On Inoue

My initial thought about student involvement in assessment, as presented by Inoue, is that it has the potential to create a kind of chaos in the classroom. On the one hand, it’s a great idea to allow students to participate in creating a grading rubric, to determine values both on an individual and group/community level. However, what I find troubling about this idea is that’s a bit too subjective. Personally, and I know I’m not alone, I don’t like that most students are grade motivated. And yes, educational institutions are setting up students to replace their desire for learning, with a desire to meet work specifications only up to the point of a good grade. Meaning, not many students find themselves in the position to further engage with material, practices, etc. beyond what is absolutely required of them to earn their desired grade.

Perhaps having a teacher led/created assessment is not completely ideal, however, it does seem necessary, simply because some students, without grades, have no desire to engage with text, discussions, and so forth. That being said, I’m always hoping to find ways to engage all my students, despite the rather stringent lines of a grading rubric. For instance, I require my students to select a few of my comments from their graded papers, and in a written response, discuss their understanding, confusion, disagreement etc. of those comments. Depending on the class, I also allow students (on only one written assignment), to read over my comments, respond to them directly on the draft, and then assign themselves the grade they believe the deserve. Additionally, they must justify/defend their grade. Obviously, I don’t expect students to actually assign themselves a fair grade—let’s face it, they always grade high—however, by engaging with the comments in this fashion, I can only hope that they will fully engage with their own text and are motivated to improve upon it.