Handbook Table of Contents > Teaching Methods > Assessing Student Performance
Indiana University Teaching Handbook
Assessing Student Performance
- Introduction
- Determining Evaluative Criteria
- Test Construction
- Constructing Writing Assignments
- Grading
Introduction
Adapted with permission from Farris, 1985
It takes some time for instructors to strike a comfortable balance between the “I’m tough—learn because you respect me” and the “I’m compassionate—learn because you love me” extremes of motivating students. Regardless of the approach you take, students will not respect you or your standards unless you also provide them with a means of meeting your expectations.
Evaluation of student performance has two primary purposes: 1) summative, to measure student progress or achievement, and 2) formative, to provide feedback to students to help them learn. As an instructor, it is easy to place emphasis on the first goal, since one of your most visible jobs is to assign grades that become part of the permanent record. The second goal, however—providing feedback for the purpose of helping students improve—is often the more important one for the success of your students, as well as for your success as a teacher. For that reason, plan your evaluation tools and events so as to help students learn, rather than merely as opportunities to generate grades. Frequent tests and quizzes, for example, rather than one big exam, will give students a better chance to monitor their work, and to alter their study habits if they perform poorly early in the semester.
Similarly, consider giving feedback in the form of non-graded short papers, surveys, and other exercises to find out how well students are doing. These are often grouped together under the rubric of Classroom Assessment Techniques. Sometimes they are even anonymous, for the purpose of giving both you and your students useful feedback on the teaching and learning process. Campus Instructional Consulting has several handouts and books on classroom assessment.
Determining Evaluative Criteria
Adapted with permission from Farris, 1985
Students are very sensitive to grades and the criteria on which they are based: “Will this be on the test? How much does the quiz count toward the final grade? Do you consider attendance and participation?” You should be prepared to answer such questions on the first day of class; that means, of course, that you must have answered them for yourself well in advance.
Before constructing an exam or assignment, you need to decide exactly what it is you expect your students to demonstrate that they have learned. Reviewing the instructional objectives you established at the beginning of the term may be a good way to begin. The first step is to think carefully about the goals you set for the students. Should students have mastered basic terminology and working principles? Does that mastery entail an ability to generate the information from memory, or merely to identify it? Should students have developed a broad understanding of the subject? Should they be able to use the principles and concepts taught in the course to solve problems in the field?
The next question is how you can best evaluate the extent to which students have achieved these goals. Perhaps a certain type of test will suggest itself immediately (multiple choice, matching, fill in the blanks, short answer, problem solving, essay). If you know what you want to assess and why, then writing the actual questions will be much less frustrating.
Test Construction
Closed-Answer or “Objective” Tests
Although by definition no test can be truly “objective” (existing as an object of fact, independent of the mind), this handbook refers to tests made up of multiple choice, matching, fill-in, true/false, or fill-in-the-blank items as objective tests. Objective tests have the advantages of allowing an instructor to assess a large and potentially representative sample of course material and allow for reliable and efficient scoring. The disadvantages of objective tests include a tendency to emphasize only “recognition” skills, the ease with which correct answers can be guessed on many item types, and the inability to measure students’ organization and synthesis of material (Adapted with permission from Yonge, 1977).
Since the practical arguments for giving objective exams are compelling, we offer a few suggestions for writing multiple-choice items. The first is to find and adapt existing test items. Teachers’ manuals containing collections of items accompany many textbooks. (AIs: Your course supervisor or former teachers of the same course may be willing to share items with you.) However, the general rule is adapt rather than adopt. Existing items will rarely fit your specific needs; you should tailor them to more adequately reflect your objectives.
Second, design multiple choice items so that students who know the subject or material adequately are more likely to choose the correct alternative and students with less adequate knowledge are more likely to choose a wrong alternative. That sounds simple enough, but you want to avoid writing items that lead students to choose the right answer for the wrong reasons. For instance, avoid making the correct alternative the longest or most qualified one, or the only one that is grammatically appropriate to the stem. Even a careless shift in tense or verb-subject agreement can often suggest the correct answer.
Finally, it is very easy to disregard the above advice and slip into writing items which require only rote recall but are nonetheless difficult because they are taken from obscure passages (footnotes, for instance). Some items requiring only recall might be appropriate, but try to design most of the items to tap the students’ understanding of the subject (Adapted with permission from Farris, 1985).
One way to write multiple choice questions that require more than recall is to develop questions that resemble miniature “cases” or situations. Provide a small collection of data, such as a description of a situation, a series of graphs, quotes, a paragraph, or any cluster of the kinds of raw information that might be appropriate material for the activities of your discipline. Then develop a series of questions based on that material. These questions might require students to apply learned concepts to the case, to combine data, to make a prediction on the outcome of a process, to analyze a relationship between pieces of the information, or to synthesize pieces of information into a new concept.
Here are a few additional guidelines to keep in mind when writing multiple-choice tests (Adapted with permission from Yonge, 1977):
- The item-stem (the lead-in to the choices) should clearly formulate a problem.
- As much of the question as possible should be included in the stem.
- Randomize occurrence of the correct response (e.g., you don’t always want “C” to be the right answer).
- Make sure there is only one clearly correct answer (unless you are instructing students to select more than one).
- Make the wording in the response choices consistent with the item stem.
- Don’t load down the stem with irrelevant material.
- Beware of using answers such as “none of these” or “all of the above.”
- Use negatives sparingly in the question or stem; do not use double negatives.
- Beware of using sets of opposite answers unless more than one pair is presented (e.g., go to work, not go to work).
- Beware of providing irrelevant grammatical cues.
Grading of multiple choice exams can be done by hand or through the use of computer scannable answer sheets available from your departmental office. Take completed answer sheets to IUB Evaluation Services and Testing (BEST) located in Franklin Hall M014. If you have your test scored by BEST, they will provide statistics on difficulty and reliability, which will help you to improve your tests.
If you choose the computer-grading route, you must be sure students have number 2 pencils to mark answers on their sheets. These are often available from your department’s main office. At the time of the exam it is helpful to write on the chalkboard all pertinent information required on the answer sheet (course name, course number, section number, instructor’s name, etc.). Also, remind students to fill in their university identification numbers carefully so that you can have a roster showing the ID number and grade for each student.
If you would like to consult with someone about developing test items, call Campus Instructional Consulting at 855-9023.
If you would like to consult with someone about how to interpret your test results, call BEST at 855-1595.
Essay Tests
Conventional wisdom accurately portrays short-answer and essay examinations as the easiest to write and the most difficult to grade, particularly if they are graded well. You should give students an exam question for each crucial concept that they must understand.
If you want students to study in both depth and breadth, don't give them a choice among topics. This allows them to choose not to answer questions about those things they didn’t study. Instructors generally expect a great deal from students, but remember that their mastery of a subject depends as much on prior preparation and experience as it does on diligence and intelligence; even at the end of the semester some students will be struggling to understand the material. Design your questions so that all students can answer at their own levels.
The following are some suggestions that may enhance the quality of the essay tests that you produce (Adapted with permission from Ronkowski, 1986):
- Have in mind the processes that you want measured (e.g., analysis, synthesis).
- Start questions with words such as “compare,” “contrast,” “explain why.” Don’t use “what,” “when,” or “list.” (These latter types are better measured with objective-type items). Writing Tutorial Services, Ballantine Hall 207, 855-6738, has a handout for students which defines these terms and explains how to study for and respond to essay questions.
- Write items that define the parameters of expected answers as clearly as possible.
- Make sure that the essay question is specific enough to invite the level of detail you expect in the answer. A question such as “Discuss the causes of the American Civil War,” might get a wide range of answers, and therefore be impossible to grade reliably. A more controlled question would be, “Explain how the differing economic systems of the North and South contributed to the conflicts that led to the Civil War.
- Don’t have too many questions for the time available.
Constructing Writing Assignments
Adapted by permission from Kurz, 1996
Like writing essay exam questions, constructing effective writing assignments requires some thought and preparation on your part. First, you need to decide what your goals are in assigning writing. If you keep your goals in mind, you will find that constructing a writing assignment will be easier and the assignment is more likely to accomplish those goals.
- Role: What role is the student to take in writing this paper? If the student is writing a book review, for example, she takes on the role of critic.
- Audience: Who is the audience for this paper? What can students assume about the knowledge and background of their readers? Often students have difficulty writing because they conceive of their audience solely as their professor: “the instructor already knows all this, what can I say?” By imagining an audience to whom they can speak with authority, students can often write better, more interesting essays.
- Format: In what format should this paper be written? Business memos, for example, typically open with standard headings and are very different from academic papers.
- Task: What task is the student to accomplish? The task might be, for example, to summarize a text, to compare and contrast two theories, or to analyze an argument. Make sure your assignment clearly specifies this information, which is often referred to by the acronym RAFT (Role, Audience, Format, Task). The more clearly you indicate what you want in your assignment, the more likely it is that you will get it.
When you assign writing, you need to decide and make explicit to students what standards you will use in evaluating you’re their essays. Some areas of evaluation include accuracy or richness of content, organization, and sentence-level correctness.
Making your criteria clear ahead of time eases your students’ fears about the evaluation process to some extent. Moreover, students who know what standards against which their essays will be judged are more likely to try to meet those standards when they write. One way to make your standards clear to your students is a rubric which describes the characteristics of an “A” paper, a “B” paper, and so on. Sample rubrics are available from Campus Instructional Consulting.
Another good method is to grade a paper in front of the class. The paper you grade might be one written in the previous semester (with the student’s name removed, of course). It is useful to perform this exercise with a paper which might receive an average grade rather than a superior one; the average paper that makes some interesting mistakes will teach students what to avoid, while a superior paper will only excite envy or hopelessness.
Regardless of the method you choose, you are welcome to consult with the Campus Writing Program, 855-4928. Its staff members will help you to construct rubrics or provide student papers to grade in class.
Responding to Student Writing
Writing is a tool for communication, and it is reasonable for you to expect coherent, lucid prose from your students. However, writing is also a mode of learning and a way for students to discover what they think about a subject. You should be willing to participate in this learning and discovery process as well as grade the product (Adapted with permission from Farris, 1985).
The quality of student writing is often far below acceptable standards. Many instructors try to ignore the problem by insisting that writing skills are not part of their assigned subject area. This attitude results in further problems for both instructors and their students. If you demand good writing, make your expectations known and offer help to those who need it (or refer students to Writing Tutorial Services, Ballantine Hall 206). Students will try to meet your demands; make your standards worth meeting.
Not all instructor comments on student papers are equal. Instructors often find it useful to involve themselves in students’ writing (and learning) processes, rather than simply “correcting” the final products by having them submit first drafts which are given constructive criticism on content, organization, and presentation. One-to-one conferences after the student has read the critique and perhaps begun a second draft are invaluable. The second draft is graded and usually demonstrates improvement on all fronts, especially in the depth of analysis and support for an argument so often found lacking in one-draft student papers.
Comments on a first draft are typically different from those given on a final draft. On a first draft, comments usually address whole-paper level concerns. Is there a clear thesis that appropriately addresses the assignment? Is the evidence appropriate and convincing? Is the organization clear? It is often a good idea at this stage to phrase you comments as questions you as a reader would like the writer to address. In addition, if you connect your comments to specific phrases or sentences in the student’s text and avoid vague directives such as “be specific” or “expand,” the student will have a clearer idea of how to revise the text. In the early stages of the writing process there is little point in addressing sentence-level problems, as during revision many of those sentences may disappear. Comments on a final draft have a different purpose—to justify a grade, to point to sections that are particularly effective or ineffective, or to address sentence-level concerns, for example.
As you read student essays and diagnose writing problems, you may notice patterns. A paper full of long, convoluted sentences, for example, may indicate that the student is struggling with very complex concepts. Ideally, in your comments you may be able to help the student find ways to discuss those concepts without adding to their complexity. If the essay contains glaring grammatical or mechanical errors, it may be because the student is unfamiliar with the discipline or topic. Even experienced writers may let grammar lapse when they are writing on a topic or in a discipline new to them. If your students are inexperienced writers, you may read many papers in which the thesis is stated in the conclusion rather than at the beginning. In these cases, the student may have begun to write before thinking through the argument to be presented; writing a draft at this preliminary stage becomes a process of discovering the argument. Such a student can benefit substantially from some carefully phrased comments and an opportunity to revise (Adapted by permission from L. Kurz, personal communication, 1996).
Peer feedback groups in which students read each other their first drafts for critique are also useful. These groups work best when students observe a fairly strict protocol: generally each student reads the draft twice. The first time group members listen only; on the second reading they write comments on their photocopy and/or fill out a form designed to address problems specific to the assignment. Then one at a time, the group members offer their comments to the writer. One advantage to the peer feedback method is that you are not the only audience for the students’ writing. They hear suggestions for improving their drafts from others before you read the papers.
Avoid the trap of editing papers for students. The point is to get the students to be able to edit their own papers; tell them there is a grammatical problem in a line, but don’t fix it for them. Written comments, especially about grammar and mechanics, do very little to improve the student’s next effort. Also, getting back a paper covered in red ink can devastate students’ morale and confidence in their writing ability.
Richard Haswell, in “Minimal Marking” (1983), advocates responding to surface error, grammar, and mechanics problems, by indicating the presence of such an error “only with a check in the margin by the line in which it occurs.” One check per error, so two checks in the margin means two errors in the line. He marks these problems, records the number of them, and returns the essay to the student. He requires the student to correct checked errors and resubmit the essay for evaluation. No grade is recorded until this stage.
Haswell claims that much less of his time is spent on surface error, allowing more attention to substance. This also reduces the reverse “halo effect” where the irritation caused by explaining and correcting surface errors causes an instructor to devalue the student’s content. Haswell also claims that he saves more time by not correcting surface errors than he loses in looking at each paper twice. (Adapted with permission from Kurz, 1996, Kalish 1993, and Farris, 1985).
If you have further questions about using writing in your class or about how to respond to it, contact the Campus Writing Program at 855-4928.
Grading
Reading 50 papers or 200 essay exams presents special problems, especially when all 50 or 200 are responses to the same topic or question. How do you maintain consistency? You are more likely to be thorough with the first few papers you read than with the rest, and less likely to be careful with the comments when you are tired. To avoid such problems, read five or six papers before you start grading to get an idea of the range of quality (some instructors rank-order the papers in groups before they assign grades), and stop grading when you get tired, irritable, or bored. When you start again, read over the last couple of papers you graded to make sure you were fair. Some instructors select “range finder” papers—middle range A, B, C, and D papers to which they refer for comparison.
Depending upon the number of students you have, you may have anywhere from five to 20 minutes to spend on a three- to four-page paper. Try to select only the most insightful passages for praise and only the most shallow responses or repeated errors for comment. See the previous section on “Responding to Student Writing” for more detailed advice (Adapted with permission from Farris, 1985).
In assigning grades to essay questions or papers, you may want to use one of the following methods (Adapted with permission from Cashin, 1987):
- Analytic (point-score) Method: In this method the ideal or model answer is broken down into several specific points regarding content. A specific subtotal point value is assigned to each. When reading the exam, you need to decide how much of each maximum subtotal you judge the student’s answer to have earned. When using this method be sure to outline the model (ideal or acceptable) answer BEFORE you begin to read the essays.
- Global (holistic) Method: In this method, the grader reads the entire essay and makes an overall judgment about how successfully the student has covered everything that was expected in the answer and assigns the paper to a stack (grade). Generally, five to nine stacks are sufficient. Ideally, all of the essays should be read quickly and sorted into five to nine piles, then each pile reread to check that every essay has been accurately (fairly) assigned to that pile which will be given a specific score or letter grade.
If you are one of a group of graders, all reading responses to the same questions, it is usually a good idea to compare your grading to “norm” the grading scale. The Campus Writing Program, 855-4928, will help groups of graders norm their grading scales.
Records and Distribution of Grades
Be sure to develop a clear grading policy, whether you use a point scale, a curve, or a holistic method. Students expect that you will announce your grading scale in your syllabus and treat it like a contract. You can avoid many complaints at the end of the semester if you are clear at the beginning. If you are teaching a small section of a large course managed by someone else, procedures for grading and the distribution of grades to students will most likely be coordinated with that instructor. Some large section instructors will have established procedures for the distribution of grades, while others may leave it up to the small section instructor.
Under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), it is a breach of privacy to post grades, exam scores, or other documents in any kind of public area (outside the office, for example) without removing all personally identifiable information such as names and ID numbers. Grades should be posted by the last 4 digits of ID number. If the exams have been scanned and graded by Bureau of Evaluative Studies and Testing, you may request an “unsorted” printout includes partial ID numbers and grades only and is suitable for posting. Another method is to record grades on the attendance roster, photocopy it, and then clip out the section of names on the sheet, leaving only partial ID numbers and grades; however, this leaves the list in alphabetical order. Or you can post the grades via the World Wide Web, if you have set up an on-line grade book developed by IUB Evaluation Services and Testing (BEST) (855-1595).
Handing back papers or essays to a large class can be a very time consuming task. Some instructors deal with this by leaving time at the end of class to hand back assignments or tests, or they may ask students to come to their office to pick up papers. The latter alternative may provide an opportunity for students to get more personal feedback from you about their papers.
Don’t hand back graded work at the beginning of class unless you plan to spend time going over it; students will almost always pay more attention to the returned work than to the matter at hand. Also, be careful not to allow a discussion of the work you are returning to degenerate into a gripe session. Students’ grade complaints can easily degenerate into a “wolf pack.” If a student has a complaint about his or her grade, that should be discussed one to one in your office.
Anticipating Common Grade Complaints
Adapted by permission from Middendorf, 1993
“Five or six of my students were hostile when I returned the exam. They said it was too hard.”
“A student just left my class and said she was going to report me to the dean because she missed the last class session and I told her she still must take today’s quiz.”
Not infrequently, students get upset about testing or grading procedures. Some students go so far as to intimidate instructors as a means of either improving their grades or getting the instructor to make future exams and assignments less challenging.
Students may not all be doing this consciously, though some may be. Students feel great pressure to get A’s and will try many strategies to that end. Instructors should not ignore students’ complaints; student comments are an important source of feedback for improving teaching. However, you should be aware that students may try to get you to back off of rigorous demands. Teachers can increase student achievement by setting high, but attainable goals.
The bottom line is that instructors should expect hard work and sound thinking from students. At the same time, instructors should be aware that occasionally a student will resort to intimidation as a means of getting an instructor to lessen demands. The intellectual climate of Indiana University will be determined in part by whether students are challenged or have little demand placed on them.
The University Grading System
A student grade is officially recorded by letters evaluated as follows:
| A |
+ |
= |
4.0 (counts same as A in GPA) |
| A |
|
= |
4.0 |
| A |
– |
= |
3.7 |
| B |
+ |
= |
3.3 |
| B |
|
= |
3.0 |
| B |
– |
= |
2.7 |
| C |
+ |
= |
2.3 |
| C |
|
= |
2.0 |
| C |
– |
= |
1.7 |
| D |
+ |
= |
1.3 |
| D |
|
= |
1.0 |
| D |
– |
= |
0.7 |
| F |
|
= |
0.0 |
| F |
X |
= |
Failed (course then retaken) |
| I |
|
= |
Incomplete |
| R |
|
= |
Deferred grade |
| S |
|
= |
Satisfactory |
| W |
|
= |
Withdrawn |
| P |
|
= |
Passed |
For further information on grading policies at Indiana University, please consult the Academic Handbook or consult with your supervising faculty member.
Links
The following links will take you to additional readings associated with this general section.
- Putting together the Final Grade: Includes a sample rubric for calculating the final grade, as well as a sample Excel grade book for download.
- Grade Information: Information from the Office of the Registrar on the grades timeline, GPA calculation, GPA summary, grading system, and the grade report.
- The Pass/Fail Option
- Extended-X (Amended FX) Policy: IU policy on students retaking classes to improve their grades.
