Collaborative Grading Rubrics for Assessing Student Writing

by Rosalind Diaz, English Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2018 Grading rubrics are an invaluable teaching tool. Ideally, they promote fairness and transparency in assessment, and help students set reasonable goals, develop metacognition, and practice self-assessment. But a rubric can also act as a gatekeeper of knowledge. Vague, abstruse, or circularly Continue Reading >>

R&C Workshop Added to Fall Series

Researchers in college composition and second-language acquisition have a lot to say about correction and feedback strategies on student papers, especially when improvement of student writing skills is the dominant objective. In this workshop, GSIs will explore some of the research and, using samples of student writing, work on feedback strategies that Continue Reading >>

Deploying General Rubrics to Preclude the Pitfalls of Grading

by Christian Lambert, Goldman School of Public Policy Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2016 Assessing student work is the household chore of any given course: important and useful, but often begrudged and disparaged, too. As an instructor in an introductory course that many students pursue in order to fulfill pre-requisites for Continue Reading >>

Grading Rubrics

What are rubrics? Rubrics are scales in which the criteria used for grading or assessment are clearly spelled out along a continuum. Rubrics can be used to assess a wide range of assignments and activities in the classroom, from oral presentations to term papers to class participation. There are two Continue Reading >>

Before You Grade

The question of how we evaluate students relates back to the learning objectives for a particular course and/or assignment. What will students learn from the course or assignment? How does each assignment build towards the learning objectives of the course? Accordingly, how do we evaluate students in their process of Continue Reading >>

Working with Multilingual Writers

GSIs sometimes see student papers that are dense with linguistic errors or lack basic rhetorical structures. Here are some effective ways to address the problems while also protecting your time.

Maximizing the Impact of GSI Feedback through Reflections on Writing

by Rebecca Elliott, Sociology
In deference to the time they put into writing their exams, I spend considerable time writing up my reactions. I provide substantive feedback in the form of questions and comments, in both marginal notes and in a narrative paragraph…[but] how could I ensure that my students read, reflected, and internalized my feedback in a way that would improve their skills and enhance their learning?

Grading Essays

Connecting grading to specific learning objectives, and developing a clear system for commenting, can make grading an easier and more strategic process.