I am a proponent of using rubrics to grade students’ work. This is for a variety of different reasons that could warrant their own blog post. Moreover, I strongly believe that grading is a critical element of the teaching and learning process. It is our chance as instructors to let all of our students know where they are exceeding expectations and where they might need to do a little more work to achieve our intended learning outcomes.
As I began my grand adventure in educating college students, I committed to making grading not simply the exercise of assigning grades, but ensuring that grading was a teaching tool. This meant ensuring that grading was a formative process both for me as the instructor and for students’ in their learning. I thoughtfully and carefully constructed rubrics for every assignment I gave students, selecting criteria and then defining three to four performance levels for each criterion. When I graded, I agonized over exactly which performance level to place each individual’s work. Any time I did not assign students to the top performance level, I would take a lot of time to provide detailed feedback about what students could improve in their next assignment to achieve the top performance level.
The problem? I found that it might take me 20-30 minutes to grade a single piece of student work. With 20-30 students in each class, and generally at least one assignment per week, this type of grading was simply not sustainable. With the demands on my time expanding far beyond simply grading (and the realization that an actual flux capacitor is not yet on the horizon), I found that I simply did not have the time to grade in this manner (unless someone has Doc Brown’s contact information).
What is a well-intentioned instructor to do? A potential solution to balance the time spent grading with quality (and granular) feedback to students on their performances is checklist grading. Checklist grading is similar in many ways to grading with a rubric, so much so that most rubrics can be translated rather directly into checklists. The time-saving advantage of a checklist is that instead of struggling over which performance category a student’s work falls into, then explaining to each student why it fell into that category, you convert performance criteria into individual elements, then grade everything on a 2 point scale: present/absent, yes/no, pass/fail, etc., instead.
Below is an example of a rubric that I have used to grade journal entries in a Discover Chicago class:
| Criterion | Level 1 (25 Points) | Level 2 (20 points) | Level 3 (15 points) | Level 4 (5 points) |
| Site Visit Notes | Every site visit includes good and thoughtful notes about that site | Every site has notes, but one or two days are not good/thoughtful notes OR one day of notes is missing | Every site has notes, but three of four days are not good/ thoughtful notes OR two days of notes are missing | Not every day has good/thoughtful notes OR more than two days of notes are missing |
| Class Questions | Has answers to all four questions on all site visits (24 answers to questions) | Is missing answers to no more than 8 questions across the site visits | Is missing answers to no more than 12 questions across the site visits | Is missing answers to more than half of the questions across the site visits |
| Reflection on Site Visits | Provided thoughtful reflection on each of the six site visits | Provided thoughtful reflection on at least 4 of the site visits OR provided reflection on all six but two or less were not thoughtful
|
Provided thoughtful reflection on at least 3 of the site visits OR provided reflection on all six, but three were not thoughtful | Failed to provide thoughtful reflection on at least 3 of the site visits OR provided reflection on all, but four or more were not thoughtful |
Here is the same rubric converted into a checklist:
| Criterion | Yes | No |
| All Sites have Notes | ||
| Site Notes are Thorough | ||
| Sites Notes are Thoughtful | ||
| Answers all Class Questions for All Sites | ||
| Provided Reflection on each of the 6 Site Visits | ||
| Reflection on Site Visits was Thoughtful |
Advantages of Using Checklist Grading
In addition to simplifying and speeding up the grading process, checklist grading may actually be clearer to students. Also, the checklist grading system may result in less arbitrary (and more consistent) decisions. For example, most instructors are clear on what the top performances look like and what the bottom performances look like, but the middle gets fuzzier. Checklist grading has the potential to raise the rigor of our assessments and students’ performances on our assessments (if they understand that their grades will be based on all or nothing decisions).
Disadvantages of Using Checklist Grading
One disadvantage of this grading system is that creating the checklists might be slightly onerous and it can be difficult to decide on the exact level of granularity that might be appropriate for each assignment. For example, “uses good grammar” might be appropriate for most classes, but would be far too broad if your course is meant to teach grammar. Also, some outcomes might be very difficult to translate into a checklist form. Finally, checklists lose the middle, so there is not really a way to award credit for a student who gets most of the way toward achieving a criterion.
Taking Checklist Grading Further
If you are interested in using checklist grading as a pedagogy, rather than just a grading technique, I encourage you to look into Linda B. Nilson’s Specifications Grading. This is a rather new pedagogy. She specifies how you might use this type of grading to increase rigor, motivate students to perform at their highest levels, and allow students more latitude in determining how much work they want to do for their desired grade (by using checklists to create what she calls “bundles”). If you are interested in learning more, here are a few resources on Specifications Grading:
Nilson, L.B. (2015). Specifications Grading: Restoring Rigor, Motivating Students, and Saving Faculty Time. Stylus: Sterling, VA.
*This book is also available in the CTL library
Nilson, L.B. (2016). Yes, Virginia, there’s a better way to grade. Inside Higher Education. https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2016/01/19/new-ways-grade-more-effectively-essay