Wednesday, November 5, 2014
Grading Papers - Personal Comp Tale 8
So, I've just received my first batch of rough draft papers. Looks like it's time to grade! I haven't yet looked at them, but this is a group paper, so I only have five. Although, I'm curious to see how evident their writing separate sections (if they did so and I'm assuming most of them did despite me telling them it won't work out that well) and smashing them together will be. I think what I'm most worried about is not being fair... or being too fair. Whatever the fairness, I want it to be just right. We were kind of talking about bias in grading in class and I don't think it will be an issue for this paper, but it is an interesting concept. How do we know that we're grading fairly and not being bias and grading off of our own opinions? Taking that step back in a necessity.
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I feel like we're not really ever able to completely grade without bias, BUT perhaps this suggestion from my mentor will be helpful: after grading (including letter grades), go back through your papers and compare what you graded as an A paper to another A paper. Continue this tactic with all letter grades. Using this method, perhaps you can more fairly assess if you have the same levels of papers as A's, B's, and C's (even D's and F's). As long as you're consistent with what a certain letter grade paper looks like, you're golden. Another facet of this could be to simply rank the papers from best to worst. even physically putting the papers in a left-to-right (or right-to-left, I don't discriminate between lefties and righties) format, then draw the link of where the A's start to turn into A-'s, B+'s to B's, etc. Just ideas.
ReplyDeleteI am less worried about being biased about their arguments or topics and things, because I just like to hear different sides to things. Even if we disagree, I would be interested to see their stance. However, I am worried about bias for a far worse reason, which is just simply not liking the student. This is going to sound bad, but it's a legitimate concern of mine. What if some of my students I don't like? We don't mesh for various reasons, so every time I get to their paper I grumble and am in a bad mood the whole time, so I grade more harshly because they tick me off or something in general? Maybe I should trust my ability to put that aside more, but it's something I think about...
ReplyDeleteOlivia, if you grade papers on Blackboard, there is a feature you can use to grade them anonymously--so you don't see the student's name, I guess. I haven't used it, but maybe I'll give it a try because sometimes I have this same worry as you. I mean, I like all of my students right now, but I do see a few of them as not quite my favorites.
DeleteJeremy, I think a lot of teachers worry about how to grade without bias… But Jennifer made a post on her blog this week that talked about taking what you know about the student into consideration when you grade their work. If you know the effort they put in, the progress they've made, and the things that will motivate them to keep pushing, you can tailor your grading to the student in a way that is necessarily biased, but maybe for a good, justifiable reason. I'm not quite sure what the right balance is; I'm just putting some ideas out for consideration.
ReplyDeleteUsing rubric for the grading is the best way to be avoid bias... So I normally make a general rubric for grading a paper. Based on the general rubric, I slightly change or add some sections by different assignments and classes.
ReplyDeleteI posted for 11/11 on group project grading. Check it out!
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