Get Your Students Hired
I love the idea of online gradebooks, especially if the student cant check their grades themselves. That would really save a lot of time for me to put to use in others areas. I would love to use this tool.
Vanessa, Excellent to hear you'll take a new and great approach. With the classroom grading, be sure to maintain student confidentiality by concealing names of the papers that students grade. You can do this by assigning each student a code name or number to use on their exams instead of using their real name.
Dr. Melissa Read
Cynthia, Interesting approach. Yes, true / false questions do make things easier to grade. I recommend emphasizing test materials while also covering off on the broad educational content available in your discipline. This holistic approach provides students depth and breadth in your subject area.
Dr. Melissa Read
Deb, Sounds like you have developed a highly efficient system! Thanks very much for sharing. Your testing formats, as well as methodologies, likely help you save time and focus more on other priorities - like classroom instruction!
Dr. Melissa Read
Dr. Read,
I really like the approach on having the students underline or highlight their actual answers. Also, I will start to incorporate more "classroom" grading and discussion. It's a great idea; helps my grading time and everyone at once is allowed to have a group discussion based on any questions they may have. Thank you!
Vanessa
I make sure to lecture on specific materials that will be on my test. While lecturing I put emphasis
on the material that I feel is important and will help the student remember the answer for the questions. Giving more multiple choice and True and false test makes it easier to give and grade also.
We currently use workbooks as homework assignments, and they are easy to grade in class with students checking their own work. Most of the assignment is multiple choice, true and false, fill-in-the blanks, etc.
The tests we use are graded using Scantron, so once again, it is quickly graded.
We are also using an online gradebook.
Veronica, Sounds like a great system. Multiple choice and true / false give me quick grading options so I love using them as well. At the same time, I like to balance these with open-ended question formats to deeply test knowledge. Having a nice balance in formats has worked well for me.
Dr. Melissa Read
Currently I use more multiple choice and true/false questions to my exams with one or two discussion questions. This makes it easier for me to grade and with the homework assignments I may use a diagram and have them label the parts (computer) and discuss each part.
I think the easier you can grade a test or project the faster you can get the grade back to the student and review the tests.
Liset, So true. Multiple choice is quick to grade and we can use the scantron to do it. I like to mix these formats with short answer and essay formats to deeply test knowledge while speeding the grading process.
Dr. Melissa Read
I teach lab, which is mostly hands on so I have a tendancy not to give homework assignments. I will however, give the occassional one-page written assignment and scan them for key pieces of information.
In this module I learned to have them underline or highlight what they feel is important to give me a starting point for reading their assignments.
The format of my exams and quizzes are fairly easy to grade, I did make corrections to elimate confusion or for misinterpretations adding grading time due to the disputes.
I will use more multiple choices questions in the future , these are really easier to grade .
I already have students fill out a seperate answer sheet that is much shorter and more manageable than the test booklet. I do this for all of my multiple choice and true/false answers which speeds up grading significantly. While I also include the short answer and essay sections on this answer sheet, in the future, I think having the students underline or highlight the important parts of the essay answers may be very beneficial to my grading process. It not only speeds up grading, it lets you know what the student felt was important about their answer.
I will format my exams in the future to not include many essay questions and most exams will be in a format that the student will have blanks to place their answers in. In this fashion i will not have to look all over the page to find the answers.
I like this idea of highlighting of major idea or key words. I think it should help with time management and I will try to use it.
Tonya, So true. By hand analysis can take forever and really doesn't add value when grading multiple choice questions. It sounds like you no longer have access to that scantron machine. That's got to be tough.
Dr. Melissa Read
We do all our writen assesments on paper. We do all our physical assesing on the motorcycles... I'm not given the freedom to rework the curiculm here.
I worked previously at a university that had a scantron system. Not only were your exams graded quickly but you could get the class results analyzed so you could see which questions were missed the most, etc. That really helped me determine whether the questions were not "good" questions or whether the class did not understand the material, etc. I found that really helpful. Doing that sort of analyzing by hand is quite time consuming!
I will have the students first grade their transcripts, and if close to a pass I will then regrade; otherwise, I will just skim it together with the student.