I spent 4 hours yesterday and 4 hours today grading programs for CS 480. I've learned two things. People have wildly different programming styles, and grading is an art.
It's easy to grade something that is correct. The student is right, end of story. It's much more difficult to grade something that's wrong. How "wrong" is the error? How many points should be deducted? What sort of helpful comments should I write?
Fortunately, I'm TAing for a very experienced teacher (Dr. Budd) who is exceptionally helpful when I have questions or dilemmas. I'm just hoping I'll be a much better (and faster) artist by the end of the term.
Posted by enigma at January 18, 2004 09:35 PMYes, grading is always one of the most difficult parts of teaching. What do you do with the student who in the first paragraph gives exactly the correct answer, then in the second paragraph goes on to demonstrate that they have no idea what is going on. How do you compare the student who on a ten question exam gets every question slightly wrong to the student who gets 8 questions right and two totally wrong - they might end up with the same grade but which one would you like to hire? What do you tell the student with the hightest B that the difference between his or her grade and the lowest A is only 1 point? Its a difficult task, but an important one.
(A funny example of the first - I remember once going on a bicycle outing with my family. My daughter and I went to get the bikes, and found one with a flat tire. So we pumped it up. When we finally showed up with the bikes, my wife asked what had taken us so long. My daughter piped up "we were putting gas in the bike". The answer was literally correct, but didn't, I think, show a true understanding of the situation.)
Posted by: Tim Budd at January 22, 2004 10:15 PM