I finished Jay Howard’s excellent book earlier this week.
His second-to-last chapter, “Making Online Discussions Work” was insightful and
echoed much of the good advice from Michelle Miller’s book. The topic of
today’s blog is on the final chapter: “To Grade or Not to Grade? And Other
Conundrums.” I am still a novice in trying to figure out optimal practices in
my different classes. This post traces the evolution in my thinking so far. I
recognize that I am still in the early stages – and there is far to go before I
reach a robust approach. I’m very glad for the many others who have gone
before, and this is an area where science professors have much to learn from
our non-science colleagues.
Like many other “old school” science professors, I started
with having problem sets and exams count towards a student’s final grade.
Problem sets, which can be worked on collaboratively, take up a low percentage.
Exams, with individual work only, took the lion’s share of the grade. I did not
assign any credit towards participation nor did I take attendance. Students
could choose to attend and participate, or not. The exams would determine if
they understood the material. This is not to say that I had dry, boring
lectures. My students over the years will attest to the fact that the classes
are interactive, and I pose lots of questions to students (and I do wait for
their answers). I also keep the material interesting in a variety of ways to
help as a motivating factor for students to attend class.
In my first year teaching General Chemistry (before online
homework systems had made their debut), I was over-zealous. Besides the Final
Exam, I had five in-class hour-long exams, and every non-exam week there was a
problem set. This was a killer from a grading point of view. The next year I
cut down the number of problem sets and exams, but this meant that many
students did not keep up with the material through longer stretches. (If you
fall behind, it’s a lot of work to catch up.) It was only in my third year that
I added frequent low-stakes quizzes – 5 minutes on an index card at the
beginning of class. To start, I would give maybe 14 quizzes during the semester
and count the top 8 (for 4% of the course grade).
The quizzes turned out to be a boon to keep students
motivated towards learning while allowing me to reduce further the number of
problem sets and assign ungraded homework. At that point I had not read much of
the research literature on learning suggesting that this was a good strategy.
Over the years I’ve given more quizzes per semester and had them count for
slightly more. In fact, in one of my classes this semester that meets twice a
week, I’ll be giving 20-24 quizzes and counting the top 16 for 16% of the
course grade. This lowers the grade assignment due to exams. (Homework and
problem sets have always hovered in the 10-15% range.)
Then came participation. The way I started assigning
participation as a grade was when I got my first class of first-year advisees
who were also in my General Chemistry course. The college had various useful
“College Skills 101” workshops sprinkled throughout the semester such as study
skills, how to choose a major, time management, staying healthy in college,
etc. One of my colleagues required all the students in any of his classes to
stop by his office at least once for a short chat early in the semester. I
decided that this was a good idea and assigned 3% for the students to attend
some skills events and stop by my office. Students wrote me one paragraph about
their experience attending a particular “workshop” – what they learned, and
whether they found it useful or not. (That way I could give feedback to Student
Affairs so that they knew what worked well and what didn’t.)
These early efforts at assigning some grade towards
participation did not involve any in-class participation towards discussing the
course material. It is only in the last several years that I have started
assigning a participation grade towards thinking about the course material. I
have mainly done two things so far. One has been to incorporate blogging
outside of class time for the students to connect course material with their
lives outside of my chemistry class. The other is to assign short written
assignments in class based on the course material. (I usually provide the
prompt before class so students can think ahead, and there is usually some
discussion both in small groups and as an entire class on the topic. Then the
last 5-10 minutes of class is spent writing.) So far this has not been assigned
more than 10% of the course grade.
I’ve tried to keep track of the quality of in-class
discussion, roving from one small group to another, cold-calling a range of
students (after they’ve had a chance to discuss things with their classmates of
course), among other things. I just haven’t quite felt comfortable assigning a
grade based on those interactions. It’s hard for me to keep track of them and
to ensure equity. This is where the online component is helpful for keeping
track of things, not to mention it also levels the playing field for students
who may be much more introverted or who feel less comfortable expressing
themselves in English if it is not their first language. Thank to Howard’s
book, I’m now looking more into student self-graded discussion. This seems an
intriguing way to possibly accomplish several goals but I’ll have to think
about it a bit more before incorporating it.
At the moment, exams still form the bulk of the students’
grade. I think this is appropriate in some of the standard courses that I
teach: General Chemistry and Physical Chemistry. However I can see some
variation in other courses that I teach to reduce how much exams count towards
the grade. I have much more to learn in any case!
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