[ATTW-L] Labor based grading contracts in editing course

[Elizabeth Chamberlain]

Hi Hannah,

I switched to labor-based contract grading last fall. Most of my classes don’t have exams, but in my graduate composition theory class, I gave a midterm. I scored the midterm pass/fail in the gradebook but also gave students (unrecorded) scores according to the department’s comprehensive exam rubric.

Thus, students received feedback on their mastery of course concepts and their preparedness for their comprehensive exams, but in my gradebook, only their participation in the exam was recorded.

I love Joseph’s idea for multiple-choice exams, giving students the opportunity to study again and retest until they’re happy with their score. For longer-form written exams, however, I wouldn’t ask students to rewrite the exam repeatedly.

Perhaps ask yourself: What pedagogical purpose do you hope the exam will serve? Are you comfortable giving feedback on mastery while only officially measuring labor/completeness? If you care about having students’ grades reflect the mastery you’re measuring with the exam, can you give students ways of demonstrating mastery after the exam to improve their scores—e.g. asking students to write narrative explanations of why/how they got a question wrong, explaining what they’ve learned and how they’d respond now?

Elizabeth
--
Elizabeth F. Chamberlain
Director of First-Year Writing
Assistant Professor of English Rhetoric and Composition
Arkansas State University

From: Joseph Robertshaw<mailto:jwr0015 at uah.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2020 2:47 PM
To: Bellwoar, Hannah (BELLWOAR)<mailto:BELLWOAR at juniata.edu>; attw-l at attw.org<mailto:attw-l at attw.org>
Subject: Re: [ATTW-L] Labor based grading contracts in editing course

Hi Hannah,

I have an idea or two for you to consider.

In the Editing course I taught in Spring 2020, I turned my exams into several quizzes and released them over several weeks. Upon Joy Robinson's suggestion, I also made them available for multiple attempts. This allowed students to strive for mastery by retaking the quizzes and then the score in the end does reflect their labor investment. Alternatively I considered scrapping the exam in favor of more process documentation (progress reports, proposals, reflections). Ultimately I combined these approaches and used half of the exam to create quizzes while increasing the number of process documents for me to offer feedback on. Converting the quizzes to Canvas was highly problematic but I think it was worth the initial investment of effort.

I hope this helps you think about your course in a new way.

Joseph W. Robertshaw
[https://docs.google.com/uc?export=download&id=1WGKSza1-3ECFta4Iz6jy00wiuPhGolIZ&revid=0B1osq0Aln_akK2hFdTM5aFRRUmJUbVJyYXJYWlF3VHB1clZzPQ]


On Wed, Jul 15, 2020 at 2:34 PM Bellwoar, Hannah (BELLWOAR) <BELLWOAR at juniata.edu<mailto:BELLWOAR at juniata.edu>> wrote:
Hi all,

I decided to make the move to labor based grading in all of my classes in the fall. However, I am teaching Professional Editing, and I typically give a mid-term exam in that course. I cannot wrap my head around how to grade an exam based on labor rather than correctness. Any suggestions or ideas for me?

Thanks, Hannah

Hannah Bellwoar, PhD
Director of Writing
Associate Professor of English
Juniata College



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