The goal of this article is raising awareness of several issues recently brought to the authors' attention. Among them are concerns that rubrics are a pervasive assessment tool in current educational settings. The authors posit how the pervasive use of rubrics broaches concerns about teachers' grading practices with rubrics and students'…

The variables of class attendance and the institution-wide Early Alert Grading System were employed to predict academic success at the end of the semester. Classroom attendance was found to be statistically and significantly related to final average and accounted for 14-16% of the variance in academic performance. Class attendance was found to…

Despite the vast array of educational practices that are present in today's society, grading is one practice that has established a historical foundation and one that will continue to be an important aspect to the profession of education. This small scale study determined that both undergraduate and graduate learners, in one college instructor's…

Few aspects of school are as controversial as the practice of grading, for grades affect students' educational opportunities. The purpose of this study was to identify the practices Catholic high-school teachers employed in determining students' grades. The study investigated the extent to which academic achievement comprised the grades teachers…

This forum provided an overview of competency-based pathways to education and described programs that have successfully utilized these pathways to move all students to success in high school and beyond. Speakers highlighted how innovative learning environments that base student advancement upon mastery of measurable learning objectives have been…

Despite the many changes in education over the past century, grading and reporting practices have essentially remained the same. In part, this is because few teacher preparation programs offer any guidance on sound grading practices. As a result, most current grading practices are grounded in tradition, rather than research on best practice. In an…

This article investigates assessor decision making when using and applying a marking guide for a note-taking task in a specific purpose English language listening test. In contexts where note-taking items are used, a marking guide is intended to stipulate what kind of response should be accepted as evidence of the ability under test. However,…

This purpose of this pre-post, quasi-experimental evaluation was to explore the impact of grading rubric use on student academic performance. Cross-sectional data were derived from 80 undergraduates enrolled in an elective course at a research university during spring and fall 2009. The control group (n = 41), who completed the course's Assignment…

"A Tale of Four Electrons" is a creative writing assignment used with 10th-grade Honors Chemistry students. The project helps students consolidate their learning about bonding--an important unifying theme in chemistry--and answers questions such as (1) How are ionic, metallic, and covalent bonds related? (2) How do variations in electron…

This paper proposes a new model for team building, which enables teachers to build coherent teams rapidly and fairly for the term projects of software engineering courses. Moreover, the model can also be used to build teams for any type of project, if the team member candidates are students, or if they are inexperienced on a certain subject. The…

This issue of "Assessment Update" presents the following articles: (1) SLO-Based Grading Makes Assessment an Integral Part of Teaching (Nagy N. Bengiamin and Christina Leimer); (2) Editor's Notes: Assessing Assessment's ROI (Trudy W. Banta); (3) Assessment Plans: A Tool for Sanity (Shannon M. Sexton); and (4) Lessons from…

Although course management systems (CMSs) were originally designed for teachers to manage their teaching, little interest has been directed at students' learning. Moodle is usually regarded as a CMS. However, how to make full use of its powerful features and design them into learning tools has rarely been investigated. This study investigates two…

Blogging has been recommended as a suitable tool for learning during internship due to its associated usefulness in collaborative learning, reflection, communication, and social support. In this study, blogging was incorporated into the internship activities of two discipline-specific groups of interns: information management (n = 53) and nursing…

Superintendents and principals can have a positive and decisive impact on student achievement and higher graduation rates. Their essential leadership can illuminate the path to excellence for faculty and students. In upgrading curriculum and instruction, school leaders need to keep abreast of practices proven effective in other districts and…

This article is an effort to add to computer-assisted language learning by extending a study on an essay critiquing system (ECS) feedback to secondary school language learners' writing. The study compared two groups of participants' performance, namely the treatment group which received both the system feedback and teacher feedback (i.e., blended…