Grading–especially grading writing–often feels just this arbitrary for both teacher and student.
Just why is one piece of writing a B and another a B-? Can you explain that to a student in a way that he or she can reliably replicate that grade?
Or an even better question: can the assessment process be used to support, enhance and further classroom objectives, rather than merely to measure them?
This semester I’ve been experimenting with grading methods for writing in MOCM 409 and MCOM 407.
In MCOM 409, we’re experimenting with portfolio grading. (To check it out, see the syllabus and scroll down to “grading.”) This method has been used widely in English departments and freshman comp programs over the last 20 years, but I’ve never really heard of it being used in journalism classes.
The idea is to delay grading until the end of the semester when the student submits a portfolio of their work for the class. The resulting grade is more holistic and assesses the student’s overall growth. It also preserves their freedom to experiment during the semester without the fear of a bad grade haunting their final score. This freedom to take risks is exactly the kind of atmosphere I want to cultivate in an upper-level elective writing course like Literary Journalism.
In MCOM 407, a curriculum-wide capstone course, I’m experimenting with peer grading. (To check it out, see the syllabus and scroll down to “grading.”) Here, I want to help students understand how their work will stand up in the real world. I also want to help them become better readers so they can edit the work of others and understand how they can better edit their own work.
Since we’re participating in the Newstrust Baltimore experiment this semester, I took the Newstrust review form and adapted it for the class to use in evaluating our own writing.
Newstrust blogged about my experiment last Friday. Thanks again to the good folks over there–Gin and Mary and Jon and Fabrice–for being so helpful and inspiring.
And a big thanks to my 407 students who have been so very patient with me while I’ve taken the time to figure this out.
Here’s a few of the comments I’ve gotten so far from students:
- Grading others’ work made me realize where I can improve my own writing. You also had to really read the paper and not just skim.
- I enjoyed being in the group and bouncing our thoughts off of other people who read the story.
- It was a good way to learn what to improve on. After reading the other students I was thinking about what I did well or need to improve on.
- By seeing what others fell short on, I know what I need to specifically do to score higher.
