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Home > Resources > Library and Links > Online Postings & Articles > Testing/Evaluation > Term Paper Grading

Term Paper Grading

(These items are from a listserver about teaching.)

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One strategy that I have used and recommended to other faculty is to develop a checklist of the key factors that you'll be grading (Mechanics, Organization, Content are three easy big categories), with sub-headings within. If you use a point system in grading, it's fairly simple to figure out how much each of these factors should be worth, and then to assign the appropriate number of points to each as you're grading.

You can also add a grading scale for the paper to the bottom of the checklist, so that students can tell the relative value of the total points they earned.

The value of this seems to be that

• it simplifies the grading process for the teacher
• it simplifies and clarifies the grading for the student
• it helps ensure that we are looking at each paper with similar factors in mind.

I always show the students a copy of the checklist--in fact, I give them one that they staple to their paper when they turn it in. That way, you know that they're aware of how the paper will be graded. Of course, you'll still want to write other comments and notes throughout. But my experience has been that students appreciated having a better understanding of where they did well and vice versa--better than they would have had without the checklist.

Dr. Mary Ann Bowman, Western Michigan University

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Several people have noted the obvious 20-20 hindsight that many of us have developed in providing the assignment first and the grading guidelines second.

May I suggest that the next time a course involving term papers is taught, that the SYLLABUS contain the general expectations that apply to term papers? Once basics are provided, a good part of the problem is taken care of prior to when we more easily forget details as the semester gets a bit too busy. Thereafter, the grading criteria that need to be conveyed can revolve around specific content rather than form or generalities. If it isn't in the syllabus now, use the necessary circumstances to draft your criteria while the problem remains fresh in mind, and save it to your computer file to be incorporated in next year's syllabus.

As a compromise when I've been late with criteria, I go ahead and provide the checklist I used to students and allow them the option of resubmitting the exercise to recoup some (usually 50%) lost points. At least this provides a second encounter with the parts on which they performed poorly and is likely to enhance learning. On the down side, this is labor intensive for the instructor--an incentive to retool parts of the syllabus!

Ed Nuhfer, CU-Denver