Deciding how to evaluate your students is often very difficult, and maintaining a fair and consistent strategy for grading student work will make your life much easier. Two of the most common types of grading systems are ‘norm-referenced’ and ‘criterion-referenced.’ These are by no means mutually exclusive, and many instructors feel most comfortable combining elements of each one.

Norm-Referenced Systems

Definition

In norm-referenced systems students are evaluated in relationship to one another (e.g., the top 10% of students receive an A, the next 30% a B, etc.). This grading system rests on the assumption that the level of student performance will not vary much from class to class. In this system the instructor usually determines the percentage of students assigned each grade, although it may be determined (or at least influenced) by departmental policy.

Advantages

Norm-referenced systems are very easy for instructors to use. They work well in situations requiring rigid differentiation among students, where, for example, due to program size restrictions, only a certain percentage of the students can advance to higher level courses. They are generally appropriate in large courses which do not encourage cooperation among students.

Disadvantages

One objection to norm-referenced systems is that an individual’s grade is determined not only by his/her achievements, but also by the achievements of others. In a large non selective lecture class, you can be fairly confident that the class is representative of the student population, but in small classes (under 40) the group may not be a representative sample. One student may get an A in a low-achieving section while a fellow student with the same score in a higher-achieving section gets a B.

A second objection to norm-referenced grading is that it promotes competition rather than cooperation. When students are pitted against each other for the few As to be given out, they’re less likely to be helpful to each other.

Criterion-Referenced Systems

Definition

Norm-referenced tests measure students relative to each other. Criterion-referenced tests measure how well individual students do relative to pre-determined performance levels. Teachers use criterion-referenced tests when they want to determine how well each student has learned specific knowledge or skills.

In criterion-referenced systems students are evaluated against an absolute scale, normally a set number of points or a percentage of the total (e.g., 95-100 = A, 88-94 = B, etc.). Since the standard in this grading system is absolute, it is possible that all students could get As or all students could get Ds.

Advantages

Students are not competing with each other and are thus more likely to actively help each other learn. A student’s grade is not influenced by the caliber of the class.

Disadvantages

It is difficult to set a reasonable standard for students without a fair amount of teaching experience. Most experienced faculty set criteria based on their knowledge of how students usually perform; thus, criterion-referenced systems often become fairly similar to norm-referenced systems.

Other Systems

Some alternate systems of grading include contract grading, peer grading, and self-evaluation by students.

In contract grading instructors list activities students can participate in or objectives they can achieve, usually attaching a specified number of points for each activity (e.g., book report = 30 points, term paper = 60 points). Students select the activities and/or objectives which will give them the grade they want and a contract is signed. It is advisable to have qualitative criteria stated in the contract in addition to listing the activities.

In some classes, a portion of a student’s grade is determined by peers’ evaluation of his/her performance. If students are told what to look for and how to grade, they generally can do a good job. The agreement between peer and instructor rating is about 80%. Peer grading is often used in composition classes and speech classes. If used, it should always be done anonymously.

Students can also be asked to assess their own work in the class and their assessment can be a portion of the final grade. This method has educational value since learning to assess one’s own progress contributes to the university’s goal of preparing students to be life-long learners.

A research analysis found that the percentages of self-assessors whose grades agree with those of faculty graders vary from 33% to 99%. Experienced students tend to rate themselves similarly to faculty while less experienced students generally give themselves higher grades than a faculty grader. Students in science classes also produced self-assessments which closely matched faculty assessment. If self-assessment is used, the instructor and student should meet to discuss the student’s achievement before the self-evaluation is made.

These and additional resources are available online at the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

What do you find to be the most effective evaluation strategies for your students? Do students favor one form while you favor another? Why?

For many instructors, putting together a syllabus is the first (and often daunting) step toward a new teaching experience. A few years ago, at the American Sociological Association’s annual meetings, a panel on ‘Teaching Sociology for Beginners’ dealt with syllabus construction, among a number of other topics aimed to provide more resources for first-time instructors of introductory-level courses. The sociology department at the University of Buffalo has made some of these materials available electronically. 

Check out the links below.

• Essential Elements of a Syllabus: University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill Office of Educational Development
• Online Syllabus Workshop: Brown University
• Learning-Centered Syllabi Workshop: Lee Haugen, Iowa State University Center for Teaching Excellence
• Preparing a Syllabus: from The Penn State Teacher II: Learning to Teach; Teaching to Learn

Managing conflict with students in the classroom is something that many instructors struggle with. Both new teachers and those with years of experience often express anxiety and frustration about how to address some of these issues. The following tutorials are provided by the University of Minnesota’s Center for Teaching and Learning.

Why is it important to address these issues?

Managing a classroom well–balancing your instructional authority with your students’ concerns–comes with experience. Sometimes painful experience! Small problems poorly handled can distract you from teaching well and cast a pall on the semester. And while many are ready to complain about situations, we don’t often engage in constructive talk about how to manage and minimize the troublesome issues when they arise.

These scenarios help instructors think about what to do when a student complains about a great, doesn’t think s/he will ever ‘get’ the concept, misses work because of a sick child, disputes classroom or assignment directions, or asks you to meet off campus.

How to use the tutorial:

Select a scene (see below) and you’ll have a chance to view an encounter between a student and an instructor.

Following the clip, you’ll likely want to think about how you might have handled the situation—there’s no single correct approach. After you’ve formulated an opinion, you can choose to listen to several teaching consultants to see how they might have worked with the student to resolve the conflict.

Transcripts of both the scene and the advice are available on every page and further resources can be found on the workshop’s resources page.

Take a look at the scenes below…

Scene 1 – Why Did You Take Points Off?
Scene 2 – I’ll Never Get It!
Scene 3 – Could You Talk to the Professor for Us?
Scene 4 – It’s a Zoo in Here!
Scene 5 – Let’s Meet for Coffee
Scene 6 – I Had to Go to a Funeral
Scene 7 – Sorry, but I Don’t Always Understand You
Scene 8 – Do the Problem for Me!
Scene 9 – I Had a Sick Child!
Scene 10 – You Never Told Us That!

These resources for planning successful and effective lectures come from the University of Minnesota‘s Center for Teaching and Learning, a free source of great information about undergraduate instruction available to those within and beyond the University. They offer a number of resources on ‘Designing Smart Lectures,’ but today we’ll focus on lecture planning and delivery. 

3 important things to keep in mind when planning for the lecture:

• Articulate the goals for every lecture to yourself, and plan to share those goals with your students at the beginning of your presentation
• Determine which key points can be effectively developed during the class session
• Develop an introduction, body, and conclusion to your lecture to meet those goals and to help your students follow your thoughts

Specific tips on lecture organization:

• Stick to 3-4 main points in a 50-minute period
• Vary your format of presenting every 15 minutes
• Organize material in logical order:

Cause-Effect: Events are cited and explained (i.e., one can demonstrate how the continental revolutionary movements of the late 1700’s affected British politics at the turn of the century).

Time sequential: Lecture ideas are arranged chronologically (i.e., a lecturer explaining the steps in a clinical supervision model, talks about the first step to be undertaken, the second step, and so forth).

Topical (Compare and Contrast): Related elements of various selected topics are focused on successively (i.e., a professor lecturing about etiologies, typical histories, and predisposing factors of various diseases).

Problem-solution: The statement of a problem is followed by alternate solutions (i.e., a lecture on the Cuban missile crisis could begin with a statement of the foreign policy problem followed by a presentation of the alternative solutions available to President

Pro-Con: A two-sided discussion of agiven topic is presented (i.e., the lecture is organized around the advantages and disadvantages of using the lecture method of instruction)

Ascending-Descending: Lecture topics are arranged according to their importance familiarity, or complexity (i.e., in a lecture introducing students to animal diseases, the diseases of primary importance could be discussed first, the tertiary/less important ones last)

The handout posted here has a great in-class activity designed and used by sociology professor Ann Meier at the University of Minnesota. The activity encourages student to identify and categorize deviant acts (such as breaking a window) or deviant attributes (such as working as a prostitute) using the following scale:

Not deviant at all = 1
Not so deviant = 2
Neutral = 3
Somewhat deviant = 4
Very deviant = 5

Then, students are encouraged to discuss why they chose to label certain acts and attributes the way that they did. This exercise is a great way to get students thinking about sociological concepts of deviance, conformity, social control, folkways and mores, as well as crime… plus it can get them up out of their chairs!

Many instructors are now using PowerPoint to present lecture material, integrate technology in the classroom, and project videos for their classes. Below you will find some useful tips and tricks compiled by University of Minnesota PhD candidate Jon Smajda, also the Web Editor of Contexts Magazine.

1. Use the Dual Monitors mode in Powerpoint: Ever wished you could look at your own notes on your laptop screen while keeping the Powerpoint presentation up on the projector screen for your students? You can do this! You have to enable Dual Monitor mode on your laptop and Powerpoint and then you put the Powerpoint slide on one “monitor” (the projector screen) and have your own laptop monitor free to do whatever you want. Here are the instructions: http://www.onppt.com/ppt/article1026.html.
2. Navigating to a specific slide: Say you’re on slide #12 and you want to go to your web browser to show the class a website or you want to bring up a Word document to show the class. When you go back to Powerpoint, you select View Show from the Slide Show menu and you’re right back at slide #1. Then you have to quickly cycle through each slide to get back to slide #12. There are three ways to avoid this. First, before you enter slideshow mode, instead of using the menu use the tiny “Slide Show” icon in the bottom left corner of your screen (its icon looks like a projector). If you click this, you’ll be taken straight to the slide displayed in your editing mode window, not the first slide. Second, while you’re in slideshow mode, if at any time you type a number and click return you’ll be taken to that slide: so “12 return” takes you to slide #12. Third, if you right-click anywhere on the screen while in slide show mode, and go to the “Go” menu you can go straight to any slide that way.
3. Drawing on the screen: If you type control-p (or command-p on macs) while you’re in slideshow mode, you’ll get a pen icon. You can then draw on the screen. This is helpful if you’re looking at graphics or lots of text, for example, and want to draw attention to one element (or if you simply want to pretend you’re John Madden drawing out football plays on the telestrator). If you click “E” your drawings will be erased, and if you go to another slide and come back, they’ll also be erased.
4. Blank screen: If you click “W” while in a slideshow, you’ll get a blank white screen. If you click “B” you’ll get a blank black screen. Just click W or B again to return to your slide. This is helpful if you want to move into a discussion portion of the class and don’t want everyone pretending to study your slides as a way to avoid making eye contact with you when you ask them questions.
5. Other shortcuts: Microsoft has a table of other shortcuts like this available on their website: http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/assistance/HP051953031033.aspx

Also, if you are looking for more detailed online tutorials and references, check out the links below…

• Powerpoint 2003/2004 Tutorial: http://www.uwec.edu/help/ppoint03.htm
• Active Learning with Powerpoint: http://www1.umn.edu/ohr/teachlearn/tutorials/powerpoint/
• Powerpoint in the Classroom: http://www.actden.com/pp/

Know of other great tricks for making the best use of PowerPoint in the classroom? Comment below!

This list of ten teaching tips first appeared in The Teaching Professor after Professor Leblanc won a Seymous Schulich Award for Teaching Excellence. The list has been put on the University of Hawaii – Honolulu website with the permission of Professor Leblanc, October 8, 1998.

ONE. Good teaching is as much about passion as it is about reason. It’s about not only motivating students to learn, but teaching them how to learn, and doing so in a manner that is relevant, meaningful, and memorable. It’s about caring for your craft, having a passion for it, and conveying that passion to everyone, most importantly to your students.

TWO. Good teaching is about substance and treating students as consumers of knowledge. It’s about doing your best to keep on top of your field, reading sources, inside and outside of your areas of expertise, and being at the leading edge as often as possible. But knowledge is not confined to scholarly journals. Good teaching is also about bridging the gap between theory and practice. It’s about leaving the ivory tower and immersing oneself in the field, talking to, consulting with, and assisting practitioners, and liaisoning with their communities.

THREE. Good teaching is about listening, questioning, being responsive, and remembering that each student and class is different. It’s about eliciting responses and developing the oral communication skills of the quiet students. It’s about pushing students to excel; at the same time, it’s about being human, respecting others, and being professional at all times.

FOUR. Good teaching is about not always having a fixed agenda and being rigid, but being flexible, fluid, experimenting, and having the confidence to react and adjust to changing circumstances. It’s about getting only 10 percent of what you wanted to do in a class done and still feeling good. It’s about deviating from the course syllabus or lecture schedule easily when there is more and better learning elsewhere. Good teaching is about the creative balance between being an authoritarian dictator on the one hand and a pushover on the other.

FIVE. Good teaching is also about style. Should good teaching be entertaining? You bet! Does this mean that it lacks in substance? Not a chance! Effective teaching is not about being locked with both hands glued to a podium or having your eyes fixated on a slide projector while you drone on. Good teachers work the room and every student in it. They realize that they are the conductors and the class is the orchestra. All students play different instruments and at varying proficiencies.

SIX. This is very important — good teaching is about humor. It’s about being self-deprecating and not taking yourself too seriously. It’s often about making innocuous jokes, mostly at your own expense, so that the ice breaks and students learn in a more relaxed atmosphere where you, like them, are human with your own share of faults and shortcomings.

SEVEN. Good teaching is about caring, nurturing, and developing minds and talents. It’s about devoting time, often invisible, to every student. It’s also about the thankless hours of grading, designing or redesigning courses, and preparing materials to still further enhance instruction.

EIGHT. Good teaching is supported by strong and visionary leadership, and very tangible institutional support — resources, personnel, and funds. Good teaching is continually reinforced by an overarching vision that transcends the entire organization — from full professors to part-time instructors — and is reflected in what is said, but more importantly by what is done.

NINE. Good teaching is about mentoring between senior and junior faculty, teamwork, and being recognized and promoted by one’s peers. Effective teaching should also be rewarded, and poor teaching needs to be remediated through training and development programs.

TEN. At the end of the day, good teaching is about having fun, experiencing pleasure and intrinsic rewards … like locking eyes with a student in the back row and seeing the synapses and neurons connecting, thoughts being formed, the person becoming better, and a smile cracking across a face as learning all of a sudden happens. Good teachers practice their craft not for the money or because they have to, but because they truly enjoy it and because they want to. Good teachers couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

An additional page from the University of Hawaii outlines more great teaching tips including how to evaluate and address different learning styles, tips for the first day, and how to deal with stress and problems in the classroom. Read more, here.

Contexts Magazine graduate editorial board member Shannon Golden has offered a syllabus and in-class exercise to our readers for a course addressing ‘Sociological Perspectives on Race, Class, and Gender.’ The materials were developed as part of a course in the Sociology of Higher Education offered by Professor Ron Aminzade in the Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota.

The syllabus:

• For a semester-length course meeting twice weekly
• Assignments include weekly media reaction papers as well as two longer papers, designed to be ‘writing-intensive’
• The section devoted to ‘Course Dialogue’ provides a great example of how to encourage students to engage in respectful debate about controversial issues.  – A must-read for all first-time instructors.

In-class exercise:

• Title: ‘A White African-American?’
• Written scenario about whether a student typically identified as ‘White’ can be considered for an academic award aimed at recognizing accomplishments of African-American students
• Provides discussion questions to get students talking about the scenario
• Engages students in small group discussion
• Based on an actual event, with some details modified

For those of you unfamiliar with the Contexts Crawler, this blog provides summaries of sociological research in the news as it hits the presses (or the web). The site houses daily posts of news articles from national and international news sources and summarizes the key findings of social science research and highlights the relevant discussion by the media. The Contexts Crawler can be a valuable resource for instructors of sociology to bring current events into lectures and in-class activities. You can find up-to-date news stories on the topics you cover in the classroom, using newspaper articles as a way to help your students understand different sociological concepts with current and innovative research…

How to use the Crawler to find articles for your classes…

All of the posts in site are fully searchable, using the ‘Search’ function on the left-hand side of the site (about halfway down). Using this function, you can look for news stories on particular topics like race, gender, sexuality, youth, and work – among many others.

Another handy way to navigate the Crawler is to use the tag cloud on the left-hand side of the page. (See this for an explanation of a ‘tag cloud.’) This part of the site displays the number of posts on a particular topic by the size of the text. For example, the tag ‘culture’ is used more frequently than the tag ‘youth.’ Although stories are available for both of these topics.

Visit the Contexts Crawler at www.thesocietypages.org/crawler

For beginners: What is a blog?

Check out this great resource from Contexts Magazine Graduate Editorial Board Member Kristin Haltinner. This proposed syllabus was prepared as a part of the ‘Sociology of Higher Education’ graduate seminar taught by Professor Ron Aminzade in the department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota. 

Assets of this syllabus:

• Outlines a community service learning (CSL) opportunity for students
• Provides a number of well selected video clips for course topics
• A great template for the section on ‘Course Expectations’
• See the section on ‘Classroom Etiquette’ – especially helpful