wp home > teaching resources > instructor's handbook > evaluation of student performance

Evaluation of Student Performance: Grading

In the Writing Program, we are chiefly concerned with improving our students’ writing skills; that is why we emphasize the writing process so much in the course. As the official course description puts it: College Writing is “an entry-level course in writing” with “emphasis upon the writing process: prewriting, revising, editing.”

We need to remember, though, that the goal of intervening in students’ writing processes is, ultimately, to help them produce better final drafts. After all, according to the original mandate for the course, “The purpose of the writing requirement is to help students acquire the skills they will need to cope with the writing tasks they will perform in their academic work, in their lives, and in their careers.” In those contexts, individuals are often judged on the basis of the texts they produce.

When grading your students’ writing, therefore, we recommend that you try to strike a balance between awarding credit for the effort they expend – their conscientious working through the drafting process – and assessing the quality of the final texts they produce.
Such evaluation, of course, should be based on the criteria specified for each unit (see chart above). For example, summary, paraphrase, and quotation of other writers’ work is a more important part of Unit II, “Interacting with Texts,” than Unit I, “Inquiring into Self”; evaluation of students’ writing in Unit II, therefore, should pay more attention to those aspects of writing than evaluation of students’ work in Unit I.

But there are also criteria for student performance in the course that transcend the individual units. In every unit, students should be improving their ability to:

• write for the audience and purpose designated in the assignment;

• develop their thinking by questioning their own views and considering the views of others;

• draw on and appropriately cite different sources of information and ideas in their writing;

• substantially revise their writing by experimenting with different ways of communicating their ideas;

• be a perceptive reader of their own writing and give constructive feedback to their peers about their writing;

• manage their own writing processes by reflecting on the choices they’ve made about their texts; and

• carefully copy-edit their final drafts, at every level (word, sentence, paragraph, and text), according to readers’ expectations for grammar, usage, style, mechanics, and other conventions.

Your students’ grades should communicate to them your evaluation of their performance based on all those criteria. They should also, of course, be in line with the policies and formulas that you lay out in the syllabus at the beginning of the semester. And you should make those criteria as transparent as possible.

Remember that much of the writing your students do for this course (e.g., freewriting and journaling) can go ungraded, and some of it can be evaluated minimally (√+, √, √-). Some TOs also use point systems. At the end of the semester, however, the University recognizes only the traditional letter grades (http://www.umass.edu/registrar/gen_info/grading_system.htm); the way that you get from individual paper or unit grades to this final letter grade should be transparent.

The standard syllabus for the course breaks down the final grade this way:

The following table offers a skeletal view of the five letter grades sanctioned by the University, along with permissible + and - grades (note that there’s no A+ or D-).

You need to be aware of the following additional issues related to grading:

• A range of grading options is available—from grading every single piece of writing the students do to assigning a final grade only at the end of the course; from grading by a point system to portfolio grading to contract grading. While the Writing Program does not require that you use any one particular method, you must articulate to the students early in the course how they will be evaluated throughout the semester. All TOs, new and veteran, must submit a copy of their grading policy to the Writing Program office, 305 Bartlett, each semester. You also will need to make some provision to evaluate the students’ performances and/or portfolios at least once during the semester, generally around mid-semester, either during conferences or during office hours.

• Students who are doing D or F work in your class at mid-semester need to be notified of their standing. The Writing Program office has Mid-Term Grade Report forms to give to these students. On this form, you will need to indicate the reason(s) for the low grade. One copy of the form is given to the student, one is submitted to the Writing Program office to keep on file, and one should be kept for your own records.

• Our policy regarding Incompletes is stringent. According to the Academic Regulations of UMass Amherst, “Students who are unable to complete course requirements within the allotted time because of severe medical or personal problems may request a grade of Incomplete from the instructor of the course. Normally, incomplete grades are warranted only if a student is passing the course at the time of the request and if the course requirements can be completed by the end of the following semester. Instructors who turn in a grade of "INC" are required to leave a written record of the following information with the departmental office of the academic department under which the course is offered: (1) the percentage of work completed, (2) the grade earned by the student on the completed work, (3) a description of the work that remains to be completed, (4) a description of the method by which the student is to complete the unfinished work, and (5) the date by which the work is to be completed. In the case of an independent study where the entire grade is determined by one paper or project, the instructor should leave with the department information pertaining to the paper or project, which will complete the course. To avoid subsequent misunderstanding it is recommended that the student also be provided with a copy of this information” (emphasis added). For more information, see http://www.umass.edu/registrar/media/academicregs.pdf, Section VI-D, p. 23. In order to be sure you are in compliance with University policy you need to receive approval from Pat Zukowski or Haivan Hoang before granting any student an Incomplete.

• Final Grades are submitted through SPIRE, an online system. For each student receiving a failing grade, a Failure Form needs to be completed and turned into the Writing Program. A hard copy of your final grades also needs to be turned into the main Writing Program office. Near the end of the semester, you will receive information about how to submit your grades and deadlines.

Next section: Teaching with Technology

UMail / UDrive / Spark / Spire