{"id":13111,"date":"2013-02-22t08:00:23","date_gmt":"2013-02-22t13:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/?p=13111"},"modified":"2013-03-21t15:40:46","modified_gmt":"2013-03-21t20:40:46","slug":"ask-professor-pedagogy-assessment-suggestions-for-large-lecture-classes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/2013\/02\/ask-professor-pedagogy-assessment-suggestions-for-large-lecture-classes\/","title":{"rendered":"ask professor pedagogy: assessment suggestions for large lecture classes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
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ask professor pedagogy<\/strong> is a twice monthly advice column written by 2022年世界杯中国小组赛积分 staff. one aspect of our mission is to cultivate dialogue about teaching and learning, so we welcome questions and concerns that arise in the classroom; particularly those from vanderbilt faculty, students, and staff. if you have a question that you’d like professor p to address, please send it to us<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

by adam wilsman, graduate teaching fellow <\/em><\/p>\n

(professor p. is on vacation this week)<\/em><\/p>\n

dear professor p.,<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

this semester, i am leading a 200-student lecture class for the history department.\u00a0 the class is going pretty well, but grading has been a real challenge.\u00a0 due to the size of the course, there are only three graded assignments on the syllabus, two essays and an exam.\u00a0 i designed the course this way because i am afraid of the amount of work that additional assignments would create in such a large class.\u00a0 however, some of the students are arguing that having so few graded assignments is unfair because one bad grade can have a devastating impact on their overall grade in the course.\u00a0 i am scheduled to teach this course again in the spring.\u00a0 how can i re-approach my grading plan to avoid another uprising?<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

-one grumpy grader<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n


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dear grumpy,<\/p>\n

yours is a familiar problem for many of the instructors tasked with teaching these large college courses each year.\u00a0 on the one hand, you don\u2019t want to have so many graded assignments that you bog yourself down with incessant grading.\u00a0 on the other, you do want to have enough assessments that you have a fair grading system for your students and yourself. \u00a0is there a way to strike a balance between these two things without simply resorting to more superficial grading assignments like multiple choice exercises?\u00a0 absolutely.<\/p>\n

there are several ways to incorporate more formative assessments into your class that do not add significantly to your workload, but give students and instructors the critical feedback that they need.\u00a0 discussion-oriented activities in the classroom enable students to practice course-related skills and demonstrate comprehension of the material, while not requiring formal grading.\u00a0 for these kinds of activities, students can receive valuable verbal (and sometimes written) feedback from professors, tas, and other students.\u00a0 the incorporation of technologies like \u201cclickers\u201d or websites like polleverywhere.com can also serve to engage students while giving students a sense of how they\u2019re doing in the course, and giving instructors an opportunity to assess student-learning.\u00a0 these types of feedback-providing activities are especially valuable in classes in which the first graded assignments are not returned to students for several weeks.<\/span><\/p>\n

what of your summative assessments?\u00a0 you will need to grade some homework, papers, and exams, so how does one best grade 200 students?\u00a0 one option is to split students into groups.\u00a0 in a class of 200, organizing your class into 50 groups of four students to work on weekly homework assignments, papers, or exams reduces your grading load by 75% while still giving students a chance to practice their skills and receive feedback.\u00a0 this substantial difference in workload may make collecting homework assignments or additional paper assignments feasible in these large classes.\u00a0 such group work also has value in promoting the kinds of communicative skills that represent critical learning goals in so many of our classrooms. \u00a0however, group projects also raise different challenges in cultivating fair and equitable groups that you will need to address.\u00a0 many of us can think of examples of being in a group where certain members did all the work while others slacked.\u00a0 to avoid this, there are a number of tactics that you can try.\u00a0 you can assign each member of the group a role in the group.\u00a0 you can build a peer review element into the group work so students feel accountable to one another.\u00a0 you can also offer small bonuses on exams for those groups whose members all maintained a certain average, in order to promote positive interdependence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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you might also be interested in our upcoming events on\u00a0teaching large classes: <\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n