Grading Criteria

I have been a Teaching Assistant for one year now, and I have performed several techniques for grading. The first class that I taught was an introductory class in Computer Science (CS 2401). For this class, I was responsible for grading quizzes and laboratory assignments. The way I graded the quizzes was by giving each problem (or question) a maximum number of possible points. That is, I weighted the quizzes in such a way that each question worth more than other questions based on the difficulty.

For the lab assignments, it was a little more difficult for me to grade them. First, I would run the programs, then I would check the source code, and finally I would decide the number of points I would give to each assignment. For this part, I had a grading criteria handout.

The first time I started to grade, I felt consumed by the huge amount of assignments I had to grade. I was very concerned with the time. It took me a lot of time to grade everything during my first two weeks.

To be fair, I graded both the assignments and quizzes based on a grading criteria provided by the instructor. Also, if the students were doing similar mistakes, I would reduce the same amount of points. Or, if some students turned in a clean and modular code (besides running correctly) I would give them more points.
Since this was not a writing class, the only thing they had to write was Java code. So, regarding this aspect, they struggled at first, but at the end, almost everyone succeeded in writing runnable Java code.

I helped them to write better Java code by explaining them the big picture first, and then moving towards the algorithms, and finally to the source code.

I did pretty much the same thing when I taught a course this past summer (2009).

Blog #2 - Learning Styles

For this assignment, Blog #2 (well Blog #5 in reality) I learned a lot about myself. I realized that I am not only a visual person, but also a person who likes to learn about the most minimal details. For example, I completed the VARKS questionnaire and the learning styles questionnaires from ncsu.edu, and I realized a lot of facts about me.

I know myself pretty well, but I had never thought about the way I think and the way I do things in detail. Both questionnaires provided me identical results. For the VARKS questionnaire, I obtained similar result for visual, aural, read and write, and kinesthetic aspects. Yes, I tend to be visual most of the time, but I also want a full and detailed description about the general problem. I want to know how this fits in the big picture with explanations and details.

Overall, if my classmates and or professors explain a problem to me, I prefer to obtain the big picture first, and then I want full details about the problem. In my case, I prefer data flow diagrams, class diagrams, or state diagrams to understand the big picture. Then, we can discuss design phases, algorithms, implementations, and so on and so forth. Further, I really like the idea of asking and answering questions with my mentor and classmates. I think I learn a lot more this way.

In conclusion, I consider myself both visual and detailed for all problems. If I do not understand anything via diagrams, I always want a detailed description of the problem and how this problem fits a general solution. If possible, I would like both learning styles (e.g. visual and words) when discussing problems with anyone.