• What are the learning goals in your class?
   
• What are the relative importance of these learning goals?
   
• How can these learning goals be categorized so that they are easily tracked throughout the quarter?
   
• What kind of grading system is most appropriate for your course and program goals?
   

List all of the possible learning goals that could be a part of your course. Think about some of the following questions to help you expand your list of possible learning goals:

• What do students need know in order to be successful in the next course or level?
   
• What aspects of their development do students need feedback on?
  In many professional schools, students not only need feedback on how they are mastering the content of the course, but also on their ability to understand and respond appropriately to socially complex situations in their field. How can this set of skills be assessed?
   
• What learning goals could be included to help ease your job of grading in delicate situations where student behavior or academic misconduct come into question?

• Try ranking the learning goals you have listed by order of importance. Decide what percentage of the final grade each learning goal should represent.
   
• List the graded components of your course. Determine how each of the learning goals for your course are reflected in each graded component.

Once you have laid out your learning objectives, thought about how those learning objectives are reflected in your course content and decided whether you'd like course grades to reflect students' absolute performance towards meeting these objectives or their relative performance, you have most of the tools you need to build solid grading practices. The next question is how to take these factors and create an easy to use grading system out of them. There is no answer that can fulfill everyone's instructional needs. For personalized consultation services, we recommend you contact the Center for Instructional Research and Development and speak with someone who can quickly orient you to some of the practices which might be most useful to you. In the meantime, however, we have included a few simple practices which might be adapted to many circumstances:

 

Tracking Learning Objectives Across Assignments:

Categorize your list of learning objectives into four or five areas. Advise students of the relative weight each category of learning goals will have in determining their final grade. Make a grading grid out of these areas. Each assignment will fulfill the categories of learning goals in different ways. Some assignments might not fulfill one category at all. Others might be heavily weighted in one category.

Assignment	Set I of Learning Goals	Set II of Learning Goals	Set III of Learning Goals	Set IV of Learning Goals
Assignment I	50 points	0 points	20 points	30 points
Assignment II	35 points	35 points	30 points	0 points
Assignment III	60 points	30 points	10 points	0 points
Assignment IV	80 points	10 points	0 points	10 points
Assignment V	75 points	15 points	5 points	5 points
Total Points:	300 points (60%)	90 points (18%)	65 points (13%)	45 points (9%)

In the above example, each assignment is worth a total of 100 points. How many points each assignment counts towards each category of learning goals differs. Because the set of learning goals are not equally valued in this course, the points in each section add up to different amounts. In this case, the instructor felt learning goals listed under set I should be worth 60% of the final grade. Set II's learning goals should be worth 18%, Set III 13% and finally, set IV, 9%.

 
Linking Competencies with Grades:

Sometimes simply mastering a certain percentage of the learning objectives in a course is not enough. In courses where a minimum grade is required to advance to the next level of courses, students are expected to have mastered certain skills over others. One way to deal with this is to define the specific skills that need to be mastered for each grade. In creating an achievement test, this would involve marking each question with the corresponding grade level of the skill tested. Certain questions would be coded as "D" level questions. Others "C" level. Others "B" and "A". Students would need to get a specific number of questions correct in a grade category to earn that grade. Students must achieve the minimum requirements for all lower grades before they can be considered for a higher grade. For example, a student scoring 90% on all of the "A" questions but only 40% on the "C" questions would receive a "D".

For more discussion on this method, please see Frisbie and Waltman 1992 and their comments on grading for content.

 

Courses are typically graded on a point or percentage system (absolute grading method) or a curve (relative grading method), depending on the need for grades to serve as a competitive filter. Because grades are almost always used at some point for some sort of competitive evaluation (scholarships, entrance into degree and graduate programs) even absolute grading systems are normed so that they fall generally within the standard grading practices of the institution. Most grading practices at the UW incorporate aspects of the absolute and relative grading methods. The following questions might help you think about which method should be most dominant in your own grading practices.

1. Must a student's grade in this course show how they compare to their peers?

YES
Most of the time grades must show how students compare to each other in order for screening systems for awards, scholarships and entry into competitive programs to work. When this screening function is a priority for a course, such as in large entry level courses meant to narrow the field of students entering a discipline, it is important to use a relative grading system. When this screening process is not as high a priority, the comparative function can be woven into absolute grading scales.

NO
Sometimes students do NOT need to know how they compare to their peers, but only that they have attained a minimum level of knowledge and skills that will allow them to continue on with their studies. Thus, pre-college level courses meant to help students attain skill levels they need to succeed in college are usually never graded on a relative scale. Graduate courses that lead to paths were competition on the basis of grades is no longer necessary (in other words, courses of study that end in a professional position rather then a system of post-doc and fellowships) might also not require any relative or norm based grading.

2. Must a student's grade in this course show the content the student mastered?

YES
Sometimes students are required to pass a course with a minimum grade in order to be able to take the next course in the series. This policy implies that each grade is associated with a concrete set of skills and that the skills represented by the minimum grade will enable them succeed in the next course. You should look at absolute grading scales based on content if this is your priority. Almost all courses want to guarantee some mastery of content with the grades they give though, so even if you choose to use a relative scale, you should investigate how to incorporated content based grading into your grading system.

NO
Sometimes a course or program is meant to be adjusted to the level of the students. These courses and programs require that students be either grouped or selected according to their strengths relative to their peers, but do not require specific content mastery. Examples of this can include some elective language courses, elective physical skill development courses (music, art, sports), and elective tutorial or preparatory programs.

3. Is feedback as to a student's behavior and potential more important in this class than the student's actual achievement?

NEVER
At the level of higher education, no student should be graded on behavior rather than their actual achievement of course objectives. If the course objectives are to improve certain aspects of behavior then those aspects to be graded should be explicitly stated and graded according to the student's ability to achieve those objectives.