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5. How could you minimize student complaints about grading? 

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5. How could you minimize student complaints about grading? 

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As a teaching assistant, you'll soon become familiar with hearing certain complaints from students. Here are seven of the most common student complaints and some suggested responses.

1. "I met all the criteria in the assignment. Why did I only get a 'C'?"
Meeting the minimal criteria isn't always enough to guarantee a great mark. A great assignment (essay, test answer, etc.) will often elaborate on issues that are missing from a more basic assignment. However, sometimes the problem is that the assignment is filled with irrelevancies. Being concise is as important as saying enough. Knowing the appropriate level of detail is part of what is being evaluated. Also...students need to know that there is nothing wrong with a "C" grade. According to the Faculty of Arts and Science grading scale, this level of achievement indicates "intellectually adequate performance".

Helpful strategies:

As stated above, make sure the student is aware that many faculties (i.e., Arts and Science) identify a C paper as one that fulfills all assignment requirements in a competent fashion.

Approach a student who has performed well on an assignment and seek his or her permission to use the assignment as a model for the class. With the student's express permission, photocopy a portion of the assignment and use it anonymously in class to model a good paper/test answer/lab report/calculation, etc. Show this to students so that they can identify a goal towards which they should be striving, and so that they know what they need to do to improve. This may be better than the answer key originally provided by the professor.

If possible, ask that the course supervisor provide anonymous examples of great assignments from past classes, so that students have a clearer idea of what is expected of them.

2. "Most of your comments on my paper were about grammar, spelling, and writing skills. But this course is about ______. You should only be grading me on my knowledge of the subject content."
Communicating an idea effectively is as important as coming up with the idea in the first place. In the end, TAs can only assign a mark based on what is written on the page. If you as a student cannot explain yourself clearly, then you do not understand the material as well as you thought. However, the issue becomes complicated with ELL (English Language Learner) students. Some latitude may be given for individuals whom you definitively know (not assume) to be learners of English. Clarify with the course supervisor what accommodations and support, if any, are given to learners of English in the course. Familiarize yourself with support services on campus for ELL students.

Helpful strategies:

Prevention is best. Make sure that students are aware that any course that involves significant writing involves them being marked on their communication skills, not just their knowledge of specific material.

Recommend early on that students seek individualized help from U of T writing centers. Ask that the course supervisor also make a similar announcement. Make sure you can follow this up with a list of available campus writing support services.

3. "Your standards are too high."
This may actually be true. If most of the class is doing poorly according to your method of marking, then perhaps something was misunderstood when the assignment was explained to students, or perhaps they have too little experience with this kind of writing. You (and the course supervisor) will have to decide whether there are extenuating circumstances or not.
If your standards are fair, it helps to describe the general performance of the class to the complaining student. This is where showing (anonymous) copies of high and mid-scoring assignments would be useful: if would demonstrate to students that others in the course understood the requirements. To excel, they will have to meet a higher standard of performance.

Helpful strategies:

Go over the assignment with the student to identify where improvement is needed.

Try not to be overly negative. Focus on 2 or 3 of the more urgent problems. Be sure to point out 1 or 2 positive aspects of the student's work.

Focus the interaction on real examples of good assignments (make some copies in advance-don't show the whole assignment, only sections of it). If you do not have access to examples of work from real students, invent something yourself to be used as a model.

Avoid focusing the interaction on defending your marking style or on issues of authority. Be sure to write up your comments on longer assignments (if possible, type them up and save them on your computer) so that you have written documentation of your grading that you can fall back on when discussing assignments with students.

Keep an open mind. Sometimes the student may be right. * Being open-minded and listening carefully to students' concerns does not mean that you should secondguess your grades. Be prepared to change a grade only after very careful consideration. If there is no clear justification for changing the mark, stand firmly by your original decision.

Ask that students examine grade distributions and answer keys before disputing a mark.

Ask students to review the course objectives before disputing a grade or discussing your marking standards. Your standards must fit into a set of guidelines for your department, your faculty and the university. You are part of a larger system, as are the students. The University of Toronto has very stringent guidelines and expectations regarding student performance. Remind your students of this.

For the remaining four complaints, we offer some verbal responses that may be used.

4. "I'm an 'A' student, yet you only gave me a 'C' in this course!"

"I understand you're worried, and that this might be a different result from what you've received in the past. However, I'm assessing your performance in this course only. Do you have concerns about your mark on specific assignments/tests? We can look over them together." Be clear with your students that you are not responsible for the grades they achieve in other courses or the marks they received in high school. You are evaluating current performance and knowledge and identifying avenues for future growth, not maintaining past achievements.

5. "I did everything the same as the last time, but this time you gave me a poor grade."

"Every assignment is a little different, so repeating what you did was probably not enough this time around. Also, we have higher standards over time, since we expect you to improve as you get more familiar with these assignments. Do you want to look over the assignment together?"

Learning is a cumulative process involving sequenced steps building toward a higher level of competency or expertise. Students must show that they have moved through the necessary steps to acquire and apply new skills and knowledge, and that they are not simply repeating what they already know.

6. "I put a lot of effort into this paper, but you only gave me a 'C'."

"I know you put a lot of work into this. Unfortunately, we were expecting more in the assignment. Let's look over the paper and see what happened."

Be very clear with your students that while the process of completing an assignment is important, you are evaluating the production of work. Unless evaluating the process of completing an assignment is expressly incorporated into the assessment of that assignment (i.e. awarding marks for submitting a draft version of an essay or report, submitting the steps involved in solving a problem set, submitting the outline for a project, submitting an annotated bibliography, etc.), you cannot possibly evaluate the effort a student puts into an assignment. Every student learns in different ways and at different speeds-the effort students put into their assignments cannot possibly be standardized and evaluated in the same way that the end result of that effort can. If students have indeed put an appropriate level of effort into an assignment, it will show in the product of their work.

7. "But I need a better grade to earn a scholarship/enter grad school/survive probation/stay in student residence."

"I know you're worried about your mark. But it's important that I mark objectively, and evaluate your work in this course independently of external pressures. Let's go over your work and see where the problems were. I'm sure you can improve on the next assignment and increase your grade."

As a university educator, you are responsible for contributing to the development of well-rounded citizens capable of independent and critical thought. You are also responsible for referring students to campus services that can aid them in juggling all the pressures of studying at a large postsecondary institution. Beyond this, however, you are not personally or formally responsible for the rest of your students' lives. The University of Toronto has very high assessment standards and it is your job to uphold these standards. It is also your students' responsibilities to do their very best to meet these standards. Train your students to be proactive: if they have reason to be concerned about a grade that might affect their student privileges, they must take steps before an assignment is submitted to ensure they are doing everything necessary to better their performance. (Telling you they need a higher grade because they need admission to a particular academic program is not being proactive.) Be clear with your students about how you can help them before a test is written or an assignment submitted, be clear about your expectations and provide students with a list of all possible resources for learning support. The rest is up to them.

Created by Christopher Lo, TATP Trainer © 2006
Edited by Megan Burnett, Associate Director, CTSI/TATP © 2016
Updated by Nicole Birch-Bayley, Faculty Liaison Coordinator, TATP/CTSI © 2022

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Handling Student Complaints - Teaching Assistants' Training Program

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As a teaching assistant, you'll soon become familiar with hearing certain complaints from students. Here are seven of the most common student complaints and some suggested responses. 1. "I met all the criteria in the assignment. Why did I only get a 'C'?" Meeting the minimal criteria isn't always enough to guarantee a great mark.

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6. How do you like to receive feedback from professors? 

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6. How do you like to receive feedback from professors? 

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4. How would you be consistent in grading if you co-teach (or TA) a course? 

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4. How would you be consistent in grading if you co-teach (or TA) a course? 

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2. How do/will/could one create grading criteria? 

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2. How do/will/could one create grading criteria? 

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Included below are sample criteria for you to consider as you develop a grading rubric. As you develop your rubric, consider the essential knowledge and skills required for the assignment/assessment for which you are developing the rubric and develop and define the criteria accordingly. Then consider how you will weight these criteria relative to each other (for a good example and description of weighted rubrics, see page 11 of An Introduction to Rubrics by Stevens & Levi, which is available as an online resource through the Brown library).

This resource from the University of North Carolina Wilmington offers examples of sample grading criteria organized by assignment and discipline: https://uncw.edu/cas/assessment/rubrics/samplerubrics.html ​

clarity, organization, grammar

context of & purpose for writing, content development, genre & disciplinary conventions, sources & evidence, control of syntax & mechanics

communication, critical thinking, content

thesis, structure, use of evidence, analysis, logic and argumentation, mechanics

Presentations (individual)

content, organization, graphics, English, elocution, eye contact

introduction, organization, context, evidence, analysis, presentation

organization, language, delivery, supporting material, central message

organization, subject knowledge, graphics, mechanics, eye contact, elocution

Presentation (group)

individual presentation skills, group presentation skills, group organization, individual organization, individual content

respect for other team, information, rebuttal, use of facts/statistics, organization, understanding of topic, presentation style

Leading a Class Discussion

preparation, content, discussion/debate methods, discussion questions, communication skills

Problem Solving

define problem, identify strategies, propose solutions/hypotheses, evaluate potential solutions, implement solution, evaluate outcomes

statement of problem, correctness of proof

understanding; strategies, reasoning, procedures; communication

analysis, interpretation, application

Lab Reports

organization, content, analysis, interpretation

abstract/summary; introduction; experimental procedure; results (data, figures, graphs, tables, etc.); discussion; conclusions; spelling, grammar & sentence structure; appearance & formatting

introduction, research, purpose/problem, procedure, data & results, conclusion, grammar & spelling, attractiveness, timeliness

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Included below are sample criteria for you to consider as you develop a grading rubric. As you develop your rubric, consider the essential knowledge and skills required for the assignment/assessment for which you are developing the rubric and develop and define the criteria accordingly.

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Print Version
What Purposes Do Grades Serve?

Barbara Walvoord and Virginia Anderson identify the multiple roles that grades serve:

as an evaluation of student work;

as a means of communicating to students, parents, graduate schools, professional schools, and future employers about a student's performance in college and potential for further success;

as a source of motivation to students for continued learning and improvement;

as a means of organizing a lesson, a unit, or a semester in that grades mark transitions in a course and bring closure to it.

Additionally, grading provides students with feedback on their own learning, clarifying for them what they understand, what they don't understand, and where they can improve. Grading also provides feedback to instructors on their students' learning, information that can inform future teaching decisions.

Why is grading often a challenge? Because grades are used as evaluations of student work, it's important that grades accurately reflect the quality of student work and that student work is graded fairly. Grading with accuracy and fairness can take a lot of time, which is often in short supply for college instructors. Students who aren't satisfied with their grades can sometimes protest their grades in ways that cause headaches for instructors. Also, some instructors find that their students' focus or even their own focus on assigning numbers to student work gets in the way of promoting actual learning.

Given all that grades do and represent, it's no surprise that they are a source of anxiety for students and that grading is often a stressful process for instructors.

Incorporating the strategies below will not eliminate the stress of grading for instructors, but it will decrease that stress and make the process of grading seem less arbitrary - to instructors and students alike.

Source: Walvoord, B. & V. Anderson (1998). Effective Grading: A Tool for Learning and Assessment . San Francisco : Jossey-Bass.

Developing Grading Criteria

Consider the different kinds of work you'll ask students to do for your course. This work might include: quizzes, examinations, lab reports, essays, class participation, and oral presentations.

For the work that's most significant to you and/or will carry the most weight, identify what's most important to you. Is it clarity? Creativity? Rigor? Thoroughness? Precision? Demonstration of knowledge? Critical inquiry?

Transform the characteristics you've identified into grading criteria for the work most significant to you, distinguishing excellent work (A-level) from very good (B-level), fair to good (C-level), poor (D-level), and unacceptable work.

Developing criteria may seem like a lot of work, but having clear criteria can

save time in the grading process

make that process more consistent and fair

communicate your expectations to students

help you to decide what and how to teach

help students understand how their work is graded

Sample criteria are available via the following link.

Making Grading More Efficient

Create assignments that have clear goals and criteria for assessment. The better students understand what you're asking them to do the more likely they'll do it!

Use different grading scales for different assignments. Grading scales include:

letter grades with pluses and minuses (for papers, essays, essay exams, etc.)

100-point numerical scale (for exams, certain types of projects, etc.)

check +, check, check- (for quizzes, homework, response papers, quick reports or presentations, etc.)

pass-fail or credit-no-credit (for preparatory work)

Limit your comments or notations to those your students can use for further learning or improvement.

Spend more time on guiding students in the process of doing work than on grading it.

For each significant assignment, establish a grading schedule and stick to it.

Light Grading - Bear in mind that not every piece of student work may need your full attention. Sometimes it's sufficient to grade student work on a simplified scale (minus / check / check-plus or even zero points / one point) to motivate them to engage in the work you want them to do. In particular, if you have students do some small assignment before class, you might not need to give them much feedback on that assignment if you're going to discuss it in class.

Multiple-Choice Questions - These are easy to grade but can be challenging to write. Look for common student misconceptions and misunderstandings you can use to construct answer choices for your multiple-choice questions, perhaps by looking for patterns in student responses to past open-ended questions. And while multiple-choice questions are great for assessing recall of factual information, they can also work well to assess conceptual understanding and applications.

Test Corrections - Giving students points back for test corrections motivates them to learn from their mistakes, which can be critical in a course in which the material on one test is important for understanding material later in the term. Moreover, test corrections can actually save time grading, since grading the test the first time requires less feedback to students and grading the corrections often goes quickly because the student responses are mostly correct.

Spreadsheets - Many instructors use spreadsheets (e.g. Excel) to keep track of student grades. A spreadsheet program can automate most or all of the calculations you might need to perform to compute student grades. A grading spreadsheet can also reveal informative patterns in student grades. To learn a few tips and tricks for using Excel as a gradebook take a look at this sample Excel gradebook.

Providing Meaningful Feedback to Students

Use your comments to teach rather than to justify your grade, focusing on what you'd most like students to address in future work.

Link your comments and feedback to the goals for an assignment.

Comment primarily on patterns - representative strengths and weaknesses.

Avoid over-commenting or "picking apart" students' work.

In your final comments, ask questions that will guide further inquiry by students rather than provide answers for them.

Maintaining Grading Consistency in Multi-sectioned Courses (for course heads)

Communicate your grading policies, standards, and criteria to teaching assistants, graders, and students in your course.

Discuss your expectations about all facets of grading (criteria, timeliness, consistency, grade disputes, etc) with your teaching assistants and graders.

Encourage teaching assistants and graders to share grading concerns and questions with you.

Use an appropriate group grading strategy:

have teaching assistants grade assignments for students not in their section or lab to curb favoritism (N.B. this strategy puts the emphasis on the evaluative, rather than the teaching, function of grading);

have each section of an exam graded by only one teaching assistant or grader to ensure consistency across the board;

have teaching assistants and graders grade student work at the same time in the same place so they can compare their grades on certain sections and arrive at consensus.

Minimizing Student Complaints about Grading

Include your grading policies, procedures, and standards in your syllabus.

Avoid modifying your policies, including those on late work, once you've communicated them to students.

Distribute your grading criteria to students at the beginning of the term and remind them of the relevant criteria when assigning and returning work.

Keep in-class discussion of grades to a minimum, focusing rather on course learning goals.

For a comprehensive look at grading, see the chapter "Grading Practices" from Barbara Gross Davis's Tools for Teaching.

This teaching guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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Print Version What Purposes Do Grades Serve? Developing Grading Criteria Making Grading More Efficient Providing Meaningful Feedback to Students Maintaining Grading Consistency in Multi-Sectioned Courses Minimizing Student Complaints about Grading What Purposes Do Grades Serve? Barbara Walvoord and Virginia Anderson identify the multiple roles that grades serve: as an evaluation of student work; as a means of...

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5. How would you provide feedback to students? 

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5. How would you provide feedback to students? 

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6. Should professors limit the number of A's earned in a course? Why or why not?

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6. Should professors limit the number of A's earned in a course? Why or why not?

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View of large group of students as they take an exam in a lecture hall at the University of ... [+]
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Ask anyone, but especially those in education, about grade inflation and you're likely to get strong responses. The idea that good grades are more common than they used to be because teachers are more lenient, more passive in their expectations will uncork some passion.

It's also a topic that's been difficult to assess objectively because it feels as though it could be a generational trap - an issue in which the older set just believes that things were harder when they did them. And no one wants to hear that, especially young people.

That does not mean that grade inflation - better grades for the same or even less rigorous work - is not a real thing, that it is not happening.

In fact, a working paper published this past April from researchers at BYU, Purdue, Stanford and the United States Military Academy at West Point, says that grade inflation is not just real, it's contributing to - perhaps even warping - college competition rates.

If that's true, the implications are well beyond settling a generational squabble. If high marks are easier to get than they used to be, and that's driving degree attainment, degrees awarded today are worth less - they reflect diluted attainment - than they used to be.

That could indeed be a big deal for the way we think about college completion and degree attainment as well as how we think about the underlying value agreement of going to, getting through college.

But first step first. In their paper, the researchers say that increased college graduation rates since the 1990s can be, in large part, explained by grade inflation. They say that between 1990 and 2010, graduation rates increased across all school types, save for the for-profit schools where they arguably got worse. When you take those for-profits out, college graduation rates went from 52% to 59.7% in those two decades.

The report authors note that most of the things that would otherwise influence graduation rates, are negative. Net cost, state support, stagnant academic preparation, increased enrollments, students spending less time studying and more time working should all reduce competition rates - yet, they went up.

The researchers also write that, by examining student-level data from nine large, public universities, liberal arts colleges and other sets of data, G.P.A. also increased over this same time - rather steadily since the 1990s. If the two are linked closely - that higher grades boosted college retentions and completions since the 1990s - it means that over the past 20 plus years, a significant number of college graduates would not have earned degrees if grading had stayed flat to the 1970s and 80s standards.

Significantly, the report makes that linkage, saying, "Increasing grades explain, in a statistical sense, a majority of the changes in graduation rates in our decomposition exercise."

Further, and perhaps most importantly, the paper's authors said that "increases in college GPAs cannot be explained by student demographics, preparation, and school factors." They also add that their data, "present evidence that the increase in grades is consistent with grade inflation." Adding elsewhere in the report, "We find evidence that the increase in grades is due to grade inflation," and, "These facts combined with trends in student study time and employment suggest that standards for degree receipt have changed due to grade inflation."

As with all such research, replication and verification will be important - this is still a working paper. Even so, it's difficult to look away from a data and evidence-filed report which says that degree standards have changed - that is to say, degraded - because of grade inflation.

The report doesn't get deep into why grade inflation may be happening, though they buzz past a few factors that incentivize it. Those include the reality that professors who give better grades or grade more permissively get better reviews. And reviews matter, especially if you're an adjunct or contract instructor whose contract is up for regular review. Likewise, courses and departments that are seen as easy - the easy As - see their enrollments and revenues grow.

In the arena of higher education, this report probably won't change much, as the factors that likely drive grade inflation and downstream inflated completion rates are only increasing. Schools have to increase their revenues, which is to say enrollments. And they have be sure a credible number of those enrollees graduate. That puts pressure on expensive intervention and support programs. But it also puts pressure on grades - and not in a good way.

Outside of higher education, this report may win you bet or help you win an argument. Some pretty credible people, armed with pretty credible evidence say grade inflation - getting better grades for the same work or less - is real.

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Ask anyone, but especially those in education, about grade inflation and you're likely to get strong responses. The idea that good grades are more common than they used to be because teachers are more lenient, more passive in their expectations will uncork some passion.

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What questions do you have about grading?

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What questions do you have about grading?

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Add comments...

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2. What have been your experiences giving grades?

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2. What have been your experiences giving grades?

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What have been your experiences with receiving grades?

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What have been your experiences with receiving grades?