16.5 Exam Grading

One of the most common types of summative assessment is to give students a written final exam. A course may also have one or more written term tests or midterm exams that typically provide some summative assessment (particularly if the final exam only covers the later material in the course rather than being cumulative), but may also provide some formative feedback. Often, these assessments will form a large part of a student’s grade in the course.

Because of the weight of these types of assessments, and the perceived importance that is placed on them by both instructors and students, it is important to ensure that marking is completed in a timely manner, and that there are clear rationales for the grades that are given. For term tests and midterm exams, in addition to grading, there is also the need to provide feedback that can be used by students who will hopefully use this feedback to improve their course learning. In the case of final exams, many presume that less feedback is needed, however we caution against having too little information with regards to how the grade was assigned because some students will request a way to view their exam, and in the case where an appeal is submitted, formal or informally, you will be required to provide marking rubrics/schemes, and another person will review to ensure that the grading has been done correctly.

The most important concept is that grading be completed in a fair and consistent manner. This is more important than considerations of whether to grade harshly or gently. All students should be graded in the same manner. This includes students who are writing under special circumstances (early, late, with ones accessibility office, etc.). This is both a professional duty, but also necessary so that students do not perceive favoritism or bias which can cause a loss of respect. Respect your students by providing consistent, reasonable, and timely feedback to the highly weighted assessments.

Suggestions…

• After the exam has been completed, you may already be aware that there are issues with some questions based on student questions during the exam, assuming they were allowed. You can use this information to revise or refine your initial marking scheme.
• Once you have developed a marking scheme for a question, you should then use it to grade a certain number of exam papers. We will often grade a minimum of 10 papers for a large number of students enrolled in the course, and 10% for a smaller number as an experienced grader. With an inexperienced grader, either yourself or a TA, the number increases. This can also be true if there is a lot of scope for the question to have different solutions. (For a design type question, this authors numbers are closer to 20 or 20%).
• The first group of papers and the last group of papers often are the ones to be slightly inconsistently marked. The first because you are developing a marking scheme, and the last because one tends to deviate from the marking scheme as it is applied across a group of papers. So it is important that for each question that you start with a different group of exam papers so to distribute this problem.
• One question should be marked in its entirety by as few people as possible to ensure consistency.

• In some cases, there is a clear, short answer to the question. In this case the authors have found it is useful to simply to count up correct answers, either noting with a check or adding a number.
• For large questions it can be useful to decide between marking up and marking down. Do not mix these two approaches as it can be hard for both the grader and then the student to determine what is the final grade. It is okay to use marks such as checks and x’s together and then use numbers to indicate the actual grade.

Co-dependencies & The Necessary and Hopefully Sufficient

• Exam grading (not marking, which apparently has a different meaning for those in the US!) starts while you are drafting the exam. As you develop questions, you need to consider the amount of work required to answer the question, including time spent reading and understanding the material, not just on answering the question.
• As you are writing questions you should be thinking about what sorts of answers that students will submit for the question and the difficulty of the question.
• Be sure to be consistent in your notation, and try to get all markers of a question to be consistent in their notation. It can help to have another symbol that is different from the assigning grade symbol that says things are okay. Do not leave any page, part of a question without something on it otherwise it will look ungraded.
• Don’t use 1 and -1 for example to tally grades. Be consistent. Mark up or mark down. The student should receive the same grade whether you are marking up or marking down.
• Although you will have spent time on making a marking scheme, inevitably there will be at least one solution for any question that is not immediately straightforward, and there should be some of these questions on any major assessment (see other section) that does not conform to the marking scheme. This is something that you need to train your TAs to bring to you for further discussion and a judgment call. They should be told to expect it so they don’t feel it is their problem to figure out these exceptions.

Further reading

• Wendel, F.C., and K.E. Anderson (1994). Grading and Marking Systems : What Are the Practices, Standards? NASSP bulletin, 1994, Vol.78 (558), p.79-84
• Schneider, J., and E. Hutt (2014). Making the grade: A history of the A-F marking scheme. Journal of curriculum studies, 46, 2, pp. 201-224.
• Bloxham, S., den Outer, B., Hudson, J., and M. Price, Margaret (2016). Let’s stop the pretence of consistent marking: exploring the multiple limitations of assessment criteria. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 41, 3, pp. 466-481.