Grading and Feedback in the Large Class
Traditionally, many educators have dealt with the grading volume in a large class by limiting assessment to a small number of high-stakes experiences like a midterm and a final exam. While this approach is one way to be efficient, it is not as effective because it reduces the potential of assessment to actually advance learning, not just evaluate it.
Incorporating more frequent and varied assessments can help you monitor student understanding and adjust your instruction accordingly. Ongoing feedback also helps students process material and identify gaps in their learning so they can direct their review or ask specifically for what they need.
Several approaches and tools exist to make frequent and varied assessment reasonable to implement in large classes. In the suggestions below, the word “assessment” is used to refer to both exams and significant assignments.
1. Be transparent about assessment plans
Transparency in the classroom is about making the intention of an assignment clear, conveying the sequence it will involve, and explaining what success can look like. Transparency is linked to increased learning gains, particularly for students from marginalized groups (See the Transparency in Teaching and Learning Project). To be transparent with your assessment, try the following:
- Communicate up front about the format, schedule, and procedures for assessments and how they will be evaluated. Rubrics can be simple but powerful tools to this end.
- Align the design of your assessment with course learning objectives. If your course learning objectives expect students to apply concepts or solve problems, then your exam questions or assessment tasks should do the same. See Brame (2013) for tips on writing good multiple choice test questions.
- Align teaching strategies with the design of your assessment. Students should have opportunity to practice and receive feedback on the type of learning that they will be required to demonstrate in assessments.
- Explore Academic Technologies’ tech tips on being transparent about assessment plans.
I find longer-term uniquely-tailored individual or group projects, with room for the students to give their own spin or emphasize their own interests, promote student engagement and provide more authentic assessments.
2. Incorporate ongoing, low-stakes assessment techniques to check for student understanding
“Low stakes” activities offer enough credit to motivate learners, but not enough to significantly affect grades. The purpose is to alert the educator and the learners to areas needing further clarification. In a large class, technology can help make frequent formative assessments easy to administer and grade for the educator and engaging for the learners. Here are some options:
- Short quizzes in Canvas combined with you reviewing the analytics can help you identify bottlenecks in student understanding. Frequent retrieval practice is also strongly supported to improve long-term memory (Rodeiger & Butler, 2011).
- Asking questions using Poll Everywhere throughout a class helps students process material and maintain attention, as well as give you a view into your students’ understanding.
- Exit tickets, minute papers, “muddiest point” questions and other Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATS) are ways to gather information on what students find most meaningful or confusing at the end of a class or a unit. You can implement any of these strategies through a Canvas assignment set up to take only text input.
- Explore Academic Technologies’ tech tips on incorporating ongoing, low-stakes assessment techniques.
3. Use assessment “wrappers” to help students build their experience from one exam or assignment to the next
Exam wrappers are metacognitive prompts that ask students to reflect on both their preparation for exams/major assignments and their results. Rather than focusing on course content, exam wrappers are meant to help students plan, monitor, evaluate and adjust their own learning strategies. Here is an example of an exam wrapper from the American Psychological Association that you can adjust for your own teaching.
- Explore Academic Technologies’ tech tips on using assessment wrappers.
In my classes I use reflection assignments that help students connect what we learn in class with their life experiences, promoting inclusivity. These assignments can also take the form of blog posts in a class blog.
4. Leverage Canvas features and Northeastern-supported technologies to make testing and feedback efficient and evaluate the grade data
Canvas and other technologies supported by Northeastern comprise a robust set of tools for making grading and feedback in large classes efficient and effective.
- Explore Academic Technologies’ tech tips on using Canvas and other tools to make grading and feedback efficient and effective:
- Leverage Canvas Mobile App and SpeedGrader to increase grading efficiency
- Leverage the SpeedGrader Comment Library to increase grading efficiency
- Provide audio/video feedback to foster learning
- Use the Large Class Setting to filter SpeedGrader by student group
- Learn how to create a moderated assignment to be graded by multiple reviewers
References
Brame, C. (2013) Writing good multiple choice test questions. Retrieved May 16, 2022 from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/writing-good-multiple-choice-test-questions/.
Roediger, H. & Butler, A. (2011). The critical role of retrieval practice in long-term retention. Trends in Cognitive Sciences (15)1, 20-27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2010.09.003.