GRADING Before You Grade Establishing Policies and Criteria

Many GSIs like to give their students a statement of their grading philosophy, together with a sample set of criteria for each grade range. Even if you prefer not to do so, you should take the time to think about how you grade and why, and about the criteria that you use in giving each of the grades. Having clear criteria not only saves you time when grading, but it also helps to make the grading process more consistent, enables you to explain very clearly to students both what you expect from them and what they can expect from you, and helps students to understand why you have given them a certain grade and how their work might be improved. It also enables you to clearly diagnose students' strengths and weaknesses, and thereby to focus on improving the appropriate areas more effectively.

You should also think about your policies on correct grammar and usage, late papers, revision, contesting grades, extra credit assignments, and so forth. Standards and criteria are personal, but it can be helpful to look at what may have been developed by colleagues in your discipline. It is also important to discuss your standards and criteria with any other GSIs teaching the same course to ensure that grading is consistent between sections. Here is a sample from a GSI in philosophy:

What Your Grade Means

A-range:

• Papers: excellent exposition, clearly and concisely written, well-argued, AND contains good original input from the student.
• Exams: answers all parts of the question clearly and concisely. Shows good knowledge and good understanding of the material. Well argued. Where required, contains good original input from the student.
  

B-range:

• Papers: good exposition, but lacks clarity and concision, or doesn't have much original input, or offers poor support for important claims. (For instance, a truly excellent expository paper will earn you a B+; a fuzzy but accurate one will earn you a B-).
• Exams: Shows a good knowledge and fairly good understanding of the material but either fails to answer some parts of the question or is unclear or is poorly argued.
  

C-range:

• Papers: fails to understand some aspects of the material, or is very unclearly written.
• Exams: doesn't show a good knowledge of the material or fails to understand
  some important parts of it or does not answer a significant portion of the question.
  

D-range:

• Very problematical. [If you receive this grade, come and see me to discuss what went wrong and how we can avoid it happening again.]
  

F:

• Papers: did not submit a paper; plagiarized material; made no effort to understand the material or shows no sign of having read it.
• Exams: did not sit the exam; cheated in the exam; made no effort to understand the material or shows no sign of having read it; completely failed to answer the question.