Grading is why I check my brakelines before I drive home.

As a new T.A. I have had a lot of stress dealing with grading. Especially in a public speaking course, grading becomes difficult. I wanted to record my students' presentations however, in class it was brought up that one instructor did that and over graded students. I liked the chapters on grading and feel that they were able to offer some valuable insights.

First Day to Final Grade gave me several very useful pieces of information regarding grading. First, the reading addresses the issue of setting up a grade book. I have a grade book and have been using it primarily for attendance. I will now add grades in on the center flap as the text suggests. I had been toying around with that idea for some time anyhow. One thing that the text didn't mention that I have found helpful is entering all of my grades in an Excel spreadsheet as I grade. That way all of my grades are in alphabetical order so I can just fill down the column of my paper grade book, rather than fumbling around the alphabet in the column. In addition to tracking grades, the book offers valuable insights on handing back graded assignments.

For the first speech, I did not follow the guidelines set in First Day to Final Grade. The book recommends to hand graded assignments back towards the end of the hour to make sure that students don't become disgruntled for the entire class period. Additionally, to hand things back so there is a limited amount of time to discuss the assignment. After my experience, this advice makes sense, and is how I plan on doing things in the future. When I returned the first speech, I lost about half of the class. One student was so angered that he wouldn't look at me, nor contribute to class (he always has something to say). I tried to recover the day by giving the "listen, it's the first assignment and a small part of your grade" talk but much to my chagrin, the class was still a lost cause.

McKeachie talks about grading, but it seemed to be more on a macro-level. McKeachie addresses what students, instructors, and employers want grades to tell them. Frankly, until reading this I'd only considered grades to be something that a student would be concerned with. This brings us to the notion of grade inflation. As we have Dr. Nelson for a supervisor, we all know about grade inflation. I believe that this is a serious problem that needs to be addressed in the academic community. That said, please don't address the problem until after I've completed my education. I believe that grade inflation is something that we need to work on collectively. Additionally, grade inflation is something that lingers in the back of my mind while I'm grading. "Is this average?" and "Hmm, without being comparative to my other students, what is average or "C" work?" are questions that plague me as I'm grading papers. Further, I must remind myself that my students are right out of high school where for the most part, fulfilling as opposed to going beyond the assignment requirements constitutes an A.

Grade inflation is a serious problem that needs to be addressed. Academic honesty was also an important part of the reading for this week. An episode from "The Golden Girls" touches on the importance of grading, grade inflation, and academic honesty on the part of the faculty. In this clip Dorothy is filling in for an instructor for the semester, and has a student that she cannot in clear conscience pass. The most important parts of this video (part 2 of 3) are from the beginning to 4:30 and from 7:12 until the end. Unfortunately embedding is disabled on this video, here is the link if you are interested. Although McKeachie does a good job at presenting grading and the notion of academic honesty there are some items that I disagree with.

One for example is the pledge of academic integrity at the beginning of each exam. I think that once students get to college it is insulting to make them sign a "I promise not to cheat" clause. I also think it is demeaning to students. I have made it clear that I expect students not to cheat and plagiarize. I feel that after that it shouldn't be something that I have to remind them of over and over again. Ultimately academic honesty lies on the students. As instructors we are responsible to catch plagiarism and cheating. Further I feel that we have a responsibility to make sure that students know that plagiarism is not an option and that we are here to help and should there be a problem. That said, it is ultimately the student's responsibility to come to the instructor to ask for extensions on assignments, or assistance on parts they do not understand.

Overall I feel that academic honesty, and grading as presented by McKeachie are somewhat universal to any field, including communication. Some of the information in First Day to Final Grade regarding grading is information I don't think I will ever use given my field. I do not anticipate grading problem sets, or lab reports. Additionally, there was no advice given on grading presentations and oral reports. I would really have liked to have seen some advice regarding that type of grading.

Useful links:

NDSU's plagiarism policy and guidelines. This is the full policy that we use at NDSU regarding plagiarism. This document details rights and responsibility of accused students.

General information on cheating, and cheating types. This is the website from Berkeley highlighting different types of cheating students partake in and some very generalized advice on what to do. Additionally the link at the bottom of the page takes you to more advice on what do do about academic dishonesty.

Grade inflation. This article comes from Minnesota State University Mankato and does a great job at explaining and making recommendations in terms of grade inflation.