Tested Studies for Laboratory Teaching (ABLE Proceedings)

Title:

Supporting TA Training and Management Using an Evidence-Based Approach: A Visual Tool to Identify Outliers in Student Grades

Url:

http://www.ableweb.org/volumes/vol-37/v37reprint.php?ch=32

Author:

Laura Weir
Liane Chen
Megan Barker

Author's Address:

University of British Columbia, Department of Zoology, British Columbia
University of British Columbia, Department of Botany, British Columbia

Email Address:

lchen@zoology.ubc.ca

Description: In large classes with multiple lab/tutorial sections and graduate teaching assistants (TAs), it can be a challenge to determine whether grade variations between TAs are a result of differences in grading or whether they reflect other factors such as underlying student ability. Instructors can assess grading quality by checking a subset of graded work, but the number of TAs and the amount of graded work to check can be prohibitive. Gillian Gass and I previously developed an Excel-based graphing tool that created a visual depiction of the grade distribution within and between TA groups, allowing instructors to easily identify outliers (Proceedings of the Association for Biology Laboratory Education 34:310-313). Subsequent work has demonstrated that most outliers identified visually are also detected through statistical tests, underlying the rigor of the tool despite its simplicity of use. Here, participants are invited to interpret typical graphs and analyze their own class data, in order to propose underlying causes of grade outliers and to discuss subsequent TA training interventions.

Keywords:

graduate teaching assistants
grading
variations in grading
teaching assistants

Topic:

Teaching Tools and Techniques

BEN Subject/Discipline Taxonomy:

Teaching Tools and Techniques

Learning Resource Type:

Teaching strategies & guidelines (DCMI Type Vocabulary)

Context:

Undergraduate lower division 13-14
Undergraduate upper division 15-16

Format:

pdf