The grades cause often anxiety for students. But as difficult as grades can be for students, the grading process is also hard for teachers, particularly new ones. But if are able to keep some basic principles in mind, we can enhance student learning. So, evaluating student work is more than simply assigning grades, comments that explain our assessment and a willingness to have conversations about ideas are important. The goal of evaluating student work is to encourage students to continue learning, not to provide mean and hard feedbacks that decrease their intrinsic motivation.
Commenting on student work is an important part of the educational process; simply assigning a grade is not enough, because our comments tell the student why we graded as we did and how he or she can improve in the future. Comments can justify and explain the grade. And as I said, comments let us give student feedbacks for continued improvement. Students can see what they need to do better or differently in the future to reach the goals of the courses. Comments can also motivate en encourage students. When it is properly written, they can inspire the students to continue working and improving as learners.
But, I think comments should be balanced. “Constructive comments generally reflect a balance between three kinds of comments: what was done well, what was weak and how the student can improve” (Evaluating and grading the student work, University of southern California).
But we should be careful to not over-marking student work and not to over-criticize. Too many negative comments can overwhelm students.
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