Grading

Ever since I was a kid I have watched my parents, who were both professors, grade the exams of students by taking great pains to understand what they meant to convey through their answers even though they might not have written down the exact correct thing. I guess I took heart after that. I always try to keep in mind the intention of the student behind writing that particular answer instead of their direct action in writing it. Often it so happens as in the C.S. course I am teaching this semester that a trivial mistake like ending a brace prematurely may disrupt the entire flow of the program. But truly that is not an issue to be harsh about, and reduce the grade of the student. Because in the obvious sense he was writing far more important things which on the other hand happened to be perfect and he sort of overlooked this tiny thing. The fact that he changed the entire result of the program did not make him a bad performer since writing a program without a computer is almost similar to trying to win a war without an army.

In other aspects I sometimes do grade out of instinct and then I go so far as to talk with the concerned student to understand his motivation behind writing it. I have often asked such students whenever I get a chance to meet with them that if they wanted to change one thing about the piece of code they have written, what would it be? That says a lot. Now in other cases like suppose I have already graded a class and found out some common mistakes I go over it in the next class/lab and indirectly lead them to find out their own mistakes. I try never to tell it to them myself. I guess this is another old practice I learnt from my peers. Somewhat unsurprisingly I find students learn more that way rather than spoon-feeding them by directly stating their mistakes in class/lab.

Since one part of my work in grading this semester is grading quizzes, homeworks and another is the lab grading part both of which has a different bunch of students the first thing I try to do is to associate the names of the students with their faces. That way when I return the graded answer sheets back I can let them know about the small things they missed. Usually I grade quizzes and assignments out of a total of 100 marks and split up the entire total into smaller subdivisions so that even if it is one single program I have marks allotted for comments, program correctness, compilation errors, modularity etc. In the case of the labs I always make sure to have a one on one sessions so that I get a clear understanding about their approach and I assign a part of the grade here. It helps because I know where the student is headed and if they are moving in the wrong direction I have an opportunity to bring them back. Also another part of this is I get to take notes on which parts the student needs to improve on before they submit the final version of the lab and I later I can check if they have indeed worked on the changes promised.

I distinctly remember the first time I was grading and I clearly was a novice then. I surely did not have much of an idea regarding grading. I remember turning up at the professor’s office who was teaching that course more than often to understand what it takes to be a good grader. I always had a million questions then most of which I can solve myself now. But is guess that a lot of effort in this has made whatever I am now and that is surely a good thing.

Learning Styles

After I completed the Felder and Solomon’s learning inventory I found out that I am very well balanced between being a reflective and active learner. I absolutely agree to that. I like doing lots of hands on as well get engaged in brainstorming sessions. Everybody gets thrilled when they have a new thing to play with. But when it comes to understand a concept I would rather sit down quietly and think through it. When I requested some of my friends and students to use the inventory I found some have a tendency to be on the active learner side whereas most tend to be reflective by nature when it comes to learning processes.

Also I found out I stand in the exact middle when it comes to being judged as a sensing or an intuitive learner though I must admit that I am more of the latter then former. Sometimes I do not like to memorize facts, I am horrible at general knowledge and I do not like plug and chug problems. And so when few of the graduate students that I know also opted for being an intuitive learner it was kind of unsurprising because graduate students usually have a tendency to think intuitively rather than going over the facts they have learnt in class. Undergraduates on the other hand depend heavily on fact based learning. As a graduate student myself I must say I do not really mind if I have to work something out from first principles in the exam rather than memorizing the final formula, probably which brings out the intuitive side of me and often other fellow graduate students.

In visual vs. verbal learning, I am definitely inclined towards being a visual learner considering that I always associate a name with a face, and I do not remember many things that I hear. However when it comes to music I can remember most songs that I have heard. Even then I would say that my visual learning capabilities are better and I would sincerely persist on the fact that we need to have a lot of visual learning techniques in class because almost everyone remembers a picture better than a thousand words that are used to describe it.

A different case exists for sequential vs. global learning. It usually depends mostly on the specific problem. However, if possible I like to get a clear notion of the broader philosophy before thinking of the details. So all in all, I think that the Felder and Soloman's learning inventory did a reasonably good job of determining my learning habits.

I think that as far as classroom teaching is concerned, learning habits of individual students can make a considerable impact on the teaching style. Particularly for large classes, teaching methods should only make sure that students with all kinds of learning patterns can benefit from the course and use their own particular learning method to their full advantage. That means as a teacher I should make sure that I am aware of the learning methods of my students.