Student Evaluations of Faculty Grading Methods

Abstract

Considerable literature exists concerning grading, its purposes, its best practices, and its reliability. In this research, the authors investigated students' complaints about how faculty members grade them on both essay assignments and quantitative problems. The two major problems cited by students were lack of “fairness in grading” and too little feedback from their instructors. The authors explain how strategies such as setting clear assignment objectives and using matrices and rubrics would help to reduce these negative student comments.