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Quality assessment, or lack thereof, at the university level
Dear Editor,
Everyone who took the School of Education’s newest course, Assessment and Evaluation of Learning this semester will no doubt agree with me: assessment methods at the university level suck.
Right away I want to say that a number of amazing profs do take the time and energy to assess their students’ learning in a surprisingly thorough way, but the general lack of descriptive feedback or quality assessment methods, such as the use of rubrics or criteria when it comes to marking, is startling at this level. The use of rubrics and criteria-based assessment should not have been left behind in grade school. Students need to know what they are being marked for and how they can do an excellent job for each individual prof, instead of bumbling about the library with the Little Brown Handbook and a panicked expression on their faces.
One of the biggest issues that came up regarding grading in our class was the practice of taking a percentage off per day that an assignment is late. Most students at Trinity have struggled to hand in a paper on time, even if it’s a crappy paper, because they don’t want to lose the 10 per cent. Does that accurately reflect what they learned in their research and in the class? Some students do not let the percentage off scare them and hand in their work late only to find their grades are, surprisingly, not reflective of what they felt was a really good paper.
I don’t want to just rail about the unfair grading that occurs at the university level, I want to offer some solutions. It might just be that I am still an education student, idealizing the perfect assessment design implementation that might be extremely unrealistic in practice, but at least I’m thinking about it.
I suggest that:
–Profs become clearer about their assessment policy; how they determine marks, how they weigh different criteria, what is important to them and how students can be involved in the assessment process.
–Profs use rubrics or criteria and make sure students are clear about how they will be marked. This gives students a better understanding of where they went wrong in a paper and how they can do better next time. It also helps profs back up their reasoning for giving certain grades.
–Profs give students models of good and bad work so they know what they should and should not do. It could be as simple as taking a few minutes in class to explain the models, or putting some good and bad models up on myCourses for students to see.
–Profs should stop taking percentages off for late papers or at least lower the percentage taken off. Grades at the university level should be an accurate reflection of a student’s learning, not whether or not they handed in a paper on time.
It is understandable that profs are extremely busy people who do not have time to closely monitor the learning of each student, but even a few simple changes made to the system could even help them out and make their jobs easier. If quality assessment methods are applied at this university, (and every prof takes a condensed version of the Assessment and Evaluation of Learning course) grades will begin to accurately reflect the actual learning that occurs on this campus.
– Holly Sandmaier
Way to go putting 401 to good use, Holly. One concern I bet a lot of professors would have, though, would be with removing the percentage off per day. Just to play the other side of the board, arguably university ends up not just assessing learning but providing feedback on one’s professionalism as a student gears themselves up into the professional world – where timeliness is key – what would you propose as an alternative so we lazy students still hand in our work on time so we don’t bog professors down – is it a matter of recultivating respect? How would we get there?