On Grading

One of the things I least liked about university teaching was having do grade students. First, it took a lot of time -- often reading work that was not of the standard I had desired. Second, even though I worked hard to be fair, there were always some student complaints about their grades.

I would guess most faculty would express similar feelings about grading. I was therefore pleased to see a recent article on grading that may prove helpful to university RT faculty. The title of the article is "For the 'Grader' Good -- Considering What You Grade and Why." It appears in the November, 2006, issue of the Observer (pp. 33 - 37) which is published by the Association for Psychological Science.

Some of the questions addressed in the "Grader Good" article are: (a) How can we use grades to motivate students? (b) What Can We Grade? (c) How should we compute the final grade? (d) How can we protect ourselves from grade disagreements? While written for teachers of psychology, the article has much that may be applied by RT instructors.