“But what are you looking for?” The Conundrum of Evaluating Students
Dr Steve Gennaro
I distinctly remember as a younger teacher, standing in front of the lecture hall, at the podium after just explaining in great detail the final essay for a first year survey course and hearing nothing but silence from over 200 students. I had finished by saying “are there any questions?” to which the only response was the sound of crickets. Much like Ben Stein in the 1980s blockbuster film Ferris Bueller’s Day off, I repeated “Anybody? Anybody?” and still I was only greeted by blank faces, students avoiding eye contact, and silence. Finally, after waiting through a painfully excruciating length of time (at least it felt that way, in reality it was probably only about 45 seconds), one lone hand was raised. Yes! I jumped and pointed to the student who asked the question that I’m pretty sure most educators dread and is one of the most difficult student questions to hear: “can you tell me what you are looking for?” My heart sank. Why are our students so focused on what it is that “we” as educators are looking for instead of what “they” as students can discover from the learning process? Why is the focus simply on the end result (the letter grade noted at the bottom of the page) instead of what can be learned from this project, or even better, what do they already know as a result of their hard work in this class and other classes! I’ve come to learn over the last decade since this moment that the struggle to evaluate students in meaningful ways that provides feedback and resonates with them is challenging. The struggle is real.
Over the last 15 years at York, I have marked thousands of student essays. I have tried dozens of different strategies to help my students understand their mark and to provide them with helpful guidance for improving their ability to think, read, and write critically. I’ve used rubrics. I have written paragraphs with detailed feedback. I have marked up papers like a copy editor. I have even (with my smaller classes) required students to meet with me 1 on 1 for a brief conversation in order to receive their grades. And still, what I have come to discover is that there is no universal feedback strategy that successfully meets what I consider to be the primary goal of evaluation (remember: to provide meaningful feedback as to why they received the grade at the same time as opportunities for improvement going forward). But this makes perfect sense since all students are different learners.
Feedback is gift. But it is also an emotional process. Reading the comments of another individual who has evaluated and ultimately judged us and a product of our work triggers a significant amount of emotions in all us: students, professors, Deans, Presidents. Even the scientific structuring and organization of rubrics cannot remove the emotional attachment we all feel to our work and the emotional responses we experience when receiving feedback. I’ve come to discover that some students want only the letter grade; they don’t desire feedback. In fact, they don’t even read the comments. When they receive a graded paper they immediately flip to the back, view the letter and then stuff it away into their back pack to never look at it again. I’ve even watched students who received all level of grades from A to F toss the graded essay in the recycling bin on their way out the door of class without ever reading the comments or notes that I had spent so much time mulling over while evaluating their work! Other students, I’ve learned would like a brief explanation as to why the letter on their paper has been assigned but it is more for closure than for growth. Lastly, I also have come across students who desire excessive feedback; no amount is enough. The challenge for me as an educator has been trying to meet all of these different needs since I do not know in advance (or sometimes even after returning graded work) which students are which.
Starting in 2012, I began asking students about how they would like to be evaluated. Often in tutorial or upper year seminars, I would spend time with my students developing a rubric together in advance of assignment submission that provided some detail as to what the key components for evaluating the upcoming assignment needed to look like. It wasn’t entirely student driven, as I had a set of clear principles and guidelines that had to be included and were not optional, but it was the start of my journey towards creating better forms of feedback. More recently I have adopted the approach of asking each student to select which type of feedback they would like for their upcoming essay and offering them three choices: (1) just the letter grade with no written feedback, (2) the letter grade with a paragraph explanation as to how the grade was achieved and 1 or 2 suggestions for future work, or (3) a detailed markup of the paper with a full page or more of feedback. Students indicate which option of feedback they would like directly on the paper as they hand it in.
While I cannot guarantee that I have resolved many of the tensions that exist in creating meaning forms of evaluation and feedback, I have found that asking students what type of feedback they would like opens up channels for discussion and hopefully creates a better learning environment for all.