Teaching Excellence Handbook

One of the principal duties of an instructor or TA is to assign grades in accordance with UNT regulations. Grading is often complex and time-consuming. The following points are designed to help the instructor avoid common grading problems. Hard work, enthusiasm, and politeness count but do not substitute for the quality of a student’s work. A UNT degree certifies competency. Our responsibility is to uphold this goal.

UNT is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC). This process requires an active commitment from every member of our community, and each instructor plays a critical role in our ability to maintain this designation. One major element of impact is the instructor’s ability to help demonstrate that our students are meeting learning outcomes for the class. In order to do this, an instructor may find it helpful to get a refresher of sound assessment practice and how it is different from traditional test administration.

We recommend using multiple methods of assessment. Note that grades are not a legitimate form of evidence to demonstrate student learning for SACS. Instead, instructors may be asked to provide other forms of evidence. The Office of Institutional Research and Effectiveness is a partner in this process. It is the role of IRE to provide faculty with expertise and assistance in this area. Additional content can be found on their website (institutionalresearch.unt.edu/).

Constructing Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs)

Creating measurable student learning outcomes is the first step in course design. The common definition of an SLO is what a student is expected to know and be able do at the end of your course. Outcomes need to be measurable, meaning that they can be measured in some reasonable and effective way. Therefore, it is important that the SLO statements that express the expectations are carefully worded so they clearly communicate what is expected. SLOs should be the basis for and clearly linked to what you teach and what you measure. They should be communicated to the student.

SLOs can come from various sources: a previous course, published lists such as Blooms Taxonomy (1956) and versions of it that have been published, professional organizations, national organizations, department requirements, the web, and can even be reverse engineered from test items already in use. The important thing to keep in mind is that SLOs can be broad statements, less-broad statements that help clarify a broad statement, and more specific statements that clarify a less-broad statement. It is at the specific statement level that assessments and instruction are linked. If students perform well in attaining the specific statements, then it can be inferred that they are attaining what is stated at the broader levels. See Carriveau (2010) and Carriveau (2^nd Edition, 2016 in press) for an in depth explanation.

The verb that typically is at or near the beginning of a specific outcome statement is what indicates the behavior that you expect to see. The outcome statement can begin with a verb, such as write, explain, identify, calculate, determine, or think critically, or with “The student will,” “The student will be able to.”

Here are a few guidelines from a longer list provided in Connecting the Dots: Developing Student Learning Outcomes and Outcome Based Assessments by Carriveau (2010), p13.

1. Use a hierarchical model for the breadth and depth of what you want students to know and be able to do: (1) the overall construct, (2) the big goals, (3) the general outcomes you want to measure, and (4) a breakdown to more specific outcomes to which items will be written.
2. Identify what student behavior you expect to see if a student were to correctly do what the outcome statement requires. Think about the test format you might use to test the student to determine to what degree the outcome was accomplished. For example, outcomes that require more complex (higher level) thinking on the part of the student may require a constructed response rather than a selected-response item and would thus require a rubric (rating scales) to measure the degree of success.
3. If you want your outcome statement to focus on a specific task, then you need to be careful not to pollute the task by mixing in other tasks that are not relevant to the specific task you want to measure. For example, if you want to specifically measure the degree to which a student can accurately describe the production of a particular chemical solution, then don’t include in the outcome statement a requirement that the student defend the use of modern chemistry from a social/political viewpoint. The two outcomes should be measured separately.

Setting Expectations

Two of the most important steps in evaluating students—and avoiding student complaints—are (1) identifying outcomes for both the instructor and the students and (2) making the instructor’s expectations clear. The course syllabus should specify how students will be evaluated: What percentage of their grade will be based on tests? Will the exams be comprehensive?

Moreover, for longer written assignments (projects and papers), instructors should be clear about what skills and content students should demonstrate: Should students demonstrate creativity? Should they demonstrate knowledge of a specific subject before providing their own analysis?

Setting expectations will help the instructor evaluate student work as well. When the outcomes are known (clearly stated), the instructor can create a rubric that matches those outcomes. A rubric is a clear statement of the outcomes of an assignment and an allocation of points to each objective.

For example, if an instructor has specified that a paper should connect a concept to course readings, 10 points might be assigned on the rubric to “tying concepts to course readings.” As the assignment is graded, the instructor can evaluate how the paper performed on that particular objective and can give it a score of 1-10 for how successfully it achieved that objective. Point values may be assigned for following formatting requirements, abiding by length guidelines, being on time, etc. After each element of the rubric has been evaluated, the instructor simply adds the elements and has a total score.

Using a rubric helps students identify exactly where they went wrong (and where they went right). It also helps to establish credibility for grading and to ensure that the instructor’s grading is consistent across students and across all graders for the course.

Instructors also should be aware that grading policies might affect the motivation of students in class. If it does not conflict with departmental policy, an instructor might want to factor attendance and class participation into the final grade. This helps promote class discussion.

Another possibility is to consider allowing students to revise their work for credit. This may help students who do poorly on the first class assignments to learn from feedback. Extra credit options can be motivational to students and can enhance their engagement in the course.

Providing Feedback

The job of an instructor is to help students improve; as a result, instructors tend to focus exclusively on students’ weaknesses. Providing only negative feedback, however, does little to motivate students to improve. Feedback provided to students should always start with identifying one positive feature of a paper or assignment. Sometimes this is challenging, but it increases the likelihood the student will construe the negative feedback as constructive.

When weaknesses are discussed, comments should be specific. “This is terrible” and “You’ve missed the mark” are not constructive remarks. The following methods are more constructive:

• Specifying the problem (“Your thesis statement is not clear”).
• Explaining why it’s a problem (“It’s not clear which position you support until the last paragraph; as a result, readers are not sure how to evaluate the information you provide in the body paragraphs”).
• Providing information that will help the student do better next time (“A reader should always know what position you are taking by the end of the first paragraph”).

It is also wise to keep remarks impersonal. That is, instead of saying, “You misinterpret the problem here” or “You have not analyzed the question very thoroughly,” it is better to write that “The paper misinterprets. . . .” This will help ensure that students do not feel personally attacked by written comments.

With exams—especially multiple-choice exams—detailed comments may not be appropriate or feasible. Instead, students can be given a summary of their performance: identifying questions that large groups of students struggled with and explaining why students might have answered incorrectly (or, at a minimum, why the correct answer was correct).

Grades are not a measure of innate intelligence but simply a gauge of students’ educational progress. Instructors should emphasize this aspect of grades and should let students know that with hard work there is always room for improvement. Strive to convince students to divorce their egos from their grades. When appropriate, an instructor may point out that even though the student ended with a grade of, say, a low B, this may actually be a sign of substantial improvement if the student began the class getting grades in the D range.

Even the best students should be reminded that there is always room for improvement. Even an “A” exam or assignment may be improved upon. They should be encouraged to strive for excellence and self-improvement.

Students’ work should be evaluated and returned promptly. It is important that students have information about their progress in a class and feedback that will allow them to improve their work.

Appendix 1, “Succeed at UNT Campaign: Tips for Faculty in the Classroom.”

Citations

Carriveau, 2010, Connecting the Dots: Developing Student Learning Outcomes & Outcome Based Assessments. Fancy Fox Publications, Denton, TX. 

Carriveau, 2016 (2^nd Edition), Connecting the Dots: Developing Student Learning Outcomes & Outcome Based Assessments. Stylus Publications, Sterling, VA. ​