Course Assessments
Assessment and grading are intertwined; when we talk about one, we typically also talk about the other. Assessment is determining what a student knows (or doesn't know); grading is assigning a level, usually a letter or a pass/fail mark, based on what the instructor has observed about student knowledge via assessment.
Students are often motivated by grades--think of how many students ask about extra credit each semester! It seems natural that instructors leverage this grade-based motivation to help shape student behavior; this often shows up as participation points, graded homework, extra credit, and in other categories that relate more directly to student behavior rather than student knowledge. For instance:
- Participation points reflect a student's ability to have reliable transportation to reach class in the first place. It often relies on students raising their hands and talking during class, which may not be a realistic expectation for neurodivergent students.
- Graded homework typically reflects the amount of time that a student has outside of class to complete it; but what about the student who is attending school while working multiple part time jobs to support their family? Homework is typically intended to be formative, so why is it that students are penalized if they don't yet understand the material to be able to complete it successfully?
- Extra credit privileges those who have extra time (and sometimes money) to complete additional work.
To ensure that grading is equitable, there are three pillars that the grading approach should stand on: Accuracy, Bias-Resistance, and Motivation. Explore the ideas behind these pillars along with suggested grading practices in the tabs below.
Three Pillars of Equitable Grading
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Grades should be mathematically correct and sound, without being misleading because of the many categories that are often included in grades. Accurate grades should not include irrelevant information (such as student compliance), nor should grades exclude relevant information (such as student knowledge.
Grading Practices
These grading practices can help improve the accuracy of grades. Note that some of these ideas can be used in combination, but some are not intended to be combined (e.g. avoiding zeros and 0-4 scale).
- Avoid zeros
- Zeros can be very difficult to recover from, mathematically. Assigning a 0 for missed work doesn't provide information about what the student knows, and doesn't distinguish between a student who tried (and didn't understand) and a student who didn't try. Some techniques to avoid zeros include using minimum grading (see below), allowing a student to make up the missed or misunderstood work, or excluding a particular assessment from the overall grade determination.
- Minimum Grading
- As mentioned above, zeros are difficult for a student to recover from. Assigning a minimum grade shows that the student is at a failing level for an assignment, but makes it easier for a student to recover from a missed or misunderstood assignment. Minimum grades are often set at 50%, but an even higher number might make more sense, depending on the rest of the grading setup.
- The 0-4 scale
- This scale can be easily understood by students. 0 -> F, 1 -> D, 2 -> C, 3 -> B, 4 -> A.
- On a traditional 0-100 scale, a 69% (0-69) of the scale is failing; this is nearly 2/3 of the scale! On a 0-4 scale, only 0-1 is failing; this is only ~1/3 of the scale.
- Large quantization bins make the grading more repeatable; it's far easier to tell the difference between work at a level 2 vs. a level 3 than it is between work at a 79% vs. an 81%.
- Weighting more recent performance
- This provides students an opportunity to demonstrate improvement and reduces inequities created because of prior knowledge (which often corresponds to prior privilege).
- Grades based on an individual's achievement, not the group's achievement
- Students shouldn't be penalized (or rewarded) for someone else's work.
- Assess students individually about what they learned from a group project.
- Avoid zeros
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Grades should not be affected by an instructor's biases, including unconscious biases. All students should have "an opportunity to succeed regardless of privilege." (p. 66)
Grading Practices
These grading practices can help improve the bias-resistance of grades.
- Grades based on required content, not extra credit
- Extra credit is often based on a student's ability to spend time and/or money learning or attending something that may not be directly related to course content. Although these activities may be helpful for students in the long run, it is inequitable to incorporate the ability to complete these activities into the grade. Extra credit also potentially allows students to not understand one or more topics in the course and still receive a passing grade.
- Grades based on student work, not the timing of work
- Learning is not a linear process; some students learn faster than others.
- Life happens, but not all students feel comfortable approaching an instructor to ask
for an extension because life happened. Building flexibility into a course allows
students to manage their time as is appropriate for their school and personal schedules.
- How can you add flexibility to deadlines? The Grading for Equity FIG suggests setting "best by" dates for assignments along with 3-4 "hard" deadlines within the course. If a student misses an assignment, the instructor can reach out to discuss the missed assignment. Also consider adding a "No Ghosting" policy - students cannot try to catch up on 8 weeks worth of work in the last week of the course.
- Alternative (non-grade) consequences for cheating
- Cheating is the act of a desperate student. Reduce cheating by reducing incentives to cheat. This can be done by changing grading practices, making the learning/grading's "why" and "how" transparent so that students see the value in the assignment, and reducing or eliminating points on formative assessments.
- A zero grade for cheating provides no information about what the student knows. Consider requiring the student to redo the assignment or to complete an alternate assessment.
- Excluding participation and effort
- Participation and effort grades are often subjective, and are likely to be biased (including unconsciously) judgement of student behavior. Because grades for participation measure student behavior rather than student knowledge, they change the accuracy of the grade as well.
- Grades based entirely on summative assessments, not formative assessments (such as
homework)
- Formative assessments are meant to measure where students are in their learning journey. When grades are assigned for these assessments, we are telling students it's not okay if they don't understand yet, and students often respond by copying (cheating). Graded formative assessments also punish (or reward) students for the speed at which they learn.
- Basing grades only on summative assessments means that we are only measuring what students know at the end of the learning process.
- Grades based on required content, not extra credit
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Grades should motivate students, not discourage them. Grading practices should encourage a growth mindset and encourage students to take risks - it's okay to make mistakes as long as we learn from them.
Grading Practices
These grading practices can help improve the motivation students have because of grades.
- Minimum grading and 0-4 scale
- With traditional grading, it can be very difficult for a student to recover from a low grade, and students may feel discouraged and give up. Using minimum grading or a 0-4 scale makes it easier for students to recover from a bad test or missed week of school, and keeps motivation to learn higher because students feel that they are not "stuck" with or defined by a low grade.
- Mistakes are a part of the learning process; minimum grading and the 0-4 scale allow for these mistakes.
- Renaming grades
- The A-F scale can feel demotivating; students might think "I'm just a C student" or "I'm a failure".
- Renaming grades with short descriptors can have a large impact on student motivation. One example from Grading for Equity is calling the different levels "Exceeding Standards", "Meeting Standards", "Approaching Standards", "Not Yet Met Standards", and "Insufficient Evidence". Although they have a 1-1 correspondence with A-F, they provide students with a goal (to meet standards/learn the course material) and lets them know where they are in relation to that goal.
- Retakes and redos
- By allowing retakes and redos, we let students know that we value learning from mistakes - they are a part of the learning process. Plus, students will actually read your feedback!
- This shifts the focus from points/grades to knowledge and allows students to take ownership of their learning.
- Rubrics
- Rubrics allow students to understand what is expected of them. They also make evaluating an assessment easier! We'll spend more time on rubrics in Week 3.
- Rubrics work well with a 0-4 scale
- Minimum grading and 0-4 scale
Formative & Summative Assessments
Assessments are typically defined as either formative or summative. To best support teaching and learning, a course needs to include a mixture of both. Joel Feldman argues in his book Grading for Equity that where a student is in the learning process should define whether or not an assessment is summative or formative
As teachers, we may have been taught that whether an assessment is summative and formative defines where the student is in the learning progression, but in equitable grading the opposite is true: where the student is in her learning progression defines whether an assessment is formative or summative.
Formative Assessments
Formative assessments are frequent, low-stakes assignments and activities that are designed to help students learn. We're using discussions and other assignments as formative assessments in Assess. Completing them gives you the opportunity to experience the course as a student and interact with the content without the pressure of traditional grading. They also give us, the facilitators, the opportunity to see your progress, make adjustments to our instruction and future iterations of this course, and provide you with resources for improvement. Formative assessment in the online classroom might include activities such as:
- muddiest point & entry / exit tickets (Canvas Quizzes)
- weekly knowledge check quizzes (Canvas Quizzes)
- discussions (Canvas Discussions, FlipGrid Discussions, Canvas Studio)
- reflections (Canvas Assignments)
- collaborative annotation activities (Perusall integration in Canvas)
- journal entries (Canvas Assignments)
- think-pair-share (Zoom)
- gallery walks (Google Slides)
These activities allow the instructor to check in on student learning. For example, if several students listed the same topic as something still confusing to them in a "muddiest point" activity, then a whole class announcement with some support is called for. Formative assessment activities in the online environment can create spaces for students to connect with each other, share stories, be seen, and build community, while also allowing instructors to monitor the learning that is taking place.
Summative Assessments
Summative assessments are less frequent, higher-stakes assessments that assess what students have learned. Some traditional examples of summative assessments in an online course are:
- exams (Canvas Quizzes)
- oral assessments (Zoom meetings)
- projects (Canvas Assignments, Canvas Studio, Google Slides)
These activities typically assess students' mastery of multiple objectives for your course. A summative assessment should allow students to show what they learned from the course content and practiced with their formative assessments. Even though summative assessments tend to be high stakes, it can be a good idea to have more than just a midterm and a final, or to find other ways to make these assessments less stressful, thereby better facilitating student learning.