Thanks to the inspiration of laurakgibbs I have decided to try Grade Declarations for my fully online history class in the spring. One of the assignments I am going to use it with is the primary source analysis, which students do several times over the course of the semester. They find a primary source that is from a specific time period, and I have them write a three-paragraph analysis of the source. The paragraphs focus on the source's context, content, and finally an interpretation.
I am used to assigning points for each criteria within a rubric:
| Criteria | Ratings | Pts |
|---|
Writing quality Is the writing free of grammatical errors, and does it flow smoothly from one paragraph to another? | | 5.0 pts
|
First paragraph (context) Does the first paragraph contain at least one properly formatted citation from the text that is used to support the description of the document's context? | | 10.0 pts
|
Second paragraph (content) Does the second paragraph contain at least one properly formatted citation from the document that is used to support the description of its content? | | 10.0 pts
|
Third paragraph (meaning) Does the third paragraph include properly formatted citations from the text and/or document that effectively support an interpretation of the document's meaning? | | 20.0 pts
|
Works Cited list Does the analysis include a properly formatted list of works cited that includes the text and the document being analyzed? | | 5.0 pts
|
Total Points: 50.0 |
After seeing a question from @distance_ed1 about Student Self-Grading for Variable Credit? and Laura' response, I thought about how I might make a Grade Declaration for each criterion.
I created two quizzes. For one I made each criterion a separate question worth the appropriate amount of points. This ended up with a quiz long enough to require a page down before seeing all of the questions:
The second quiz I have with just one question, which is in line with how Laura does Grade Declarations. This one fits much more easily within a single window:
This will also be a peer-review assignment, so my students will be doing an assignment in addition to taking the Grade Declaration quiz. And they will select from the analyses created by the entire class as part of the capstone assignment. Both the peer review and the within-class repository will make these public, so students will be thinking of their peers as the complete the Grade Declaration assignment.
It all boils down to whether it makes a difference for students to do a separate declaration for each criterion or one declaration for all of them. They will separately submit it, provide and read peer feedback, and then read my feedback. It might be enough for there to be a single declaration question instead of several. Since this is new to me, either option will teach me something.
