Board # 9 :"Blinded" Grading Rubrics for Bioengineering Lab Reports (Work in Progress)

Yanfen Li; Philip A. Jensen; Paul Anthony Jensen; Karin Jensen

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Conference: 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Columbus, Ohio
Publication Date: June 24, 2017
Start Date: June 24, 2017
End Date: June 28, 2017
Conference Session: Biomedical Division Poster Session
Tagged Division: Biomedical
Page Count: 9
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--27951
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/27951
Download Count: 395

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Paper Authors

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Yanfen Li University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign orcid.org/0000-0002-9465-7147

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Yanfen Li is a Ph.D student in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign working under Dr. Kris Kilian. Her research focus is on biomaterials and tissue engineering.

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Philip A. Jensen Rocky Mountain College

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Paul Anthony Jensen University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

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Paul Jensen is a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the Department of Bioengineering and the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology. He received bachelor degrees in chemical and biomedical engineering at the University of Minnesota and a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from the University of Virginia. Paul completed postdoctoral training at Boston College before joining the University of Illinois in 2016.

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Karin Jensen University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign orcid.org/0000-0001-9456-5042

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Karin Jensen is a Teaching Assistant Professor in bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. At UIUC she teaches undergraduate courses and serves as an academic advisor. Before joining UIUC she completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Sanofi Oncology in Cambridge, MA. She earned a bachelor's degree in biological engineering from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from the University of Virginia.

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Abstract

Work in Progress: “Blinded” grading rubrics for bioengineering lab reports

Large introductory laboratory courses are often assessed with a large number of written assignments requiring multiple graders. Consistency between graders for lab reports is an important issue for both students and instructors in order to maintain accuracy and fairness. This challenge is enhanced by the need for graduate student teaching assistants who often receive limited instruction on grading and have little or no experience grading technical writing documents. When presented with detailed rubrics, graders have preconceived notions about the definitions of “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory” or similar descriptors and how these evaluations equate to a numeric grade. Even detailed rubrics that provide point designations for each item can result in inconsistent grading if graders have a preconceived notion of the overall score range that a report should fall into. To address these challenges, we propose using a “blinded” rubric where graders are encouraged to assess assignments only by qualitative descriptions on a rubric and not assign quantitative scores or points. Pre-assigned point designations for each statement on the rubric are then applied after the grader has evaluated all the reports. We hypothesize that this process will increase inter-grader consistency, increase grader confidence in evaluating work, and reduce overall grading time. We piloted this approach in a sophomore bioengineering laboratory course that employed three graduate student teaching assistants. Our preliminary results indicate that grader consistency increased using the blinded rubric system. Graders also reported greater confidence in their assessments. Further, graders reported spending less time grading assignments when they were asked only to select qualitative statements and not assign quantitative point values for their selection on the rubric. We are currently assessing student perceptions of this grading process, including fairness of the system and whether or not blinding graders to the initial point designations will encourage student-grader conversations to focus on the evaluations instead of points deducted.

Citation
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Li, Y., & Jensen, P. A., & Jensen, P. A., & Jensen, K. (2017, June), Board # 9 :"Blinded" Grading Rubrics for Bioengineering Lab Reports (Work in Progress) Paper presented at 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Columbus, Ohio. 10.18260/1-2--27951

TY - CPAPER
AB - Work in Progress: “Blinded” grading rubrics for bioengineering lab reports

Large introductory laboratory courses are often assessed with a large number of written assignments requiring multiple graders. Consistency between graders for lab reports is an important issue for both students and instructors in order to maintain accuracy and fairness. This challenge is enhanced by the need for graduate student teaching assistants who often receive limited instruction on grading and have little or no experience grading technical writing documents. When presented with detailed rubrics, graders have preconceived notions about the definitions of “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory” or similar descriptors and how these evaluations equate to a numeric grade. Even detailed rubrics that provide point designations for each item can result in inconsistent grading if graders have a preconceived notion of the overall score range that a report should fall into. To address these challenges, we propose using a “blinded” rubric where graders are encouraged to assess assignments only by qualitative descriptions on a rubric and not assign quantitative scores or points. Pre-assigned point designations for each statement on the rubric are then applied after the grader has evaluated all the reports. We hypothesize that this process will increase inter-grader consistency, increase grader confidence in evaluating work, and reduce overall grading time. We piloted this approach in a sophomore bioengineering laboratory course that employed three graduate student teaching assistants. Our preliminary results indicate that grader consistency increased using the blinded rubric system. Graders also reported greater confidence in their assessments. Further, graders reported spending less time grading assignments when they were asked only to select qualitative statements and not assign quantitative point values for their selection on the rubric. We are currently assessing student perceptions of this grading process, including fairness of the system and whether or not blinding graders to the initial point designations will encourage student-grader conversations to focus on the evaluations instead of points deducted.

AU - Yanfen Li
AU - Philip A. Jensen
AU - Paul Anthony Jensen
AU - Karin Jensen
CY - Columbus, Ohio
DA - 2017/06/24
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Board # 9 :"Blinded" Grading Rubrics for Bioengineering Lab Reports (Work in Progress)
UR - https://peer.asee.org/27951
DO - 10.18260/1-2--27951
ER -