Question regarding norming sessions

[Secondhand_Rose]

I haven't been here in a while but have a question that I would like to ask.  Do any of your departments have meetings called for the sole purpose of discussing and potentially "norming" grading criteria so that they are more uniform among faculty in a department?   If so, have you found such meetings to be useful?  I remember that they were useful in grad school when you had six TAs teaching different sections of the same course.  Thanks for any experiences you can offer with this.

[Parasaurolophus]

We talked about doing it before the pandemic, but that's dropped off the radar for now.

[polly_mer]

The last time I did this, the experience was very enlightening.  It was clear that the newcomers had standards and the old-timers were jaded by too many years in the same place.

We did an all-faculty (all 30 of us in the whole institution) discussion on writing for this one year.  We used real student work with the names redacted.  We were in pretty good agreement about what the items on the rubric meant--right up until it was announced that one particular paper that everyone was savaging had in fact been deemed a pass by the faculty in charge of grading it for realsies.

Then, the fecal matter hit the fan and the real discussion started.  In the afteraction review, most faculty members wanted to do that kind of real discussion again for the opening required meeting instead of the standard pap that interested no one.  I left, so I don't know if they ever did it again.

[arcturus]

We had a faculty discussion regarding grade distributions in our large GenEd introductory courses after our department was included in a campus newspaper story regarding grade inflation. We nominally agreed that our classes were filled with similar students and that we should aim for a specific median GPA for each large class, with some recognition that we should never reduce student grades just to meet this number, since it should not matter in which section a student enrolled. However, faculty did not change their grading practices. Those with inflated grades continued to inflate. Those who held the line continued to hold the line. So, while it was an informative meeting, it had no effect in normalizing grading practices in the department.

[pepsi_alum]

The handful of times I've done grade-norming, I found it helpful for knowing where I stood in relation to my colleagues so that I wasn't too much of a pushover or a hardass. That having been said, I agree with Arcturus that it didn't really change department grade distributions or my own grading practices all that much.

One of my difficult former colleagues (whom I've complained about previously) used grade-norming sessions as an opportunity to try to bully other faculty into teaching a particular way. This was the same colleague who went way overboard on learning outcomes assessment. The meetings quickly grew unproductive and people stopped wanting to do them. I think the lesson I take from that experience is to emphasize that such sessions are advisory only and not an appropriate venue for discussing personal criticisms or policy changes.

[Aster]

We had a faculty discussion regarding grade distributions in our large GenEd introductory courses after our department was included in a campus newspaper story regarding grade inflation. We nominally agreed that our classes were filled with similar students and that we should aim for a specific median GPA for each large class, with some recognition that we should never reduce student grades just to meet this number, since it should not matter in which section a student enrolled. However, faculty did not change their grading practices. Those with inflated grades continued to inflate. Those who held the line continued to hold the line. So, while it was an informative meeting, it had no effect in normalizing grading practices in the department.

This.

[writingprof]

We had a faculty discussion regarding grade distributions in our large GenEd introductory courses after our department was included in a campus newspaper story regarding grade inflation. We nominally agreed that our classes were filled with similar students and that we should aim for a specific median GPA for each large class, with some recognition that we should never reduce student grades just to meet this number, since it should not matter in which section a student enrolled. However, faculty did not change their grading practices. Those with inflated grades continued to inflate. Those who held the line continued to hold the line. So, while it was an informative meeting, it had no effect in normalizing grading practices in the department.

This.

It's true. You can make 'em sit through the meeting, but you can't make 'em grade differently. 

[Secondhand_Rose]

Thank you for your responses.  Gosh this board has been so key to gaining perspective on academic life, and to think about how I can grow as an academic. 

Your responses make me realize that maybe there is value in comparing grading approaches.  This could be a regenerative opportunity for me to look at and potentially improve my grading practices.  I'm going to strive to see it positively.   

I do have some anxiety about what to do when others have approaches to grading that I do not think are right for me.  The colleague who appears to be most interested in doing this is well-intentioned but can be, at times, somewhat controlling.

Maybe I can ask our union about how binding such a grading "norm" meeting would be.  Ultimately, isn't the ability to determine one's grading practice part of the academic freedom protected by tenure?  That is one of the questions that I have about this.

I want to be a good colleague and to learn from this experience.  At the same time, I also want to protect myself from being pressured to adopt practices that are not right for my classes, but may be right for other people's classes.  So I guess holding these two needs together would be the way to go into this.

[arcturus]

[...] Maybe I can ask our union about how binding such a grading "norm" meeting would be.  Ultimately, isn't the ability to determine one's grading practice part of the academic freedom protected by tenure?  That is one of the questions that I have about this.
[...]

This is why such discussions do not change faculty behavior.  Academic freedom to the rescue once again.

[polly_mer]

Maybe I can ask our union about how binding such a grading "norm" meeting would be.  Ultimately, isn't the ability to determine one's grading practice part of the academic freedom protected by tenure? 

You might be surprised at how the reality at a given institution differs from the ideal that AAUP would have you believe.

Technically, yes, one should be allowed to decide on any grading practice that is within the norms of the field/course type.

Practically, though, someone who is regularly passing students in a prerequisite course who then fail the subsequent course by virtue of not knowing the material or not having the requisite skills will be subject to corrective action by the department chair/dean. 

Academic freedom means one can teach in a variety of ways as long as the course outcomes are met.  Failing to meet the goals/outcomes/purposes of the course using a specific method means a professor can be required to change, even with tenure.

Having low standards is not a valid teaching practice that is protected by academic freedom.

[Ruralguy]

Just because you have academic freedom doesn't mean you never have to take guidance from colleagues or bosses ever again. Also, even after tenure, you will be evaluated. So, put starkly, you have the freedom to do your work well or poorly, and it will be your colleagues who determine this. They may indeed base these conclusions on issues such as declining standards or unrealistically high standards.

[Hibush]

When you have several people teaching the same course, you really owe it to the students to have a fairly consistent grading approach. Similar mastery should result in similar grades. Otherwise the students have a legitimate complaint.

Talking among the teaching faculty seems to be the effective way of achieving that. The process will be slow. First, buy in will be slow. The people who are teaching will not want to change how they grade, nor do they want to have peers delving deeply into their grading practices for fear of revealing weaknesses.
Second, getting agreement on norms will be hard since each grader will like their own.
Third, getting change will be hard because there really is no external motivator to do the hard work of adjusting ones approach to the new system.

Doing norming meetings after each midterm exam and the final for a few terms will be needed. One meeting just scratches the ice.

In many schools, students asking for accountability and fairness in grading will be the most powerful motivator. Edicts from the chair of the curriculum committee will be the least powerful.

[marshwiggle]

When you have several people teaching the same course, you really owe it to the students to have a fairly consistent grading approach. Similar mastery should result in similar grades. Otherwise the students have a legitimate complaint.

......

Doing norming meetings after each midterm exam and the final for a few terms will be needed. One meeting just scratches the ice.

If the midterms and exams are common, wouldn't a decent approach be to have the tests to be graded by each instructor randomly assigned? Then everyone would see how their students' results compare to others.

[Hibush]

When you have several people teaching the same course, you really owe it to the students to have a fairly consistent grading approach. Similar mastery should result in similar grades. Otherwise the students have a legitimate complaint.

......

Doing norming meetings after each midterm exam and the final for a few terms will be needed. One meeting just scratches the ice.

If the midterms and exams are common, wouldn't a decent approach be to have the tests to be graded by each instructor randomly assigned? Then everyone would see how their students' results compare to others.

That would be a good opportunity to do close alignment. I got the feeling that Rose's colleagues were not eager to be so aligned that they have common tests. (That might reveal that it is more than their grading that varies!)

[Aster]

There are two departmental environments where the approach you are talking about tends to work.
1. Very High Departmental Collegiality - professors are true colleague-partners where everyone is collaboratively engaged and respects one another.
2. Very High Departmental Micromanagement and no collegiality - one "boss" person makes all the decisions and tells the adjuncts/grad students/for-profit university professors what to do.

Regarding norming grades, you may find that there is a lot more to it than you think. It's one string in a spiderweb of strings. Retention, matriculation, administrative agreements, inter-departmental agreements, academic freedom, innovative practices, alternate course formats, alternate assessment formats, etc...

And the more professors that there are teaching the course, the more difficult it becomes to herd your cats.