Alternative Grading Models: Holistic Grading
The Second-Level Writing Handbook // Creating and Implementing Effective Writing Assignments // Responding to Student Writing // In-Class Writing Activities // Peer Response // Preventing Plagiarism // OSU Resources.
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A growing number of teachers have moved away from the traditional method of evaluating student writing, which entails taking papers home, reading them, and assigning a grade. Some teachers have become frustrated with this model not only because of the amount of time it takes but also because of the message it sends to students that one teacher is the audience for their papers. Holistic grading can be particularly helpful for GTA's teaching recitation sections under one lecturer to ensure consistency.
Holistic grading was originally designed to reduce the individual subjectivity of grading written work by relying on the initial, almost intuitive, reactions of a number of people in order to assign a grade. More importantly, holistic grading prevents the reader from concentrating only on grading; as a result, he or she reads student work more "naturally," as if she or he were reading any text.
- Highly reliable method of grading statistically
- Reduces the amount of time spent grading
- Stresses rhetorical aspects of composing and helps students formulate a real audience for their writing
The most difficult part of using holistic grading is getting started. Below are the five steps involved in beginning to use holistic grading. Although instituting this grading model might seem involved at first, the success of grading in this way depends on the commitment of your group in participating actively in the early stages. Once your group is set up, however, most of these steps will be unnecessary.
Forming a Group:
The first step in preparing to set up a holistic grading model is to locate a group of teachers who want to use this grading model. The most convenient and efficient group would be several people teaching multiple sections of the same course. It is possible to use this model with a more varied group of teachers; however, such diversity would require a re-norming (part of the grading process described below) for each assignment individual teachers assign. Teachers of multiple sections are more likely to be assigning similar papers. A minimum of three people is needed for holistic grading. There is no maximum or ideal number; the larger the group, the more quickly the grading process will progress.
Creating Criteria:
Before your group meets to begin grading, spend at least one meeting developing grading criteria. You may choose to develop either a general criteria sheet for all papers, or a set of criteria specific to each assignment. If your group chooses the latter option, you will need to meet and develop criteria before each grading session on a new assignment. Before working on the criteria itself, your group must decide on the number scale that will be used when grading, because the range of numbers will correspond to the specificity of your criteria. Any even numbered scale will serve your purpose, although many people find a scale of 6-1 useful because it allows for a clear division among criteria and corresponds fairly closely to an A-F scale. However, a scale may range as high as 12-1 or as low as 2-1. The only rule of thumb is to keep the range of the scale an even number to prevent central tendency (i.e., a tendency for the group members to begin grouping their scores on or around the middle number). Once you have decided on a number scale, the next step is to design written criteria to correspond with each score. Criteria are usually worded in general terms and develop a hierarchy according to the issues your group feels characterize good writing (e.g., purpose, organization, address to audience, style, grammar). For example, on a 6-1 scale, the criterion relating to purpose might read "A clear controlling idea," for #6, and "Controlling idea discernible but not clearly stated," for a #5, and so on for scores 4-1. Hence, once a group determines a list of issues related to good writing, a sentence relating to each of these categories would be included in the criteria for each score.
Preparing for the Grading Session:
Once you have the group of papers to be graded, someone must take responsibility for separating the papers into manageable piles, usually groups of 7-10, and preparing three copies of a cover sheet with students' names for each pile. These sheets will be necessary for each reader to assign a score that cannot be seen by the second reader.
Norming to Scale:
Norming is the first part of each and every grading session and frequently will take up to 50% of the grading session itself. The purpose of this time is to achieve a consensus among the group on how to apply the criteria to actual papers. The group leader either chooses an example of a high, medium, and low paper to discuss, or the group can arbitrarily pick three or four papers from the pile to be used in norming. Each group member then individually reads through all the papers selected (each member will need copies of all the papers). After reading through all the papers, each reader silently assigns a score to each paper. Once all the "anchor" papers have been scored, each paper should be discussed individually with every group member explaining his or her reasons for assigning the score he or she did in terms of the criteria sheet.
Finally, each paper is discussed with the entire group in order to reach agreement about what score should be assigned. It is essential at this stage that the group decide on a score through consensus rather than a majority vote since the purpose of norming is to achieve a similar application of the criteria by all the readers. If the group continues to disagree even after discussing four papers, you might need to select another paper or two to discuss. Such disagreements should not be discouraged, however, because they need to be discussed openly if the grading session is to be successful . Once agreement has been reached, these sample papers become "anchors" and should be referred to frequently by readers during the grading session to remind individual readers of the group consensus.
Orchestrating the Grading Session:
Once norming is finished, the grading itself should proceed fairly quickly. First you need to select an administrator who will coordinate the piles of papers and monitor the grading process. Each reader takes a folder or group of papers and reads through them quickly, assigning a score to each one. He or she then flips the cover sheets to the next blank page, initials the folder or pile, and begins on a new pile. It is important that no one mark either a score or an initial on the actual papers because the students should not know who graded the individual papers. A second reader then reads the same group of papers, following the same procedures.
As soon as a group of papers has been read by two readers, the administrator should begin collecting the papers and checking for agreement between the two readers. Papers which receive two distinctly different scores are handed to a third reader. The administrator will average the three scores to determine the final score.
If you have only three readers in your group, you should save the administrative duties described below until the last step because a third reading of a paper may need to be completed by one of the initial readers, and a substantial amount of time should pass before this can be done with any reliability.
