GROUP 5

CHAPTER 11: GRADING AND STUDENT EVALUATION

What should grades reflect?
Base grades on student achievement, grades should represent the extent to which the
intended learning outcomes were achieved by students. They should not be
contaminated by student effort, tardiness, misbehavior, and other extraneous factors.
Guidelines for Selecting grading criteria
-Consistency: It is essential for all components of grading to be consistent with an
institutional philosophy and regulations.
-Transparency: All of the components of a final grade need to be explicitly stated in
writing to students at the beginning of a term of study.
-Specificity: It is important for you to recognize their subjectively, but this does not
give you an excuse to avoid converting such factors into observable and measurable
result.
-Weighting: consider allocating relatively small weights to the Items so that a grade
primarily reflects achievement. A designation of 5% to 10% of a grade to such factors
will not mask strong achievement in a course.
Calculating Grades: Absolute and Relative Grading
Absolute Grading: If you prespecify standards of performance on a numerical point
system, you are using absolute grading. The key to making an absolute grading
system work is to be painstakingly clear on competences and objectives and on tests,
tasks, and other assessment techniques that will factor into the formula for assigning a
grade.
Relative Grading is more common used than absolute grading. It has the advantage of
allowing your own interpretation and of adjusting for unpredicted case or difficulty of
a test. Relative grading is usually accomplished by ranking students in order of
performance and assigning cutoff points for grades.
Teachers’ Perceptions of Appropriate Grade Distributions
Most teachers bring to a test or a course evaluation an interpretation of estimated
appropriate distribution. Making minor adjustments to compensate for such matter
unexpected difficulty.
Institutional expectations and constrains
Some institutions use neither a letter grade nor a numerical system of evaluation and
instead offer narrative evaluations of students.
Cultural Norms and the Question of Difficulty
-It is unheard of to ask s student to self-assess performance
-No one questions the teacher’s criteria
-good teacher who can design a test that is so difficult that no student can achieve a
perfect score.
-Grades of A are reserved for highly select few, and students are delighted with Bs
-One single final examination for student’s entire course grade.
-The notion of teacher preparing students to do their best on a test.
Scoring and Grading tests and assignments
-Scoring methods: dichotomous scoring, polytomous scoring, partial-credit scoring.
-Scoring open-ended responses: Use rating scales or rubrics to score these types of
test tasks.
-Developing a rubric:
+ Intuitive approach: often used to develop a rubric in the classroom.
+ Empirical approach: examining language produced by learners.
-Guidelines for Rubric Development:
+Define the construct to be measured by the task
+Identify specific observable attributes
+Describe the scale
+for holistic rubrics, write narrative descriptions for incorporating each criterion.
+For analytic, write narrative descriptions for each individuals criterion.
+Complete the rubrics by description other levels on the continuum.
+Collect samples of students work
+Revise
Guidelines for Grading an Evaluation
-Grading is not based on a universally accepted scale.
-Grading is sometime subjective and dependent on context.
-Test are often on a “curve”
- Grade reflect a teacher’s philosophy and an institutional philosophy of grading.
-Cross-cultural variation need to be understood.
-Test do not always yield an expected level of difficulty.
-Test can be scored using rubrics or answer keys.
-Letter grades may not mean the same thing to all people.