We’ve all faced it: the daunting stack of student work, each submission representing hours of potential grading. The familiar weight of this task can feel overwhelming, leaving us searching for more effective ways to provide meaningful feedback that truly fuels student learning. While the desire
About a year ago, I decided to combine the ideas of a syllabus activity and a get-to-know-students activity. Using Microsoft Forms, I created an introductory exercise to share with students a week before the first day of classes. This optional activity included short videos related
A variety of factors can undermine performance on a test beyond lack of knowledge, such as anxiety and misinterpretations of the questions. But there are four simple things that instructors can do with their tests to minimize these confounding variables.
AI has become a part of nearly all facets of teaching, from lesson development to exam creation to answering student questions. But grading is the last bastion of education where it has yet to make meaningful inroads. This is partly due to the visceral reaction
Over 40 years of teaching, I’ve been to enough departmental grading norming sessions and scoring workshops to notice that not even English teachers agree on exactly what the term grammar means. For example, some of my colleagues get really bent out of shape when a
Quizzes provide both students and teachers with a snapshot of student learning. But students often just look at the grade rather than think about the learning that it represents and what to do about it. Similarly, instructors often only look at class performance rather than
Proponents of rubrics champion them as a means of ensuring consistency in grading, not only between students within a class but also between instructors teaching the same class. Rubrics, they say, also clarify to students the standards of excellence on which they’re being assessed (Taylor
As educators, we’re all deeply invested in our students’ learning journeys. We’ve likely all experienced the challenges of assessing performance in ways that genuinely reflect what students know and can do. For many of us, traditional grading systems, with their reliance on letter grades, have
A common faculty complaint is that students do not read their feedback. This is usually chalked up to laziness or disinterest in learning. But neither explanation has ever rung true with me. Everyone likes, and wants, to learn, and in my experience, nearly all students
Rubrics have been indispensable in education for providing clarity on performance expectations, consistency in grading, and detailed feedback to students. Generative AI has revolutionized rubric development, offering higher education instructors new opportunities to enhance their teaching and assessment practices. As AI continues to evolve, it
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