Grading Standards

[Charlotte]

I agree with most everything on this thread, but especially with Caracal's note that your response really depends on your goal for the assignment.

I grade journals generously, but look for whether they have completed all parts of the prompt. If you think it is laziness, write a note explaining what is missing and include it with the grade. If you think it is confusion, go over responses in class so they understand what is expected. In either instance, you may (as others have suggested) want to make your next prompt more specific, which will also make it easier to grade because you can point out specific elements they are missing. If writing skills are important, specify that you want correct, complete sentences. If length is important, establish a penalty for students who don't meet the set length or level of detail.

I don't know how new you are to college teaching or CC teaching in general, nor am I sure of your field, but I would be happy to send you the type of journal prompt I usually provide if you want a basis for comparison. I primarily teach composition, so all my questions revolve around writing elements (authors' effectiveness, style, use of sources, etc.)

AR.

I would appreciate an example of your journal prompts. This is my first semester teaching full time at a CC (previously only a TA) and to be honest I need all the help I can get!

[Charlotte]

A lot depends on what the purpose of the assignment was. Did you assign it because you wanted the students to spend some time reading this article so you could talk about it in class, or was the point for them to demonstrate the ability to analyze the argument. If it is the former, then it makes sense to grade it on the basis of engagement rather than quality of analysis. Give good grades to the students who made a good faith attempt to figure out what was going on, even if they got some things mixed up and reserve the poor grades for the students who didn't actually even try to answer the questions or just repeated back lines from the article.

If this was supposed to be more of a paper then it might make sense to offer a rewrite or follow some of the other suggestions.

We had been discussing the subject in class and the article was a follow up to that. I wanted them to think deeper about the issue and write about it especially since I'm struggling to get them to discuss in class. The article essentially repeated what I said in class, but with some personal examples from the author. I'm going to let them rewrite them, but I'm also going to provide some examples of what I'm looking for as others have suggested. Thank you!

[Charlotte]

Then, accept their answers as their experiences that might be different from yours. Working at a CC I have been exposed to so many cultures, backgrounds, experiences and educational systems I have learned not to expect consistent results from students, but often honest and thoughtful ones that are surprising.

I tend to try to think about what was going on in their minds that made them answer the way they did. And this could be a really good debrief activity to have them share out why they answered the way they did.

That's a very good point. To be honest I had not considered the idea that they might disagree with the author, but perhaps not have expressed that in their writings. Thank you so much for this thoughtful post.

[Caracal]

Then, accept their answers as their experiences that might be different from yours. Working at a CC I have been exposed to so many cultures, backgrounds, experiences and educational systems I have learned not to expect consistent results from students, but often honest and thoughtful ones that are surprising.

I tend to try to think about what was going on in their minds that made them answer the way they did. And this could be a really good debrief activity to have them share out why they answered the way they did.

That's a very good point. To be honest I had not considered the idea that they might disagree with the author, but perhaps not have expressed that in their writings. Thank you so much for this thoughtful post.

This is something that even reasonably well prepared students can struggle with. They don't really understand that they are allowed to disagree with someone who wrote something and then they don't know how you actually do that in a written piece. That seems really weird to us, because criticism is so ingrained in most academic discourse. The first few years of grad school are basically one long seminar in how to disagree with everything.

When I taught writing courses, we did assignment sequences designed to teach students how to engage with arguments. The first paper you were supposed to take the authors argument and show how it applied to some source. The second paper, you read two essays by authors who disagreed on some point and you looked at sources they were talking about and made an argument for which one you thought was correct.

You don't have the time for anything that extensive, obviously, but it might still be worth thinking about designing assignments where you are really explicit about how you want them to engage with the source and then talk them through how to do that in class.

There's a book designed for writing students called They Say/I say Like lots of rhetoric textbooks, I find it a little annoying in parts, but it does have a lot of useful worksheets and things you could crib in it.

[apl68]

Then, accept their answers as their experiences that might be different from yours. Working at a CC I have been exposed to so many cultures, backgrounds, experiences and educational systems I have learned not to expect consistent results from students, but often honest and thoughtful ones that are surprising.

I tend to try to think about what was going on in their minds that made them answer the way they did. And this could be a really good debrief activity to have them share out why they answered the way they did.

That's a very good point. To be honest I had not considered the idea that they might disagree with the author, but perhaps not have expressed that in their writings. Thank you so much for this thoughtful post.

This is something that even reasonably well prepared students can struggle with. They don't really understand that they are allowed to disagree with someone who wrote something and then they don't know how you actually do that in a written piece. That seems really weird to us, because criticism is so ingrained in most academic discourse. The first few years of grad school are basically one long seminar in how to disagree with everything.

And I was taught the beginnings of that sort of thinking in K-12.  But now that you mention it, it's easy to see how academically struggling students may have grown up having it drilled into them that there's always a right answer, and you'd better figure it out and go along with it to get a good grade.

Well, sounds like it could make for some teachable moments.

[spork]

Essentially, the article said that getting bitten by a bat is commonly assumed to result in rabies but in actuality there are many other factors involved, for example the author had been previously vaccinated against rabies.

Unless it's something that simple, you will see a large number of students exhibit reading comprehension fail. And even with something that simple, you are likely to see a large number of students exhibit causal relationship fail because, like, you know, stuff just happens.

[mamselle]

There are also potential cognitive dissonance issues.

In Spork's example, some might have this "bogey-man" view of vaccines, so any attempt to see them as somehow good will crash on the rocks of their pre-conceived or communal-hive-mind notions.

They also may not be able to think about vaccine as affecting a response to rabies at all, if they don't understand how vaccines work.

Families without health care may never have had their kids vaccinated, so the whole process could be past their sensed experience.

They're not stupid, but they haven't necessarily had the same exposure to concepts and events others might take for granted.

M.

[Caracal]

Then, accept their answers as their experiences that might be different from yours. Working at a CC I have been exposed to so many cultures, backgrounds, experiences and educational systems I have learned not to expect consistent results from students, but often honest and thoughtful ones that are surprising.

I tend to try to think about what was going on in their minds that made them answer the way they did. And this could be a really good debrief activity to have them share out why they answered the way they did.

That's a very good point. To be honest I had not considered the idea that they might disagree with the author, but perhaps not have expressed that in their writings. Thank you so much for this thoughtful post.

This is something that even reasonably well prepared students can struggle with. They don't really understand that they are allowed to disagree with someone who wrote something and then they don't know how you actually do that in a written piece. That seems really weird to us, because criticism is so ingrained in most academic discourse. The first few years of grad school are basically one long seminar in how to disagree with everything.

And I was taught the beginnings of that sort of thinking in K-12.  But now that you mention it, it's easy to see how academically struggling students may have grown up having it drilled into them that there's always a right answer, and you'd better figure it out and go along with it to get a good grade.

Well, sounds like it could make for some teachable moments.

All my experience teaching writing courses has been at elite universities. For the most part, the students were decent technical writers, at least by undergrad standards. It wasn't about regimented high schools. High school writing just doesn't usually ask students to engage in argument in the same way we tend to in college. I think I came to college better at it than most of the students I taught, but this is one of those things where I think we have to be careful in making comparisons between ourselves and our students. That usually means we had a  certain natural affinity for analysis, argument and debate. I taught writing to some students like that. I'd explain how they could make a stronger more direct argument engaging with our reading, they'd understand immediately and would come back four days later with a much better, more sophisticated paper. But, there were lots of students who were smart and hard workers, who you really had to take through the process and explain how to do it. Most of them could get there eventually, but you had to really take them through the process because the idea that you were going to make your own argument in response to what some authority said, wasn't something that really clicked for them at first.

[AvidReader]

I would appreciate an example of your journal prompts. This is my first semester teaching full time at a CC (previously only a TA) and to be honest I need all the help I can get!

Sent!

AR.