IV. Evaluating Students' Work

Papers and Class Projects

Conceptualizing and Assigning Papers and Projects

Lisa Reilly's Medieval Architecture students working together to determine cathedral proportions.

Conceptualizing papers or projects is similar to conceptualizing exams: you must know what you wish to accomplish. Will a review be sufficient, or are you expecting a logical argument? Are you flexible regarding style, or should students follow a format specific to your discipline? Does the complexity of the topic fit your students' level and the assigned page limit? How you construct and phrase the assignment will influence what students submit. In the suggestions below, we are assuming that you assign papers and projects because you know that working on them helps students clarify and refine their thoughts about a subject (see also Deen, 1995, and D'Errico and Griffin, 2001):

• Phrase the assignment to gain what you want. Words like "review," "describe," "survey" and "summarize" prompt most students to write reports rather than analytical essays. Words like "analyze," "critique," "judge" and "explain" more often produce the kind of expository prose you probably want.
  
  
• Hand out assignments in writing so that students can review the assignment as they work on it. Moreover, writing tutors whom your students may consult need to see your actual assignment rather than work from students' recollections.
  
  
• Make sure your students understand the conventions and expectations of your discipline. A student studying a new subject will find a lab report, a psychological case study, or a literary analysis equally alien. Provide examples of your academic genre, and review basic genre requirements. Students are particularly baffled when asked to write a "book review;" you may have in mind The New York Review of Books, but their experience probably extends only to high school book reports. If your discipline is second nature to you and it's tough to explain, take your written instructions and a sample paper to the Writing Center; as outsiders, they can tell whether you are explicitly requesting what you expect.
  
  
• Define the audience for each paper. Is it you? Other students? An academic journal readership? This information helps students know how much quoted material to include and review, as well as the appropriate tone.
  
  
• Eliminate booby traps from the assignment. For example, a "compare and contrast" assignment may well produce thesis-free essays that either spend half the pages on each topic or simply list points of similarity and difference. Likewise, the series of questions you offer to stimulate students' thinking may lead them to produce an unfocused essay that merely answers each question in turn.
  
  
• Help students get started. You might ask for a thesis statement about two weeks before a paper is due, together with notes about proposed supporting evidence and a list of sources in bibliographic form. If you want the student to acknowledge and respond to opposing arguments in the paper, you could also ask for a paragraph describing alternate points of view. Then you can help students as necessary before they submit the entire paper.
  
  
• Assign more, shorter papers or projects to permit more frequent feedback and improvement of students' work. If possible, assign a short (one- to three-page) essay early in the semester. Not only will you immediately identify students likely to have trouble, but you can also extract several thesis paragraphs you can use to explain revision techniques.
  
  
• When possible, give students opportunities and motives for revision. Incorporate a short essay into a longer final project, and students have a stake in improving their writing. For best results, require a preliminary draft of papers and projects prior to the final due date; read them quickly, note successes, pinpoint confusions, and suggest improvements. Don't go into too much detail; leave the rewriting to the student. Yes, you will have some extra reading early on but usually noticeably better final drafts. You also avoid receiving a paper written the night before the due date.
  
  
• Finally, if your class attracts first- or second-year students or non-majors, consider requiring each student to submit a thesis statement in advance; then, if possible, have conferences with students in trouble. Otherwise, discussing strengths and weaknesses of thesis statements as a class can enlighten several students at once. For an effective, detailed process to help students create and complete a long-term project, consider the "Paper or Project Prospectus" (Angelo and Cross, 1993, pp. 248-53).

It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly a scream pierced the air. . . . Good writing takes enormous concentration.

—Charles Schulz, Peanuts, 1988

Grading Papers and Projects

Obviously, you must grade papers and projects according to the criteria you announce, so be sure you are happy with your advertised standards. Refer to the techniques described in the section on grading essay exams, but demand a much higher quality of writing and reasoning for papers and projects that students have worked on over a period of time. Even when content is your main objective, comment on students' writing, organization, logic, and style; attribute part of the grade to these aspects of communication. When commenting, remember that students who write poorly may well not have learned yet how to do better. You may need to show that you cannot find a thesis statement or show why a paper is poorly organized. Poor writers might not know how to fix an "awkward" sentence; you need to explain what is wrong and, perhaps, how to fix it. To save time and offer as much help as possible, consider creating a checklist with adequately detailed examples of errors and corrections that you can attach to problematic papers. Use this to supplement, not substitute for, individualized comments. (See also "Interacting with Students.")