However, much of the research literature on grading reviewed above suggests that these goals are often not being achieved with our current grading practices. Additionally, the expectations, time, and stress associated with grading may be distracting instructors from integrating other pedagogical practices that could create a more positive and effective classroom environment for learning. Below we explore several changes in approaching grading that could assist instructors in minimizing its negative influences.
Kitchen et al. Multiple research studies described above suggest that the evaluative aspect of grading may distract students from a focus on learning. Importantly, constructing a grading system that rewards students for participation and effort has been shown to stimulate student interest in improvement Swinton, One strategy for focusing students on the importance of effort and practice in learning is to provide students opportunities to earn credit in a course for simply doing the work, completing assigned tasks, and engaging with the material.
Assessing effort and participation can happen in a variety of ways Bean and Peterson, ; Rocca, In college biology courses, clicker questions graded on participation and not correctness of responses is one strategy. Additionally, instructors can have students turn in minute papers in response to a question posed in class and reward this effort based on submission and not scientific accuracy.
In summary, one strategy for changing grading is to balance accuracy-based grading with the awarding of some proportion of the grade based on student effort and participation. Changing grading in this way has the potential to promote student practice, incentivize in-class participation, and avoid some of the documented negative consequences of grading.
Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick argue that, just as teaching strategies are shifting away from an instructor-centered, transmissionist approach to a more collaborative approach between instructor and students, so too should classroom feedback and grading.
Because feedback traditionally has been given by the instructor and transmitted to students, Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick argue that students have been deprived of opportunities to become self-regulated learners who can detect their own errors in thinking. They advocate for incorporating techniques such as self-reflection and student dialogue into the assessment process.
This, they hypothesize, would create feedback that is relevant to and understood by students and would release faculty members from some of the burden of writing descriptive feedback on student submissions. Additionally, peer review and grading practices can be the basis of in-class active-learning exercises, guided by an instructor-developed rubric.
For example, students may be assigned out of class homework to construct a diagram of the flow of a carbon atom from a dead body to a coyote Ebert-May et al. With the development of a simple rubric, students can self- or peer-evaluate these diagrams during the next class activity to check for the inclusion of key processes, as determined by the instructor.
The use of in-class peer evaluation thus allows students to see other examples of biological thinking beyond their own and that of the instructor. In addition, self-evaluation of one's own work using the instructor's rubric can build metacognitive skills in assessing one's own confusions and making self-corrections.
Such evaluations need not take much time, and they have the potential to provide feedback that is meaningful and integrated into the learning process. In summary, both self- and peer-evaluation of work are avenues for providing meaningful feedback without formal grading on correctness that can positively influence students' learning Sadler and Good, ; Freeman et al. As documented in the research literature, the practice of grade curving has had unfortunate and often unintended consequences for the culture of undergraduate science classrooms, pitting students against one another as opposed to creating a collaborative learning community Tobias, ; Seymour and Hewitt, As such, one simple adjustment to grading would be to abandon grading on a curve.
Because the practice of curving is often assumed by students to be practiced in science courses, a move away from curving would likely necessitate explicit and repeated communication with students to convey that they are competing only against themselves and not one another. Moving away from curving sets the expectation that all students have the opportunity to achieve the highest possible grade.
Perhaps most importantly, a move away from curving practices in grading may remove a key remaining impediment to building a learning community in which students are expected to rely on and support one another in the learning process.
In some instances, instructors may feel the need to use a curve when a large proportion of students perform poorly on a quiz or exam. However, an alternative approach would be to identify why students performed poorly and address this more specifically. For example, if the wording of an exam question was confusing for large numbers of students, then curving would not seem to be an appropriate response.
Rather, excluding that question from analysis and in computing the exam grade would appear to be a more fair approach than curving. Additionally, if large numbers of students performed poorly on particular exam questions, providing opportunities for students to revisit, revise, and resubmit those answers for some credit would likely achieve the goal of not having large numbers of students fail.
This would maintain the criterion-referenced grading system and additionally promote learning of the material that was not originally mastered.
In summary, abandoning curving practices in undergraduate biology courses and explicitly conveying this to students could promote greater classroom community and student collaboration, while reducing well-documented negative consequences of this grading practice Humphreys et al. The research literature raises significant questions about what grades really measure.
However, it is likely that grades will continue to be the currency of formal teaching and learning in most higher education settings for the near future. As such, perhaps the most important consideration for instructors about grading is to simply be skeptical about what grades mean. Some instructors will refuse to write letters of recommendation for students who have not achieved grades in a particular range in their course. Yet, if grades are not a reliable reflection of learning and reflect other factors—including language proficiency, cultural background, or skills in test taking—this would seem a deeply biased practice.
One practical strategy for making grading more equitable is to grade student work anonymously when possible, just as one would score assays in the laboratory blind to the treatment of the sample. The use of rubrics can also help remove bias from grading Allen and Tanner, by increasing grading consistency. Perhaps most importantly, sharing grading rubrics with students can support them in identifying where their thinking has gone wrong and promote learning Jonsson and Svingby, ; Reddy and Andrade, In summary, using tools such as rubrics and blind scoring in grading can decrease the variability and bias in grading student work.
Additionally, remembering that grades are likely an inaccurate reflection of student learning can decrease assumptions instructors make about students. A review of the history and research on grading practices may appear to present a bleak outlook on the process of grading and its impacts on learning. However, underlying the less encouraging news about grades are numerous opportunities for faculty members to make assessment and evaluation more productive, better aligned with student learning, and less burdensome for faculty and students.
Notably, many of the practices advocated in the literature would appear to involve faculty members spending less time grading. The time and energy spent on grading has been often pinpointed as a key barrier to instructors becoming more innovative in their teaching.
In some cases, the demands of grading require so much instructor attention, little time remains for reflection on the structure of a course or for aspirations of pedagogical improvement. Additionally, some instructors are hesitant to develop active-learning activities—as either in-class activities or homework assignments—for fear of the onslaught of grading resulting from these new activities.
However, just because students generate work does not mean instructors need to grade that work for accuracy. In fact, we have presented evidence that accuracy-based grading may, in fact, demotivate students and impede learning. Additionally, the time-consuming process of instructors marking papers and leaving comments may achieve no gain, if comments are rarely read by students.
What if instructors spent more time planning in-class discussions of homework and simply assigned a small number of earned points to students for completing the work? What if students viewed their peers as resources and collaborators, as opposed to competitors in courses that employ grade curving? Implementing small changes like those described above might allow instructors to promote more student learning by grading less or at least differently than they have before.
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This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. Abstract The authors explore a history of grading and review the literature regarding the purposes and impacts of grading. Finkelstein If your current professional position involves teaching in a formal classroom setting, you are likely familiar with the process of assigning final course grades. Early 19th Century and Before The earliest forms of grading consisted of exit exams before awarding of a degree, as seen at Harvard as early as Smallwood, Late 19th Century and 20th Century With schools growing rapidly in size and number and coordination between schools becoming more important, grades became one of the primary means of communication between institutions Schneider and Hutt, Present Day Grading systems remain controversial and hotly debated today Jaschik, Making the Move Away from Curving As documented in the research literature, the practice of grade curving has had unfortunate and often unintended consequences for the culture of undergraduate science classrooms, pitting students against one another as opposed to creating a collaborative learning community Tobias, ; Seymour and Hewitt, Becoming Skeptical about What Grades Mean The research literature raises significant questions about what grades really measure.
Rubrics: tools for making learning goals and evaluation criteria explicit for both teachers and learners. Cell Biol Educ. In: Encyclopedia of Educational Psychology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage; Four Years at Yale. Chatfield; Grading classroom participation.
New Direct Teach Learn. Learning for Mastery. Instruction and Curriculum. Eval Comment 1 2 , 1— Human Characteristics and School Learning. New York: McGraw-Hill; Brown's Grading System. The effects of attractiveness of writer and penmanship on essay grades. J Occup Psychol. Enhancing and undermining intrinsic motivation: the effects of task-involving and ego-involving evaluation on interest and performance.
Br J Educ Psychol. Effects of no feedback, task-related comments, and grades on intrinsic motivation and performance. J Educ Psychol. Is it worth the effort? Assess Eval High Educ. The impact of classroom evaluation practices on students. Rev Educ Res. The history of grading practices. Phys Teach. Disciplinary research strategies for assessment of learning. Reliability of repeated grading of essay type examinations. Most schools rely on grades to assess student performance, though some colleges and universities have banished them entirely.
Alverno College, Bennington College, and Brown University are just three of many institutions that favor methods like a pass-fail grading system, self-assessment, and professor assessments instead of letter grades. To help make sense of the ongoing discourse around grading, we collected a few of the common arguments for and against grading. In a survey by Pew Research Center survey , academic pressure topped the list of stressors for teenagers. Even the fear of a bad grade — to say nothing of a bad grade itself — can be a source of anxiety and stress, and that fear can inhibit learning and harm academic performance.
The grading system has at least one clear advantage over other models: It's easy to understand. According to researcher Robert Feldmesser, the simplicity of a letter grading scale makes it effective. Everyone knows what grades mean. Receiving an A is a success; an F is a failure. Grades make it easy for students to understand where they stand in a class or on a particular subject.
A bad grade on a test gives students a clear idea about their weaknesses and what areas need improvement. Conversely, a string of good grades demonstrates where they excel. In , students at Harvard University got caught collaborating on a final exam. According to Carnegie Mellon University, students cheat for different reasons , many of which reflect badly on the grading system. Some students cheat because they're "highly motivated by grades and might not see a relationship between learning and grades.
While scary for students, low grades serve an important purpose: They make students feel responsible for their work. Some experts believe low grades are a good thing because they promote effort and diligence.
Without the risk of getting a low grade, the level of effort and responsibility can drop. Feldmesser argues that while grades can be a source of anxiety, they also help students become better learners. In this way, grades become an opportunity for achievement rather than a negative obstacle. Grade inflation has become a salient issue at colleges and universities in recent decades.
Learning management systems must be designed so it is easier for teachers to customize the system so the LMS supports the intended scoring and grading approach, rather than allowing the LMS to dictate how scores are converted to grades. The first step is to allow teachers to designate assignments as missing or in progress without automatically converting them to zeroes when computing some sort of total or average grade.
Further, the push within these systems to score essentially everything appears to be based on a notion that it is better to report everything to parents.
The LMS would do better by making it easier to upload and share student work—even work in progress—so parents can gain a better understanding of what their students are actually doing. Nevertheless, there is little doubt that many more students are disengaged or performing poorly in this pandemic school year, which is being reflected, in part, in an increase in failing grades.
We must act on this information as soon as possible to support these students. However, we must not stop there. Unfortunately, the focus on extrinsic motivation inherent in most grading systems establishes an implied agreement between teachers and students where grades are exchanged for compliant behavior.
The pandemic has left many students struggling with basic economic and educational needs. Thanks to Lorrie Shepard and Carla Evans for very helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this post. Exposing Fundamental Problems The massive increase in failure rates highlights many of the underlying problems with grading practices.
Some Sensible Fixes To Flawed Grading Practices My colleague, Carla Evans, wrote a series of CenterLine posts about competency-based grading, noting that both standards-based and competency-based grading systems grew out of a frustration with the sloppiness of typical grading approaches.
Current Grading Systems Are Failing Students Nevertheless, there is little doubt that many more students are disengaged or performing poorly in this pandemic school year, which is being reflected, in part, in an increase in failing grades.
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