grading process. We then will review the questions in class once all tests have been taken so that students will be able to understand where they may have misunderstood.
Great to hear Jeff! Sometimes a little validation is all we need to continue to stay on the right track. Sounds like you've developed some systems that work really well for you. Great work!
For me this was more of a confirmation of the methods that I am already using. I use short answer questions and not essay and the short answers must be filled in on a column on the right side of the page. I also use a combination of true false, multiple choice, and matching questions .... All with the answers on the right hand side of the page. My key sheet just lines up next to the student answers and grading goes rather quickly. Since I do not look at the names, this also has the benefit of removing any potential bias in evaluating student work.
I have a 50% on line testing and a 50% written paper/projects grading system. In the culinary college that I work at it seems to work well.
I agree oral presentation is another way to see if the student really understand what was being taught.
I would like to have all tests online and be graded automatically by grade book analyzer. Giving exam in on ground modality is very time consuming
The underlining method works really well Christopher. It brings important information to the forefront while also helping the student remember to make all the required supporting arguments in their essay.
It's true Karla. True / false as well as short essay are both quick to grade and valuable in assessing student comprehension. Sometimes we have to go deeper with extended essay questions, but often these formats work fine.
multiple choice, true and false questions are much faster to grade and you still get a very good ideas on whether the students knows the answers. For homework, short essay questions would be a great format to grade easier.
I am an English teacher, so a certain amount of my time is spent with essays. I do like the idea of asking students to underline important parts, such as thesis, topic sentence, etc. Chris
Joe, I agree with you and as I was reading through the answers to this question, I kept wondering how an instructor knows if the student can apply the skills if all he or she is asking for is rote memorization. A number of people have talked about hands-on projects for various classes and I think that solves problems for those courses in seeing that the students can use the information, but it seems that application has to be an objective in every course.
I teach composition and literature. It would be easy for me to give students grammar tests with T/F or multiple choice questions, but I would not really know if the student could write. I can only see that in the essay format. Are we saying that students in career schools will be able to do their jobs once they graduate without being able to apply the skills or are we just hoping that they do know how to apply this if they have the elements down pat?
Dolores Kiesler
I must say that my immediate response to this module was jealousy. Let me explain. I am an English instructor and the majority of assignments for my classes are essays. Besides grading for the content of the essays, I also have to grade for the grammar and punctuation of the essays. There simply is no shortcut for grading this type of assignment. I have, however, developed a set of common responses for various grammatical and other sentence style errors that I am able to cut and paste as needed. This works well with Word since I can cat and paste the comments onto the Clipboard and only have to insert as needed. The other way that I am still working on perfecting is using grading rubrics as I grade. I can then scan a paper to check for formatting or in-text citation and then enter the points for that area on the grading rubric. I can also ask students to underline the thesis of the paper so that it is easier to locate and evaluate, but when it comes down to it, I need to read every word of the essay in order to grade it.
I do sometimes teach literature courses and I am planning to research the two sites listed for creating tests. These seem like they would be very helpful.
Dolores Kiesler
This is a good approach. I will continue to keep the answer sheet and have the students help me grade the test.
I type an answer sheet for short essay exams. This way I merely mark their answer "correct" or "incorrect"; then they can refer to the typed answer sheet. Of course the exam would next to change from term to term.
I teach English Composition, so the paper load can get pretty heavy. I learned that I don't have to control every aspect of their writing. I use a rubric to specify exactly what I was looking for in their paper. I leave a column for additional comments. This works well for me. I also go over a lot of assignments as a class.
Have students highlight key words in their essays.
I think this may also be a FERPA violation? (Allowing students to see other student's grades.)
