Grades are a fact of life, but they don’t have to be counterproductive if students know what to expect. Below are some general suggestions and strategies to help maintain fairness and consistency in our assessment of student work.
To begin, review our Rubrics site and this Grading Student Work resource to help make your grading more equitable and fair, along with these 10 Tips for More Efficient and Effective Grading to help save you time.
To learn about grading in Canvas, review the following.
Resources:
Ungrading
A college class should be a place where students can safely experiment, ask questions and fail without consequence. It should be a place where we trust students with their own learning and not simply ask for rote memorization. What if students spent more time thinking about what they were learning instead of how many points they will get if they meet the required word count? What if instead of assigning word count, we asked students to answer a series of questions about what they’ve learned and how it applies specifically to their unique situation?
Ungrading is simply taking an assignment (or a full course) and removing the stigma of an associated number, percentage or letter grade. Faculty still provide feedback, but the feedback is designed to help students improve, and in many cases redo their work. Many faculty who use ungrading in their courses require students to submit self-evaluation products like reflections or process documents with explanations of what grade they think they deserve and why.
You and your students may feel uncomfortable at first, but honest conversations about grading, self-reflection and learning will quickly make everyone more comfortable, and even excited, about your course.