I gave all of my classes exams in the past two weeks. It has been a good process for me to evaluate the students and my expectations. For one class, my expectations are running high, and for the other, either my expectations are low or the students are exceptional. Because my data points are two, I have too few degrees of freedom to make any good decisions.
I hate subjective measures of anything. To me, subjective means do whatever you want. Being overly analytical, I want to ensure that my grading is consistent across all papers and classes. All teachers are subject to grading fatigue and either score higher as they start or finish grading. Some people know which they do and can compensate, I don't and can't.
Thus I find myself trying to decide whether I should shuffle the papers before I grade them. The papers at the top of the pile were turned in last during the testing period. These papers come from students who took longer, but does that mean that they perform worse than those who finished earlier? If I shuffle the papers, I really don't lose anything beyond intermixing of the two classes that took the test. If I don't shuffle the papers, I may combine the grading fatigue effect with the potential self selection problem of later papers being of worse quality.
I had never thought of this before.
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3 comments:
Hmmmmm...an interesting dilemna. Grading has got to be tough and somewhat mind-numbing. Good luck with that, however you decide to do it.
By the way, you need to post some pictures of your paint job on the house. We missed you this week.
Earlene
I agree that it's difficult to identify and treat your own grading issues. I always graded higher at the beginning, and got more and more pessimistic at the end--seeing the first student-built volcano was exciting, but seeing the last one was annoying!
For tests, I had it a little easier in math--either the answer is wrong or it's right. But I did usually find the highest scores among the ones who finished first.
I can see the merit in shuffling the papers. If you did that consistently, any mistakes you made in grading higher at the beginning or end would be offset for any individual student with the next pile of papers that you graded.
In any case, acknowledging the problem is the first step to recovery, so I think you'll do just fine! :)
One way is to have more multi-or-single choice questions for the students. I feel that's much easier for teachers.
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