On March 12th and 13th, 2014, Dr. Tom Pusateri from Kennesaw State University visited Bainbridge State College’s main campus and Early County Center to present on the topic Strategies for Grading and Assessing Student Work.
Dr. Pusateri’s workshops focused on several strategies for creating meaningful assessment that also make grading more time-efficient for you as an instructor. He also introduced his own methods of using rubrics to assess learning and make the grading process a smaller component of a 3-step process of giving, guiding and grading student work.
One of the primary points was that there is a big difference between grading and assessing. Grading communicates a general idea of how well a student did in a course, but it does little to tell you if they accomplished specific learning outcomes. For example, if a student makes a B in an English Comp course, do we know if they mastered the effective use of strategies in composing for different audiences? No, the grade tells us nothing. But more refined assessments of particular outcomes, and how they changed across the semester, would. This is useful to instructors as they revise a course and generally evaluate their own effectiveness.
Some of those strategies he discussed included making a checklist for students to fill out with an assignment evaluating their own work when they turn it in, allowing you to agree with or correct their assessment. If you use rubrics for grading, simply have students complete the rubric themselves assessing how well they accomplished each criterion. This forces them to consider the various requirements of the assignment because they have to judge how well they met each one.
Dr. Pusateri pointed out the many smaller, usually simple, assessment techniques that can be useful in many classes such as the minute paper in which students are asked for the most important point, most confusing point and any unanswered questions as a way to assess student learning and fill in visible gaps. Many such strategies are outlined in the book Classroom Assessment Techniques available in the CTE.
Dr. Pusateri also spoke on Just in Time Teaching (JITT), which requires students to submit short assessment assignments prior to class (in GeorgiaVIEW for example) and allowing you to follow up on reviewing and covering the difficult topics in class.
Congratulations to Dr. Amie Seidman and Pamela Barnes who won a personal copy of Effective Grading by Walvoord and Anderson, for sharing their ideas on the next steps for implementing some of the strategies in their classrooms. A copy of the book is also available in the CTE for borrowing.
If you are interested in getting more resources on assessment based on Dr. Pusateri’s workshop, consider looking into the resources below:
- Field-tested Learning Assessment Guides (for science, math, engineering and technology instructors)
- Authentic Assessment Toolbox
- Just In Time Teaching (JITT)
- American Association of Univerities & Colleges VALUE Rubrics
- Walvoord, B. E., & Anderson, V. J. (2010). Effective grading (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. (Available for borrowing in the CTE): Online summary of 1st edition
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