Academia Stack Exchange
Academia Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [grading]

Queries pertaining to the process of determining suitable grades for coursework. This tag is NOT appropriate for queries about interpreting or improving grades.

The tag concerns different problems associated with grading course work. Grading involves how to assess work performed and how to provide objective/fair measures of a student's ability to fulfill requirements in a course context. The tag can be used for questions regarding the use of different assessment systems, problems when setting grades etc.

The tag should not be used when discussing grades, for example comparisons between different grade systems (between countries etc). Then the tag should be used.

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What to do about "grade grubbers?"

An annoying aspect of working with a "strict" grading system (e.g., 90%+ = A, 85% = A-, 80% = B+, etc.) is what I call the "grade grubbing" phenomenon: the people who feel compelled to raise complaints about the grading because they didn't get the…
aeismail
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In a yes/no question, a student gives the right answer and an unnecessary but wrong explanation. How to grade?

Example: Q: Does Venus exhibit retrograde motion? (1 mark) A: No. This is because Venus orbits the Sun and not the Earth. The first part is correct: Venus does not exhibit retrograde motion. But the explanation is incorrect: the reason Venus…
Allure
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How do teachers learn to grade?

I teach math with about two years of experience now. In general I have found that all the cliches about graduate school teaching you "how to research but not how to teach" are true. But I have also found many great resources (at my institution,…
sdg238
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How to reward students for learning from mistakes without penalizing those who didn't make mistakes in the first place?

We're thinking of implementing a policy where if a student asks a question/makes a mistake in a lab, they are required to write down what that question/mistake was and how it was resolved. These "lab notebooks" (for want of a better word) will be…
Michael Stachowsky
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Is it fair to give zeros to students who missed early assignments because they added the class late?

Last semester, I was teaching a class where there is a small assignment (~2% of the total course assessment) that students need to submit every week. Unfortunately, some of the students joined the class late, due to add/drop forms that needed to be…
I Like to Code
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Dispute grade penalty for reading in class?

I am in an large, entry level course targeted at engineers. A few weeks ago, I was reading for another class while my professor covered material I was familiar with, and she marked me down as absent for at least one and maybe two classes. She has a…
Irritated
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Grading: students give correct answers, but in the wrong places

In the last assignment I've given my students, one of the questions has two subquestions that go as follows. Explain how Theory X, as developed in Smith (2010) accounts for dataset A. Briefly summarize the additional data that, according to Smith…
Koldito
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How is grading by curve fair at all? Are there any arguments in favor of it?

Per definition, grading by a curve usually means that the students are assigned grades based on the statistical distribution of the test/exam results. No matter what, say 20% of students will always fail, and only say 10% will get a perfect mark. I…
Neinstein
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Grading schemes to encourage effort

I'll be teaching a graduate-level mathematically oriented class with probably less than 20 students. I have to grade the students (our system doesn't allow for pass-fail grading), and while I don't want to be overly fussy about the grades (this is…
Suresh
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How do I appropriately penalize late projects?

I am teaching an elective course in which students' grades are determined on the basis of a final project. Due to unforeseen circumstances, this year I had to grant a one-week blanket exception to all of the students. However, several students asked…
aeismail
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Blind grading for exams isn't very blind

TL;DR: How should I blindly grade exams when I can recognize over half of the papers by the handwriting? Situation: I'm a TA for an first year physics class of approximately 50-60 students. Due to a complaint along the lines of "the grader hates me…
Kevin L
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Realizing I should have graded more harshly at the end of the class

It's my first time teaching a college class as an instructor. My grade breakdown is as follows: Worksheets 15% Lab attendance and participation 15% Homework 40% Final Exam 30% Discussion forum 3% extra credit I have two TAs who have been doing the…
Tea Tree
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Student requests to know their "grades so far"

I periodically get requests from students to know their "grade so far". From what I can tell, this is becoming more prevalent, and more encouraged by administrators. And there is a box for "Total Grade" in our LMS, turned on by default, which I have…
academic
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How do I reassure my students that my grading really will be “strict but fair” when the university has an “official” grading policy?

One of the biggest challenges I face year after year in teaching—and one that seems to affect my teaching evaluations—is that students are convinced that they are doing poorly in my course, no matter how much I reassure them that this isn’t the…
aeismail
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Common grade curving or scaling techniques

I'm working on a small application which would hypothetically allow instructors to perform a variety of grade transformation techniques on a given distribution. (I don't intend for the application to actually be used) What are some of the more…
Collin
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