Most teachers don’t list grading as one of their favorite parts of teaching. If you’re conscientious about it, it’s a hard, time-consuming task. Dishearteningly, efforts to provide students with quality feedback aren’t always appreciated, or at least they don’t appear to be.
Like a lot of terms in higher education, low-stakes grading doesn’t always refer to the same thing. In some cases it means small assignments that don’t count for much but occur regularly, as quizzes are often used. Low-stakes grading can also mean there’s a de-emphasis
With most instructional practices, it’s all about how they’re implemented. That’s what determines whether they’re right or wrong. Professor Tropman teaches introductory and upper division philosophy courses. She acknowledges that there are arguments against using reading quizzes, but writes, “I have had success using quizzes
Faculty rely on quizzes for a couple of reasons. They motivate most students to keep up with their class work and, if they’re unannounced, they motivate most students to show up regularly for class. The research on testing offers another reason, something called
Do grades motivate students? The answer is yes, but it’s not an unqualified yes. Below are highlights from a couple of first-rate studies that illustrate those qualifications, and they aren’t the only studies to do so.
The article cited below describes an assignment in an upper-division, large-lecture biochemistry course that has students generate questions about the readings. The assignment is worth about 5 percent of the course grade. The goal was to develop a formative assessment strategy that “would successfully (1)
There are three articles in this issue that deal with student assessment and learning. One offers an interesting approach that has students writing and answering their own exam questions; another introduces the idea of feedforward, which provides feedback before rather than after learning; and a
A colleague of mine recently engaged with a new technology tool that has changed her life. She purchased and became a vigilant user of the fitness band. This wristband tracks her movement and sleep. Although fitness bands are cool tech tools, their “magic” is rooted
Often the articles highlighted in The Teaching Professor are examples of pedagogical scholarship that could beneficially be done in many fields. That is the case with this piece on developing writing assignments, but it also contains content useful to any faculty member who uses writing
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