Grading
What is Grading?
Grading is an interpretation of students' learning products to :
- reflect where students stand in relation to an orderly development of competence
- inform both student and teacher not only where the student currently is, but what needs to doing to improve that position
- be able to be combined with other grades in order to meet administrative requirements for awarding of levels of pass, and the like.
Purpose of grading
- Criticism
the analysis of a product or performance for the purpose of identifying and correcting its faults or reinforce and confirm achievements. - Evaluation
the measuring of a product or performance against an independent and objective standard of excellence to which nothing is added to education by adding a grade. The true rationale of evaluation is not educational but professional in that it indicates if a person is qualified. - Ranking
the relative comparison of the performances of a number of students. This is the grading activity that produces the greatest anxiety and provokes the most opposition and is neither educational or professional but economic.
To Grade or Not to Grade....
A question that may be raised in planning assessment tasks is whether students' learning products and performances ought to be graded.
Non-graded passes
Alverno
College in the United States is the only example found where
the rule is not to grade. Rather than using grades, standards
are established in clearly defined
profiles of desired learning outcomes. These outcomes must
be demonstrated in a combination of self, peer and teacher assessment
before a pass is recorded.
Who will judge?
Common practice often assumes that it is the teacher who will interpret and assess students' learning practices. However, a number of alternatives are possible.
- Students
- Self assessment
- Peer assessment
- Neutral external examiner
- Expert professionals and community representatives
- Computer aided assessment
- Teachers
Expert assessment behavior depends on assessors having:
- A detailed knowledge of their discipline, of curriculum intentions and of learners
- A detailed knowledge of assessment options and the knowledge of the limitations of these options
- Clarity in their understanding of the purposes of assessment
- A repertoire of meaningful approaches that have been intentionally developed for interpreting students learning performances
- Awareness of contextual influences on their practice and of the limitations of their own interpretations and judgments
What will guide the grading process?
- Points of reference and grading criteria
Judging and grading implies that what is being observed is being compared with something. The meaning of grades is embodied in both the criterion and the points of reference. These are selected based on the purpose of particular assessment.Points of reference can be reduced to three types:
- Pre-established criteria, in which the
assessor asks:
"Did the student performance or learning product demonstrate or address the criteria for which the task was established?" - Pre-determined behavioural norms,in which
the assessor asks:
"How does the student performance or learning product compare against established norms for this particular level of students?" - Ideographic, in which the assessor asks:
"How does the performance or product measure against this student's earlier performances or products?"
- Criteria for Judging the Quality of Performance Assessments
- Transferability of the skills and knowledge required to novel conditions
- Fairness for all students
- Degree of cognitive complexity of the processes the student must use to complete the performance
- Meaningfulness of the problems
- Quality of the content
- Comprehensiveness of the coverage.
- Grading Schemes
There are two mains questions to ask of a student's work:
- What kind of level is exemplified?
- How well is it exemplified?
Biggs(1992) addressed both issues of grading in the "Qualitative Taxonomy for Grading Students' Performance"
| Level |
Grade |
Description |
|
| Pre-structural | (F) |
- irrelevant or incorrect learning |
|
| Uni-structural | (D) |
- understanding of a few basic ideas (retelling) |
|
| Multi-structural | (C) |
- understanding and coverage of a number of aspects of the topic but little integration or transformation (encyclopedic) |
|
| Relational | (B) |
- ideas cohere |
|
| Extended Abstract | (A) |
- high level of abstract thinking |
|
Validity and Reliability in Judging and Grading
Research tells us that the following factors influence the grade assigned:
- Graphic quality of the students' texts
Surface features such as handwriting or word-processing and layout can contribute positively or negatively to the visual appeal of a text. - Readability of the text
Features such as sentence structure and spelling can hinder or enhance the reading and detract from or enhance the quality of the ideas in the text. - Use of text structural conventions
When certain components are expected, their presence or absence can impact on how the text is received e.g. essays should have an introduction, a body and a conclusion; good introductory paragraphs have been found to have a significant effect on grading. - Cues in students' text
Certain features of the student work may distract the assessor from how the work addresses the assessment criteria e.g an oral presentation that might appear polished and well-researched but does not address the content criteria could be graded higher than one that addresses the content criteria but is less well-presented. - Teachers' prior knowledge and expectation of students
Prior judgements can frame the way assessment products and performances are interpreted, and assessments may tend towards the 'assumed' or usual level for that student. - Teacher's personality
The desire to be perceived as "tough", to have a reputation for being vigorous, or to be liked, can influence the approach to grading. - Teachers' beliefs about grading and education
- Teachers' experience in grading
More experienced assessors look for evidence of learning by assessing for meaning, the less experienced tend to note what facts are contained in the assignment without assessing theoverall meaning and coherence. - Quality of the other papers previously received
The quality of the 5 preceding papers has been found to have a significant impact on the grade assigned to the subsequent paper.
Bachor, Anderson, Walsh and Muir (1994) suggest that rather than a concern for validity and consistency on a a single test at one moment in time, the concern should be for:
- Representativeness
which questions the meaningfulness in the information the student is required to generate and the extent to which the task reveals the student's cognitive activities; - Accuracy which is a concern for mapping a student's typical performance related to clearly outlined criteria and;
- Consistency which is a concern to use consistent established criteria but in tasks that best suit individual students. Not all students can demonstrate their learning in the same manner
Grading Strategies to Achieve a High Degree of Reliability
- Multiple marking of the same paper by either the same assessor or by two different assessors
- Blind marking (not knowing who the students are)
- Establishing standards through the use of model essays
- Marking all responses to the same question together in the case of essay tests that contain several short essay questions
- Employing 'neutral' external examiners
- Using computers in grading
- Employing assessor self monitoring
- Randomising the order of papers prior to marking rather than sorting beforehand. Sorting essays into perceived grade categories prior to assigning grades exacerbates the tendency for contrast effects.