Faculty Focus

HIGHER ED TEACHING STRATEGIES FROM MAGNA PUBLICATIONS

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Teaching and Learning Without Grading

Imagine if faculty did not design courses, select course materials, or grade student work.  What role would faculty play in teaching and learning? We serve

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Contested Grades and the “You Earned It” Retort

A common rhetorical move we professors make when students object to a grade is to reframe the discussion. We’ll say, “Let’s be clear. I didn’t give you this grade. You earned it.” And if it were appropriate we might underscore our zinger with a smugly snapped Z. But stop and think about it. When we make the “you earned it” move, it’s simply an attempt to shift the debate away from the fairness or interpretation of our standard and onto students to justify their effort by our standard, which really wasn’t their complaint.

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Using Rubrics as a Defense Against Grade Appeals

Faculty dread the grade appeal; anxiety prevails until the whole process is complete. Much has been written about how to avoid such instances, but the potentially subjective assessments of written essays or clinical skills can be especially troublesome. One common cause of grade appeals is grading ambiguity in which the student and faculty member disagree on the interpretation of required content. Another cause is inequity, whereby the student feels others may have gotten more credit for very similar work or content (Hummel 2010). In the health-care field especially, these disagreements over clinical-skills assessments can actually result in student dismissal from the program and may lead to lawsuits.

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Ideas for Rethinking Your Quiz Tactics

If your quiz strategies are becoming stale, this free report is loaded with fresh ideas that will help you better understand why you are using quizzes, what you hope they will accomplish, and how they can best be used to facilitate student learning.

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