Philosophy
It is one of those unquestioned beliefs in the world of higher ed that grading is subjective. Some instructors are easy graders and others are hard graders and there is no fact in the world about what an assignment really deserves.
But I had an experience that seems to offer evidence -- albeit limited and anecdotal -- to the contrary. I was on a committee a few years back and a colleague who teaches music history conducted an exercise with us. She brought in three papers and asked us to grade them. We all assigned letter and plus/minus grades independently and then compared our grades to the one she actually assigned. The committee had me, a philosopher, a German prof, a Spanish prof, a sociologist, a physicist, an English writing prof, a biologist, and and an economist.
On all three papers, we were uniformly within a plus/minus grade of each other. I was stunned. It was clear that one paper was an A range paper, well-written, insightful, had a structure that clearly displayed someone who thought through what s/he wanted to argue before s/he started typing. Another was a sure B/B- paper. Someone who had clearly cracked a couple of books and had a sense of what they were saying, but added nothing of his/her own mind to the acceptably written paper. The last was a D-/F paper. The lack of grasp of the material was clear to even those of us who knew nothing of the material ourselves. The lack of citations, the lack of explanation of seemingly important points gave us no choice in the mark to assign. The grade of this paper, like the other two, jumped off the page.
So, was this a lucky chance case and grading really is a subjective matter of taste or is grading really more objective than we usually claim? Could it be that the difficulty of the assignments is what varies and not the grading?
- Handwriting And The Examined Life
Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living, but then Socrates never had to grade the exams. I have a stack of logic blue books in front of me which means I will do everything I can to avoid grading them...including writing a blog post...
- An Open Letter To Students
Dear Students, Sorry to interrupt, I know how busy you are right now and how stressful the end of the semester is with papers and exams. I know you've been listening to me go on and on all semester, but I have one last thing I really need to say....
- How Can You Have Any Pudding If You Don't Eat Your Meat: The Effectiveness Of Grades
Thinking about grades for obvious reasons. I am ambivalent about grades. On the one hand, it is certainly true that students rise to expectations and the mechanism by which those expectations are communicated is grading work. If one teacher gives the...
- A Grading Thought Experiment
This is one of the times of year when those of my ilk turn from teachers into graders. A colleague of mine proposed an experiment the other day and I'm interested to see if your intuitions are the same as mine. Take a stack of papers, grade just...
- Apologies
Hello, illustrious readers, So sorry for not posting for a few days. I've been lying in wait for the computer, hoping that my philosopher would take a break from the paper-writing and student-grade-preparing. He is taking a break now, so I'm going...
Philosophy
Another Grading Question
It is one of those unquestioned beliefs in the world of higher ed that grading is subjective. Some instructors are easy graders and others are hard graders and there is no fact in the world about what an assignment really deserves.
But I had an experience that seems to offer evidence -- albeit limited and anecdotal -- to the contrary. I was on a committee a few years back and a colleague who teaches music history conducted an exercise with us. She brought in three papers and asked us to grade them. We all assigned letter and plus/minus grades independently and then compared our grades to the one she actually assigned. The committee had me, a philosopher, a German prof, a Spanish prof, a sociologist, a physicist, an English writing prof, a biologist, and and an economist.
On all three papers, we were uniformly within a plus/minus grade of each other. I was stunned. It was clear that one paper was an A range paper, well-written, insightful, had a structure that clearly displayed someone who thought through what s/he wanted to argue before s/he started typing. Another was a sure B/B- paper. Someone who had clearly cracked a couple of books and had a sense of what they were saying, but added nothing of his/her own mind to the acceptably written paper. The last was a D-/F paper. The lack of grasp of the material was clear to even those of us who knew nothing of the material ourselves. The lack of citations, the lack of explanation of seemingly important points gave us no choice in the mark to assign. The grade of this paper, like the other two, jumped off the page.
So, was this a lucky chance case and grading really is a subjective matter of taste or is grading really more objective than we usually claim? Could it be that the difficulty of the assignments is what varies and not the grading?
- Handwriting And The Examined Life
Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living, but then Socrates never had to grade the exams. I have a stack of logic blue books in front of me which means I will do everything I can to avoid grading them...including writing a blog post...
- An Open Letter To Students
Dear Students, Sorry to interrupt, I know how busy you are right now and how stressful the end of the semester is with papers and exams. I know you've been listening to me go on and on all semester, but I have one last thing I really need to say....
- How Can You Have Any Pudding If You Don't Eat Your Meat: The Effectiveness Of Grades
Thinking about grades for obvious reasons. I am ambivalent about grades. On the one hand, it is certainly true that students rise to expectations and the mechanism by which those expectations are communicated is grading work. If one teacher gives the...
- A Grading Thought Experiment
This is one of the times of year when those of my ilk turn from teachers into graders. A colleague of mine proposed an experiment the other day and I'm interested to see if your intuitions are the same as mine. Take a stack of papers, grade just...
- Apologies
Hello, illustrious readers, So sorry for not posting for a few days. I've been lying in wait for the computer, hoping that my philosopher would take a break from the paper-writing and student-grade-preparing. He is taking a break now, so I'm going...