Grading and Assessment
Upcoming workshops
Hypothesis - A Tool to Make Reading Active and Social
August 29th, 2024
There is an exciting new active reading tool on Blackboard! Hypothesis is a social annotation tool that allows you and your students to actively read and annotate a text together as a group. You and your students can read, annotate and interact with a text to create a truly social annotation experience in your online or face-to-face classes. Along with traditional annotations, students also have the ability to add...
Harnessing AI for Authentic Assessments: Transforming Evaluation with 3 Use-Case Scenarios
November 22, 2024
This workshop will provide you with practical skills and strategies to transform your assessment practices, making them more reflective of real-world skills and learning outcomes.
We will explore three practical use-case scenarios where AI can be applied to create and refine authentic assessments, explore the latest AI technologies that support innovative assessment practices and learn how to craft assessments that mirror real-life challenges and encourage deeper learning.
Past workshops
Grading for Equity
In a recent book, Grading for Equity, Joe Feldman proposes that faculty should only grade their students based on their knowledge of course objectives and not on elements such as participation and the completion of homework. He argues that grading based partially on behavior skews grades in such a way that someone who knows the course objectives well will not get the grade that they deserve if they do not do all the preparatory work. Also, those who do all the preparatory work but do not attain all the course objectives might get a grade that seems to indicate that they know these objectives. In this discussion, we will explain the details of this position and ask you to reflect on your grading system in the light of Feldman's proposal. Do you agree with Feldman's grading system or not? What would be your version of the ideal grading system for equity? We hope that by comparing your grading system with Feldman's you will gain a greater sense of what you believe grading for equity should look like.
Inclusion and Representation in the Gradebook
In this presentation, we will focus on how to increase awareness of the historically marginalized minorities and what tools we have to close the achievement gap. Drawing on the Center for Urban Education’s equity-minded practices, we developed a straightforward way for faculty to implement more inclusive approaches to assessment and grading. Then we open the discussion about your practices in achieving the DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) goals.
Exploring Alternative Grading: Contract Grading
Specifications- or labor-based grading is a strategy some faculty have used to shift traditional grading dynamics. Come hear Salem State University School of Education faculty Megan Murphy and James Noonan talk about their experiences trying this alternative grading approach in their classrooms.
Setting Up the Grade Center in Blackboard
Come learn how to make grading for your courses easier and more efficient for you and your students. In this workshop, you will learn how to set up and use the grade center inside your Blackboard class. By the end of this workshop, you will know how to: evaluate your course grading system, identify the key features of a Blackboard...