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Research on learning shows that students can accomplish much (see What Students Want in a Professor on the Classroom Assessment Techniques main menu). High expectations and explicit standards of satisfactory performance assist in this accomplishment. Published grading standards make expectations visible, documentable, and subject to assessment. The main, specific traits that a professor looks for in an assignment (or even a whole course) are sometimes termed primary traits. These can be made visible and used for both grades and assessment (browse through Primary Trait Analysis on the main menu of Classroom Assessment Techniques).
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 Grading Standards |
---after a tale attributed to Lee Shulman Training a killer whale to jump over a bar is a metaphor for teaching college students to write better. Do you know how trainers get killer whales in a seaquarium to jump over a bar held over the water? Maybe they troll the Pacific Ocean in a boat while someone holds a bar out, waiting for a killer whale to jump over the bar. Then they capture that whale and take it to the seaquarium. Uh uh. Killer whales in a seaquarium swim in a tank, sometimes near the surface, sometimes near the bottom. A bar is suspended about half way between surface and bottom. If the whale swims under the bar, nothing happens. If it swims over the bar, it receives a fish to eat as a reward. After several successes, each one accompanied by a reward, the trainers raise the bar. Again, when the whale swims over the bar, they reward it and raise the bar. By the end of the first year, a freshman college student can write well enough to get the dorsal fin out of the water. By the end of the second year, a student can perhaps get over a bar at the surface by lifting the whole body out of the water. By the end of the senior year, the student can jump over the bar as expected and write the way a college student should be able to write. Unfortunately, many professors expect Freshman English classes, with no further reinforcement, to produce in one year killer whales that can jump completely over the bar. What is missing from such pedagogy are the very things that allow the killer whale to succeed spectacularly: make the bar visible, provide lots of practice, clearly reward success, and then raise the bar. There is, of course, that special first year college student who can write like professors expect seniors to write and who can be attracted to one's particular university. There is also some probability of finding a killer whale in the Pacific that will spontaneously jump over the bar and allow itself to be taken to a seaquarium. This occurrence is known as "hiring a winner." |
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