28 Grading Fairly

To ensure the effectiveness of assessments, design them transparently, stating the purpose, task, and criteria (see the Transparent assignment design chapter) and provide clarity around the grading system. For fair grading, be mindful of your own perspectives and potential preferences (Haugnes et al., 2018).

Fair grading strategies aim to be accurate (weighting more recent achievement), motivational (supportive toward students, include retakes and redos). Here are some suggestions:

• Consider co-creating rubrics with your students in class. Students who receive transparent assignment rubrics in advance have more chances to meet expectations and succeed in the task and are less likely to perceive their grades as unfair. For written assignments, consider asking your students to use the rubric to assess themselves and to turn in their scores along with the assignment. Here are rubric samples for various areas: Rubrics for Essential Learning Outcomes (from the AAC&U’s VALUE: Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education project). You may use these as a starting point, but it is crucial to tailor your rubrics to the purpose, task, and criteria of the assignment.
• After you have graded all the exams or papers, reexamine the first few that you graded. Are the standards you applied at the beginning of the grading process the same as the standards you used at the end? If the instructional team includes multiple graders (TAs, co-instructors), take time to do a calibration with a few sample papers to ensure that your expectations are consistent. More information about this strategy is available in the For TAs section, below.
• For team projects, grade individual achievement, not the group’s.
• If appropriate, consider incorporating opportunities for retakes and redos.

To motivate your students to achieve academic success, we recommend you nurture a community of feedback and encourage a growth mindset (your own as much as your students):

• Educate your students about growth mindset, a notion that skills can be developed through dedication, hard work, peer support, and effective learning strategies (Dweck, 2006). Introduce assessments as tools to estimate current skills, knowledge, and learning, not innate abilities, paying attention not only to results but also to progress in your assessment methods.
• To help your students develop a growth mindset and to model it yourself, provide them with opportunities to reflect on their learning process and progress through one-minute papers, learning portfolios, or a “letter to self” activity. In this type of activity, students write a brief letter to a struggling student in the future about their experience with this material or a project, or students craft a letter to themselves that reflects on their experience in this course, their goals, challenges, strengths as learners, and the resources they plan to access.
• Account for your own mindset as an instructor. “Course evaluations revealed that students were demotivated and had more negative experiences in classes taught by fixed (versus growth) mindset faculty” (Canning et al., 2019).

💡 Describe a strategy that you might use to make your assessments more effective and develop a brief plan for its implementation.

📚 For TAs

A course supervisor or department may dictate grading guidelines, although you may have discretion in assigning at least some percentage of grades in a course.

TAs can rehearse and calibrate their grading. During this process, TAs review identical exam answers or papers, compare the responses and grades they would have assigned, and discuss differing reactions and perceptions. They and the supervising faculty members then develop a rubric that specifies the criteria everyone will use to evaluate student work. Another option is for each TA to identify an A, B, and C paper, and then compare their selections and explain their reasonings.

If you are a TA, finding out the answers to these questions may help you feel more at ease in the grading process:

• How much responsibility do I have for assigning particular or overall grades?
• Will my supervising faculty member provide instructions on grading and a grading schedule?
• Does my department recommend a grading curve that I am supposed to use in the course?
• Does my department or the course faculty instructor employ a rubric for grading particular assignments or exams? If so, when will I provide it to students?
• Will TAs and the course faculty instructor discuss standards and expectations for grading? Will TAs calibrate their grades via a practice grading exercise?
• How will I plan for students with accommodations?
• What is the policy on late work?
• What is the policy on student absences and their effect on overall grades?
• If you give a grade for class participation, how will it be implemented?
• Do your students know how their grades are calculated?
• What is the departmental, course supervisor’s, or my policy on makeup exams and late assignments?

If students in your class are struggling or are in danger of failing, be proactive and reach out to them and to your course supervisor. Include your supervisor on all email communications related to grading issues with your students and document in-person conversations with a follow-up message.

💡Please reflect:

After reading this chapter, what would be your next step? What kinds of support do you need?