How do I formulate effective grading criteria?
With clearly formulated grading criteria that are linked to the intended learning outcomes, it will be easier for you to think ahead about assessment when planning your teaching. Clear grading criteria are also an important support for students.
A grading criterion should contain three different elements: what the students should achieve, at what level of quality and in relation to what content.
Performance is described using verbs, such as describe, analyse, discuss or problematise.
Quality can be framed with adjectives or adverbs, such as clear, nuanced, comprehensive or systematic.
Content refers to the subject content that the students will work with. This could be, for example, developments in French expressionism, the morphology of the animal kingdom or basic constitutional concepts and principles.
The grading criteria aim to ensure fairer assessment of student knowledge and to create transparency and equivalence in such assessments. Thus, the criteria need to be
- qualitative
- specific
- analytical and
- delimiting.
These four aspects have been shown to make the criteria easier for teachers to use and easier for students to understand. At the same time, it is important to recognise that qualitative, specific, analytical and delimiting criteria alone do not make assessment transparent and equivalent. If you want to become good at making transparent and equivalent assessments, you need to work with and discuss the grading criteria continuously – both with your colleagues and with your students.
It is not easy to formulate effective grading criteria, and creating criteria for multi-step grading scales is a particular challenge. In such case, it may be helpful to look at the way compulsory and upper-secondary schools work with grading criteria. The weighting of component grades to determine course grades also requires careful consideration.
Read more about how to formulate effective grading criteria.
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