As a future educator, there are a lot of things I am learning that are important in the teaching world that I never really thought about before. One of them is grading, and relating to that, homework and assignments. A teacher's job and goal is to help their students. Help them learn and achieve their goals in the class. The way we assess their progress is through grades. So a big question is, what type of homework should teachers give so that the grades reflect student progress?
When I was considering this question, I thought back to assignments I had in high school. Some teachers would load us up with homework that wasn't very meaningful, but it was worth a large part of our grade. We did whatever we had to do to get it finished. This means our grades probably didn't reflect how well we learned the material. But then I thought of the stimulating research projects I did in an AP English class and writing the research paper for that. The paper was worth a lot of our grade, but I loved writing the paper and I learned so much from it. This was a perfect example of an assignment that returns an accurately reflective grade.
As I started college, many of the assignments were more along those lines. The assignments required us to demonstrate what we learned and sometimes give our own unique understandings on the subject as well. For example, in a Calculus I class, our professor put us in groups to solve a few questions. This way, we learned from the different perspectives of our group members as well as practiced the skills we needed.
Of course, teachers can't always give in depth assignments like this to constantly stimulate our minds so much. It would be hard on students and would create a lot more time needed to grade the assignments for teachers. But what I learned from my experience and from classes I have taken, short answer questions are almost like the sweet-spot of an assignment. It is harder to cheat on short answer questions that require an opinion of a student.They don't require such in depth thinking all the time, but they are a more accurate way to gauge how well a student has learned something in a quick three to five sentences.
Another huge factor that teachers must consider today is technology. Should they give assignments online or not? This decision has big implications. If they don't give assignments online through a program like WebAssign, they will have to grade the assignments themselves, which is always something to consider. However, there is always the risk that if they give an online assignment, the students will cheat to get it done instead of just doing it themselves. For myself, I know that I will do online homework, but if I am running low on time, I will look up the answers and just do the problems later when I have more time to make sure I understand them. I think if students did that, it might be fine. However, there is now way for teachers to guarantee that their students will do that, which leads back to the question of an accurately reflective grade.
In the end, I think it must be left up to the teacher's discretion. They know their students best. They should be able to assess what their class would be capable of handling, the best way of assessing them, and helping them practice their skills. Hopefully, with the knowledge from a relationship with their students, teachers would be able to give relevant assignments. This way, teachers can grade accurately and give their students meaningful homework that they may be more willing to do.
Kaia Erickson
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