LH216V Develop the Learning by Using Grading Criteria, 1.5 credits

March-June 2018

The aim of the course is that the course participant should be able to use outcomes based criterion-referenced grading criteria and assessment aligned to the criteria in his or her own courses.

Learning outcomes

On completion of the course, the course participant should be able to

account for how intended learning outcomes, grading criteria and examination stick together,
formulate criterion-referenced grading criteria for a course,
suggest how items of the examination should be designed so that they assess according to the grading criteria,
review critically grading criteria,
account for different ways to combine grades to a final grade and which effects these can give.

Teachers

Viggo Kann, EECS, course coordinator, teacher and examiner
Emma Lundkvist, Uppsala university, teacher
Ida Naimi-Akbar, ITM, teaching assistant
Veine Haglund, CL student, teaching assistant

Schedule: meetings

Meeting 1: March 27, 2018, 13:00-16:00 in Salongen, KTH Library building.
Purpose with grading criteria, ILOs, assessment, designing grading criteria and adapting the forms of assessment.
Meeting 2: April 24, 2018, 13:15-16:00 in Salongen, KTH Library building.
Students' thoughts about grading criteria, a case study on grading criteria at Uppsala Universitet, discussions and work with your submitted assignment 1, KTH regulations, combining grades to a final grade, pitfalls and advice.
Meeting 3: June 14, 2018, 13:30-15:30 in Salongen, KTH Library building.
Strongly recommended but not mandatory meeting. Discussons of the submitted final version of the grading critera and how they should be implemented. Evaluation of LH216V.

Language

We will try to have a parallel language environment in the course, so that it is allowed to speak both Swedish and English. The terminology will be given in both Swedish and English, and you are allowed to write your assignments in either Swedish or English. We recommend that you use the same language in your assignments as the course you are writing your grading criteria for is using.

Examination

Assignment 1a (draft of new grading critieria), submitted before April 17 at 13:00 April 19 at 19:00.
Assignment 1b (feedback to peers), submitted before May 2 at 13:00.
Assignment 2 (final version of grading criteria etc), submitted before May 31 at 13:00

All assignments are submitted in Canvas.

Readings and examples of grading criteria (or grade descriptors or grading rubrics)

Chris Rust: Purposes and principles of assessment, Oxford Brookes University, 2002.
Johanna Bergqvist: Att sätta praxis på pränt: En handbok i att skriva betygskriterier. (in Swedish)
Stefan Ekecrantz: Målrelaterade betyg - Att arbeta med betygskriterier och bedömning i sju grader, UPC-rapport 2007:1, Stockholms universitet, 2007. (in Swedish)
Useful taxonomies when formulating grading criteria on different levels
Examples of Rubric creation: Physics exam problems and Sociology essay assignment. http://gsi.berkeley.edu/teachingguide/grading/rubrics-creation.html
Exemples of grading criteria at KTH, mostly from former participants of LH216V, can be found at the web page of the grading criteria project.
Graham Gibbs: Learning in Teams Grading of team projects, among other things.
Phillip Dawson: Assessment rubrics: towards clearer and more replicable design, research and practice (available through KTHB). Describes and discusses grading rubrics and gives 14 design elements related to rubrics. A useful paper, but a bit hard to read if you are not used to read educational research papers.
Lab Report Rubric. This seems like a well designed grading rubric. The lab course is described, together with the ILOs. The scale 0-3 is applied on the eight types of criteria used. How the criteria relate to the ILOs is shown, together with the formula for the final scoring. All in all, this rubric looks like what you are expected to develop for your course (or course module) within this course (LH216V).
http://tll.mit.edu/sites/default/files/examples/rubric-lab-report-fall09.pdf
Civil and Environmental Engineering. Extensive scoring rubrics for program outcomes. Click on the outcomes to find the scoring levels!
Bioethics project, Research Paper Rubric.
Scoring rubrics for professional writing. Nine criteria and four scoring levels that can be useful for inspiration on how to work with marking (or peer marking) where writing skills are to be trained and assessed.
Scoring rubrics for professional presentations. Eight criteria and four scoring levels that can be useful for inspiration on how to work with marking (or peer marking) where oral presentation skills are to be trained and assessed.
Rubrics for artists and designers.

Course evaluation and course analysis

By the end of meeting 1, a mini-evaluation will be carried out. After completing the course, you will be provided with a link to a questionnaire with questions about the whole course.

After the course, the course coordinator will write a course analysis, that will be published on the course web, under Kursdata & kursanalys.

The following improvements of the course were suggested in the course analysis of the previous course offering and implemented in this course offering:

The deadline for assignment 1a has been moved to one week before the second meeting, so that there will be time for looking at the peers' hand-ins before the meeting.
A preparatory assignment - to inspect and modify the ILOs - has been added before meeting 1.

The improvement suggestion that the system peergrade.io should be used for peer feedback instead of Canvas has not been implemented, because KTH has not yet got a license for peergrade.io.