When looking for ways to efficiently evaluate student work, instructors can modify their assessments to streamline grading and feedback, while ensuring that the assessment supports student learning. This resource provides guidance and strategies for combining grading efficiency and effective assessment. To frame our discussion, we begin with some guidelines for grading in ways that are efficient for instructors while promoting learning.

1. Free yourself of the need to grade everything.  Instructors may feel that it’s necessary to comprehensively evaluate every piece of work that a student produces. While grades can provide students with feedback, the greatest value of an assessment often accrues from the cognitive and intellectual work that students engage in as they do the assessment. Grades are a byproduct of a much richer cycle of learning and feedback that engages students in the deep learning that is a key part of the university experience. Focus on assessing and providing feedback on those assignments that have the most substantial impact on student learning. Strategies such as modifying the structure of your grading scheme can assist with this.

2. Limit grading and substantial feedback to assessments that engage students in higher-order thinking and/or require them to synthesize their learning.  Carefully review your assessments to identify those which ask students to do more critical thinking, analysis, synthesis or other higher-order thinking tasks (see Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy for a framework for identifying higher- and lower-order thinking skills). Focusing your feedback and grading efforts on assessments that require higher-order thinking will help promote student learning and will be the best use of your feedback and grading time. Examples of tasks that would be comprehensively assessed include research papers, projects, reports, and presentations. The use of rubrics can greatly increase grading efficiency while also providing students with useful, learning-focused feedback.

3. Use automated grading systems for assessments that target lower-order thinking skills, for example, memorization of facts, or those cases where quick information retrieval is important. Multiple choice Canvas quizzes can work well for this; Canvas question feedback functions can be used to provide students with automatic, formative feedback to improve their learning. Multiple choice exams can also assess higher-level thinking, but require time and careful review of test items. Please visit CEE’s website for information about CEE consultations on test creation and analysis.

4. Provide multiple opportunities for feedback. The instructor is an important source of feedback; however, students can receive helpful feedback from many sources. Varying feedback strategies can help students to engage in more collaborative work (peer feedback), gauge their understanding with reference to the rest of the class (class-level feedback) and help them develop metacognitive skills necessary to critically evaluate their own academic work (self-assessment).

Six Strategies for Streamlining Assessment and Grading
 

1. Modify Grading Structures 

Use binary grading (“completed” or “not completed”) for assessments that help students build skills through practice. Examples of this kind of assessment are problem sets in STEM courses, grammar exercises in language classes, and reading guides in courses with a substantial reading component. Instructors can establish a minimum threshold for “completed” by giving students a rubric that sets out the criteria that must be met in order to receive a full-credit grade. Showing students an example of an assignment that meets the full requirement and would receive a grade of “completed” can also help guide students in succeeding with this type of assessment.

Grade a subset of assignments by giving students a choice. Rather than grade every assignment,  instructors can require students to complete all assignments and allow students to choose a subset of the assignments that they’ll receive a grade and feedback on. This permits students to choose those assessments they feel best represent their work. Requiring students to complete all of the assignments and choose a subset for grading maximizes learning and gives students a larger pool of assessments to choose from.
 

2. Automate Formative Feedback through Canvas Quizzes 

Quizzes can be a great formative assessment tool and provide students with instantaneous feedback when designed with certain features in Canvas. When creating a quiz in Canvas, instructors can not only automate quiz scoring but also pre-load formative feedback into the quiz questions and answer options. Instructors can specify in Canvas when this pre-loaded feedback can be accessed by students. 

When building Quizzes in Canvas, use the color-coded comment boxes underneath each answer to pre-load feedback. Use the green comment box for feedback explaining why this answer is correct and how students might have reasoned toward this answer. Use the red comment box(es) underneath incorrect answer option(s) to provide feedback on why these options are not correct and/or misconceptions that may have led students to these distractors. 

Instructors can also utilize comments for the entire question to provide general feedback, including: how to reason toward the correct answer, common mistakes and/or misconceptions related to the question, and/or relevant course materials to review for further information.
 

3. Streamline Feedback with Rubrics & SpeedGrader
 

Using Rubrics for Assessment and Feedback: 

Rubrics are a great way to prioritize feedback on only those elements of a student’s assignment that truly matter for the learning outcomes.

Rubrics specify key criteria or standards, levels of proficiency, and descriptions of what each criterion looks like at each proficiency level. Aim for only a few specific and necessary criteria on the rubric. Resist the temptation to include “important but not necessary” criteria in the rubric. 

Rubrics can be the foundation for giving clear and actionable feedback on student work. Streamline feedback by focusing on only those items that are covered in the rubric, which you have already determined to be most necessary. Keep in mind that too many comments can interfere with learning: students lose the signal in the noise. Prioritize the ways in which the work demonstrates particular criteria at relative performance levels. 

Streamlining Assessment Feedback with SpeedGrader 

Integrating your rubric with the SpeedGrader tool in Canvas can enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of feedback. To do this, first build your rubric in Canvas and then attach the rubric to the relevant assignment. Once in SpeedGrader, you can utilize the rubric and provide feedback on student work. 

SpeedGrader also allows you to build a Comment Library for frequent comments. You can preload anticipated comments into your Comment Library as well as save comments to your Comment Library as you interact with student work. 

Typing comments is one of many options in SpeedGrader, which also includes spoken comments (audio recordings that students can listen to later), video comments (screen capture videos that students can watch later), and speech-to-text comments that translate spoken audio into text (only available in Google Chrome).
 

4. Assign Peer Feedback 

Having students review and give feedback on classmates’ work is one strategy for giving timely feedback. Additionally, peer review has many pedagogical benefits, including: increasing engagement and fostering collaboration and community, challenging students to express their thoughts clearly and diplomatically, and reinforcing student learning and metacognition as they reflect on how their thinking changed once reading their classmates’ work.

To streamline the peer feedback process, consider peer review on assignments or discussions on Canvas. Canvas peer reviews can show student names or display anonymously. You can manually assign peer reviewers or let Canvas automatically assign them. You can have students complete a rubric and/or leave a comment in the comment sidebar.

However you decide to have students provide peer feedback, you’ll want to clearly explain how they should (and should not) assess their classmates. Consider modeling appropriate/productive comments.
 

5. Save Time with Group- or Class-level Feedback
 

Rather than repeating identical comments for multiple students, provide feedback at the group or course level by summarizing trends you notice while grading. Send a classwide e-mail, use the Canvas Announcement tool, or allot time in class to share your feedback.

Besides saving you time and ensuring consistent feedback quality, group feedback also allows students to see where others may be excelling or struggling. This encourages students to self-assess their own work in comparison to the group norms or expectations. Similarly, students can learn from the different perspectives and approaches of their peers. Time saved by efficient collective feedback can go toward tailoring feedback to address specific needs and strengths.

To maximize the benefits of formative assessment, consider a combination of feedback, feed up, and feed forward:

• Feedback helps someone understand what they have or haven't done well based on observations or assessments that have already occurred. It's retrospective, looking back on what has been done to reinforce or correct it.
• Feed up clarifies the objectives or goals by answering the question, "What are we trying to achieve?" Feed up provides a target or standard against which to measure performance. 
• Feed forward includes information or suggestions about what to do next or in the future to improve. Unlike feedback, which looks at past performance, feed forward is future-oriented. It focuses on potential strategies, actions, or behaviors that can enhance future performance. Feed forward offers constructive guidance on how to do better moving forward, rather than just focusing on what went wrong in the past.
   

6. Engage Students in Self-Assessment 
 

This strategy involves students in assessing their own work by engaging in two steps. First, students can review their work by using an answer key or comparing their work to a well-crafted sample assignment. Then, to demonstrate that they’ve fully considered and assessed their work, students can:

• Complete a written reflection based on question(s) provided by the instructor (e.g., “Choose 2-3 areas where you made errors and provide a thoughtful explanation of how you would correct them”). 
• Revise the assignment (or part of the assignment) as part of the self-assessment process, explaining why they made the changes they’ve made. 
• Discuss the reflection with others. The reflection can be used as a point of departure for a pair discussion in class to further increase the learning value of the task, and it can be graded using binary grading to keep the grading load manageable.

Concluding Note: The Necessity of Transparency 
 

Regardless of the strategies you use to streamline grading and assessment, it is necessary to be transparent with students about your choice of grading methods. Provide a rationale for your practices that are centered on students’ learning and development. 

For example, when using binary grading, it can help to explain to students that you will use this style of grading for those assignments where students are building skills to encourage them to practice, and a more ranked form of grading (e.g., A-F) on major assignments that synthesize their learning in the course. This can reassure them that skills-building assignments have value in and of themselves, even without extensive feedback from the instructor. 

When students understand the expectations for their learning and the reasons behind instructors’ assessment choices, they are more likely to utilize feedback, anticipate challenges, and self-motivate their learning.

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Resource developed by Erica Bender, Katie Healey, and Patricia Turner for the UC Davis Center for Educational Effectiveness