Forgive me father, I have sinned: the Evaluative Process

This week’s readings touch on how instructors evaluate their students’ work (both written work and participation). Reading through the suggestions for evaluation offered by Chiseru-Strater felt more like a list of sins I had committed during my evaluation of PAAs.

Critical reading, constructive response, and reflective thought: these are the sort of practices we are encouraging our students to adopt in this class, yet as I read through the articles, what struck me most was just how much I had failed as an instructor to make these things apparent in my evaluations of PAAs. For example, Chiseru-Strater, discussing the subjective nature of the evaluative process, suggests we should bring students into it by having them draw up and discuss their own list of criteria for what makes writing good. (185) Did I do that? No. She mentions the use of a self-evaluation form at the end of each paper. Did I have my students fill one out? Nope. When she goes on to discuss her old methods of evaluating a student’s draft by marking up “each paper, making comments about grammar, syntax, and spelling along with comments about focus, voice, and detail.” Even though we were warned to be cautious with our red pens, I still couldn’t resist the impulse to mark up grammatical problems, spelling errors, and strange punctuation. I think Chiseru-Strater puts it best, saying, “Under that standard grading procedure, I did not really distinguish among my many responses, and for that reason it was difficult for my students to decide which comments were more important than others.” (190)



Sommers echoes this sentiment, stating, “teachers’ comments can take students' attention away from their own purposes in writing a particular text and focus that attention on the teachers’ purpose in commenting.” The result of this appropriation of text by the teacher is a very confused student who will often times simply correct what they can based on the comments they’ve received and will not look much further in how to change their paper.

Dirk discusses the importance of stressing to the students what exactly we expect from students in terms of evaluating their participation in the course. I thought it was interesting how he mentions the widely-varied views of what students imagine a teacher bases participation grades upon. Again, I began to think of my own class. It's true I have stressed the importance of participation, but I have failed to really explicate what I expect of my students, how their own definitions of participation might differ from my own.

So, am I guilty of not bringing the students into the evaluative process? Yes. Of not stressing enough the importance of self-evaluation? Yes. Of commenting on papers in a way that may give students the wrong impression about what is most important when revising a paper? Yes. Of not being clear to the students about what I expect of them in terms of participation? Yes.


Yes, I am guilty of all of the above. I think we all are. But the silver lining is there is time to absolve ourselves by making strides to redefine our own evaluative processes. So for this week, I'm curious to know, what are you guys guilty of in terms of your own evaluative processes? What would you have done differently if you could go back and start the class all over again?


Yes, we have sinned. But hopefully we can learn from the errors of our ways. Until then, I guess we'll just have to settle for saying a few Hail Marys and hoping one day we'll be better.