1. Set up your gradebook in eClass
By taking time to set up your gradebook at the start of your course, students will have access to their grades throughout the course, knowing exactly where they stand. For you, the gradebook will keep your records and calculate your final grades so all you have to do is submit them at the end of the term.
Tools
- Gradebook in eClass
Resources
Best practices
- Set up all of your assessments (eClass quizzes, eClass Assignments, etc.) in eClass before setting up your gradebook, as these are added automatically to your gradebook once created in your course.
- Set up your gradebook at the start of your course using “weighted means of grades” after all assessments have been added to your course, so that your gradebook will accurately calculate your students grades according to the weights you assigned to each assessment type in your course outline.
2. Grade consistently and fairly
Students will focus more on learning and your feedback if they feel their work is being graded fairly. To be fair, you must grade with consistency across time, graders, and students.
Tools
- Crowdmark organizes grading by question, not student, and allows multiple graders to grade anonymously the same assessment simultaneously.
- eClass Assignments allow anonymous grading, where student names are not visible to graders.
- Turnitin and eClass Assignments allows you to set up a rubric to use when grading.
Resources
Best practices
- Always refer to grading guidelines and expectations (e.g. rubrics, solutions with grade breakdown) when grading to avoid comparing and grading student work against each other, as well as keeping you on track and consistent over time.
- If there are multiple graders, consider grading a few assignments together to work through and interpret grading guidelines and rubrics so that you maintain consistency across graders.
- Anonymous grading will help you avoid grading the student and focus solely on grading the work they’ve submitted.
3. Provide feedback
Feedback is necessary for students to learn and continually improve. Positive and constructive feedback focused on how students can improve incrementally is most helpful.
Tools
- Turnitin and Crowdmark in eClass have comment banks that you can populate and drag and drop to multiple assessments.
- Record an audio or text file of your feedback and upload to Turnitin or eClass Assignments, or type feedback directly.
- Zoom or Microsoft Teams can facilitate real-time feedback after a presentation, performance, or demonstration.
- Use these tools to offer feedback on videos created by students
- Leave feedback on eClass Discussion Forum posts or eClass Journals.
- Automated feedback is possible using self-graded eClass Quizzes.
- peerScholar facilitates the peer-review process, and allows multiple file formats for submission and review.
Resources
Best practices
- Focus on helping students improve by one letter grade instead of “getting an A.”
- Quality, timely feedback helps establish your presence in the course.
- You should make clear what your students can expect in terms of feedback turnaround time on assignments.
- Depending on your assignment, you can try different modes of feedback delivery, including written, audio/video, and automated.
- Feedback can also be delivered at the individual or group level, for example a summary of feedback on common errors, or recording a sample solution.
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