Quick Recap
In case reading the slow fall requires more time than you have, I’ll summarize things for you here.
I attempted to use specifications grading for the first time in general chemistry lab 2. Approximately 3 weeks before the semester ended, several Rutgers unions called a strike. As graduate students, aka some of my teaching assistants (TAs), are included in the union, I cancelled the lab class until the strike was over. At the same time, due to Canvas shenanigans, students were unable to submit revisions for assignments meaning I needed to adjust the grading system for both the strike and the revisions issue. In an attempt to help students figure out the best way to use their tokens, I emailed them their current grades along with a breakdown by criteria. Let’s just say my inbox was very, very angry and that was before I discovered that Canvas changed a student name…which is how I sort my Excel sheet.
Fixing the Revisions Issue
In no particular order because, honestly, I hope to NEVER think about this semester again, let’s talk about the revisions issue. This was the easiest one to solve because I was tired and staring down a lot of grading already. One of the criteria was short answers, the things they were allowed to revise. Originally there were 25 but with the now optional lab (thanks to the strike) and the 2 labs without possibility of revision for most of the class, I ended up dropping that to 18. I basically allowed for any low/high passes to count but not needs revisions. This way students weren’t punished for work they couldn’t revise.
Don’t forget I still had to grade all the other revisions from the rest of the semester. I punted that and only checked if they had summarized the feedback in their own words and say something about how it would change their answer. That was the important part of alternative grading anyway. Taking in feedback and using it to improve. If that wasn’t there, no change, otherwise all short answers would be changed to high pass. For the last lab that had 8 short answers, I simply made a quiz and for every point, I would change a low pass or needs revisions to a high pass. I would take into account how close they were to a cutoff.
Fixing the Canvas Shenanigans & Token Trade-Ins
The first issue, the full name change, actually resolved itself with a new export. The other name issue I made sure to change manually before sorting then copying over to the grading Excel. But don’t think that went smoothly. Excel decided to glitch out and wouldn’t open the grading spreadsheet on my work computer so I had to do everything on my personal device until I could figure out a solution. I sent out a new email with corrected grading info but that’s when the token thing became time sensitive.
I had unfortunately forgotten to set up the token form so I did a rush job and linked it to the same sheet as my writing class token trade in. I figured out a system with my tablet and laptop to process tokens pretty efficiently. There were some other trips I had to fix but relatively minor at this point.
Takehome
You better believe I closed those course evals before I got deep into fixing things. Unfortunately, even with one student responding, it was still shared with me. I have put them in a folder to literally never do anything more than add to my next promotion package as required.
I ended up taking the easiest route for me, especially once I realized 20% of the class had Fs. I’ll talk more about that in my complete course reflection (link TBA). The unfortunate part was how angry students got about their grades even after I dropped the criteria significantly (more than just the short answers) and made tokens more powerful.
While I would’ve loved a less stressful ending to the semester, tokens were my safety net which isn’t something I have with traditional grading. I also got to (mostly) prioritize students’ growth & use of feedback instead of the right answer as the fix to my disaster.