Thriving in Academe
Grading and Assessment
A worthwhile
grading process promotes student learning.
By Barbara E. Walvoord, University of Notre
Dame
Faculty on campuses across the
country frequently ask: ‘How can we build on the grading process?’ Here’s
how.
In the restroom near my classroom, I
overheard two students. “Wadja get on the paper?” one asked
her friend. The friend replied, “Aaah, I only got a B. I was
really disappointed. He wrote all over it. He musta wrote a book. I
didn’t even read it.” It’s all here, I thought to
myself-—grade fixation, grade inflation, wasted effort, miscommunication—everything
except a healthy focus on learning. Classroom grading, however, doesn’t
have to be this way. Four principles can help make classroom grading
time-efficient, conducive to learning, and useful for departmental
and institutional assessment: (1) integrate grading with student engagement,
motivation, and emotion; (2) establish explicit criteria and standards;
(3) focus your grading time efficiently toward learning; and (4) use
the grading process as assessment to inform departmental and institutional
decisions.
This article reflects my experience
as a teacher and, in my role as faculty development director, my work
with hundreds of other faculty in institutions large and small, public
and private, and in disciplines from accounting to zoology, from office
management to swine management. In every institution I’ve seen, “grading” tops
the list of the topics faculty say they most need workshops on. When
institutions want to assess learning, their most common question is: “How
can we build on the grading process?”
Meet
Barbara E. Walvoord
Barbara E. Walvoord is coordinator of the University of Notre Dame’s
self-study for the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. She was
founding director of faculty development programs at Notre Dame, the University
of Cincinnati, Loyola College in Maryland, and Central College in Iowa. Named
the Maryland English Teacher of the Year for Higher Education in 1987, she
has taught literature and writing for 30 years. She has published widely on
assessment, grading, teaching, productivity, and writing across the curriculum,
and has consulted or led faculty workshops on these topics at several hundred
colleges, community colleges, and universities. Barbara can be reached at walvoord@nd.edu.
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