We know that best practices feel like ivory-tower notions—they’ re true and yet feel impossible to implement; frequent formative assessments are touted as a key factor in fostering student learning, but how to do that AND teach? Item analysis is an important way to promote exam quality, but in a large lecture course, who is going to crunch that data? Personalized feedback is crucial to supporting the student learning journey, but who has that time? Rubrics are a critical component of fair assessment, but managing them with a team of human graders with unintended biases is a lofty task.
Gradescope by Turnitin considers these best practices and brings them within range for instructors to execute. Our software addresses practical matters, bridging pedagogy with on-the-ground assessment.
The best practices serve as our beacon. As such, we bring you a whitepaper entitled, “Transforming grading into learning,” which discusses assessment as a data-filled intersection with great potential for learning. This intersection can inform teachers about teaching efficacy and assessment design. In turn, students have the opportunity to glean information about what they need to understand as they move forward. Grading can be learning, for both students and teachers.