To address concerns that college students do not develop adequate oral communication skills, guidelines are offered to faculty for designing oral presentation assignments within their courses, developing grading criteria, guiding students in their preparation for speaking, and addressing some of the unique challenges of this process, which include…

Offers a framework for approaching evaluation of practical experience, specifically in the field of elementary school teacher education, arguing that such evaluation should be longitudinal, contextualized, and collaborative. Portfolio development is found to be a powerful tool in this process, and both a rubric and criteria for assessing…

Staff at a Sandy Hook, Connecticut high school agreed that content standards are fixed learning goals specifying what a student should know and accomplish; performance standards describe student work products (criteria) to meet these goals. Forthright expectations increased students' accountability for quality work, improved grading objectivity,…

Describes the use in business-communication classes of Team Learning, an approach to teaching in which students spend approximately 80% of their in-class time working in permanent, heterogeneous teams, becoming active and responsible participants in the learning process. Describes the instructional activity sequence, getting started, forming the…

Discusses the practice of grade repetition in French schools, indicating that repetition is not beneficial to the pupil concerned. Notes that countries that have abandoned grade repetition have not suffered a lowering of educational standards, nor have they incurred extra costs, and describes ways to achieve this end. Contains 11 references. (EMH)

Presents suggestions for classroom-assessment courses regarding (1) communicating assessment results by assigning grades; (2) communicating assessment results in other ways; and (3) communicating the results of standardized testing. Discusses course content in the context of the "Standards for Teacher Competence in the Assessment of…

A synthesis of 20 studies that investigated the perceptions of 4,659 elementary and secondary students (760 with disabilities) of instructional procedures in inclusive classrooms found that students with high-incidence disabilities and their typical peers want to have the same activities, books, homework, grading criteria, and grouping practices…

College faculty have a responsibility to help students unveil some of the mystery of professional judgment in student assessment, both to help explain instructional practices and to create a model for students' use when they become professional evaluators. Teachers can use a variety of methods to ensure that subjectivity in assessment is not…

Explains that one way to overcome free riding (when some members of a group shirk their responsibilities, leaving others to complete the work) is the "Knickrehm Method", in which the professor grades the group project and students can gain or lose points based upon peer evaluations. Describes two trials of the Knickrehm Method. (CMK)

Discusses the Maryland School Performance Assessment (MSPAP), addressing the benefits of MSPAP and the teachers' call for assistance. Focuses on the use of the Internet to (1) disseminate information about assessment to parents and students and (2) offer professional development for teachers on instructional and assessment strategies. (CMK)

Reports on a recent vote of the faculty senate at the University of California at Santa Cruz to institute mandatory letter grades instead of continuing its innovative narrative evaluation system. Reasons include effects on student recruitment, graduate school admissions, and employer considerations. Notes strong opposition from students and…

Reviews and evaluates compensatory and conjunctive standard-setting strategies, presenting and discussing the rationales for each approach. Results of a comparison of the two approaches for a state high school certification writing test provide insight into the problem of choosing either strategy. (SLD)

In pedagogical literature, asynchronous, computer-mediated courses have been promoted as an interactive mode of course delivery. However, few studies have evaluated the effectiveness of different teaching strategies in this medium. In this paper, I describe the development of my asynchronous course and outline the fundamental dilemmas in…

More than eleven hundred university students were surveyed to determine attitudes toward learning and accountability. Apathy, absenteeism, and grade inflation emerged as contributing to the lack of student accountability. This article suggests institutional changes to reanimate college classrooms: explicit expectations; smaller, engaged classes;…

We compared grades and course evaluations in an undergraduate social psychology course taught using 3 different instructional formats: traditional, traditional with a course guide, and multimedia with a course guide. Students' grades (N=937) and course evaluations of grading procedures (N=547) were higher when a course guide was available. The…