Trista Reading Notes 5

Reading notes #5
In most instances I don’t enjoy grading but this week’s readings helped make it seem easier. It does feel good however to give a student a good grade that has been participating and working hard in class. Maybe it is my department professors, or grad school but I feel that grading has become more subjective. These chapters gave great examples on how to keep grading based on criteria. I appreciate Lange’s discussion on late work as this is one issue I have been having with my class. Unfortunately when I took over this class there was nothing in the syllabus regarding late work. We were in the gym for the first four weeks so a formal discussion of my expectations was difficult. I guess I assumed students would understand they would lose points for late work, but since there is nothing in the syllabus regarding a policy I am struggling with this. I know I should have set guidelines but we are now halfway into the semester. Wondering what the class would suggest?

Lange discussed having a course skeleton identifying due dates of major assignments and then checking those assignments against your course objectives. While this may seem common sense, I liked how he pointed out comparing assignments to your objectives. He also suggested a wide variety of assignments to help students learn consistent with earlier discussions. One particular idea I liked was that of two columns, one solving the problem and the other explaining the steps in writing.
There was lots of information in both of these readings that discussed how to make students successful. Many of these strategies I have seen used by some of my best teachers. Lange and Davis showed examples of rubrics and discussed their advantages. As a student I have found it helpful to see the ‘criteria I will be evaluated on. Students can’t read your mind and know what you are looking for until you tell them. I felt this was an important point to take with me and I plan on creating a rubric for my practical and larger assignments. Breaking a larger assignment into smaller assignments has also been used by a professor of mine and considering I am a procrastinator beyond most I found it very helpful.

One question I would like the class’s opinion on is grading on a curve, and weighted vs. point system? The majority of my professors have used the point system in the past and that is what I am most comfortable. I see his points regarding the curve and weighted system as this gave me an A in a past statistics course where on the point system I would have had a B.

Through the readings I found several resources I plan to check out. First is the online assignment calculator provided by the University of Minnesota. Davis also gave the resource of a web based assignment library created by UCLA. While I do believe in creating my own assignments and objectives it would be interesting to see what others have done.