Message from the Director

It’s study week, and I have some tips on fast and equitable grading from the University of Waterloo Center for Teaching Excellence. Hopefully they'll help you finish this semester strong!

Whether you’re grading assignments, essays, lab reports, or exams, here are some general strategies that can help you save time and ensure that you’re being equitable.

For fast grading…

• Prepare an answer key or set of detailed criteria before you start grading and annotate your criteria as you progress through the exams or assignments. This helps you become more efficient as you encounter the same mistakes; you have a record of how you handled the same error previously.
• Find excellent, good, adequate, and poor examples to serve as anchors or standards. Use them to refresh your memory of your grading standards and help ensure fairness.
• Write only brief comments on students’ work. Don't feel that you must correct every error, respond to every idea, or propose alternatives for each section. It's best to focus on one or two major problems and look for patterns of errors rather than note every flaw.
• Set yourself three goals in responding to student work: highlight what was done well (to build confidence), point out key errors and weaknesses that need correction, and provide ways to improve.
• Set limits on how long you will spend on each exam question, essay, or assignment.
• Sort students’ work into A, B, C, D, and F piles before assigning final grades to help you decide on borderline cases.

For equitable grading…

• Cover students’ names so you’re not influenced by the performance of students on previous exams or assignments, their class participation level, or their attitudes about you or the course. You can ask students to put their names on the last page or the back of an exam or assignment.
• Determine the general level of performance before grading by randomly sampling the assignments or exams or, if possible, skimming them all.
• Avoid judging students’ work on extraneous factors such as handwriting or use of pen versus pencil.
• Place grades and comments on the last page of students’ work to help protect privacy.
• Record grades as numbers (versus letters) to ensure greater accuracy when calculating final grades.

Best of luck finishing the semester!

Melissa Bowles-Terry

Director, Faculty Center