Just read this essay at the Chronicle on the various difficulties of evaluating student work. Syncs up very nicely with my class’s schedule, as today I have an extra credit assignment coming due and will receive projects and papers on Friday. Faced with a huge stack of work to evaluate, I always feel overwhelmed. But there's still this tiny grain of excitement there, buried underneath the anxiety and annoyance: how did they do on those exam rewrites? What did they choose to work on for their projects? Will I see any Doric temples made of playdough?
The Chronicle essayist discusses grading essays specifically, and this is something I struggle with often. Not just because writing skills are not what we all wish they were, not just because many students show up to college poorly prepared by their high school experience. In my department, nearly everyone gives essay-based exams. Some include a few fill-ins or short answers, but the majority of people teaching surveys use essays. This includes me, although increasingly I find myself questioning the benefits of the essay format. First it’s the time constraint: what is reasonable to demand of a class in 50 minutes? How well-developed can a 12 minute essay be? Given that these are questions based on a comparison of two images, should I expect synthesis, or be happy when they just provide the facts I’m asking for?
Papers I grade on style and coherence, and expect that the student can make and support a thesis, that her comparisons will demonstrate some creative thought. Generally students do better when given more time, and most see this assignment (which is their third of four grades—the other three being in-class tests) as a chance to boost their average. In the past most have invested an appropriate amount of effort in the assignment.
The reason I'm bringing all this up, though, is that I've been trying to decide whether the in-class essay format as it is clung to by many in our department is useful. I have no doubts that essays, in general, are the best way to evaluate a student’s progress. It’s the time aspect that I’m not sure I’m comfortable with. I wonder what other possibilities there might be: assigning several shorter papers in which students have to trace a particular theme through different images or buildings? The department—and possibly the university—conceives of the survey as a lecture course, and the implication is that there shouldn’t be too much of an emphasis on writing. We’re meant to lecture in these surveys, but I’m never satisfied with the lecture-only format. If I thought I could organize this class so that there was time for in-class group activity, for example, I would. What to do?
Posted by Heather at November 19, 2003 08:54 AM
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