Outcome Evaluation Clobbering

In this chapter:

Intent
Problem
Solution
Applicability
How to Implement
See Also
Source
References
Community Discussion

Intent

Instead of allowing resubmission of work, which may have logistical difficulties, allow students grades in subsequent assessments to override those from previous attempts at demonstrating the same skills or aptitudes.

Problem

Students may struggle to demonstrate their mastery of a skill on an attempt, but subsequently, through additional work or formative assessment, they may improve in their abilities. Often this can be addressed by allowing re-submission and re-assessment of work, but in many contexts, the grading burden or timing issues may make that impossible.

Solution

If a learning outcome is demonstrable in a later opportunity in the course, allow the evaluation from that later opportunity to supercede or “clobber” the earlier evaluation. For example, if a particular skill can be demonstrated in assignment n, and also in assignment n + 1, allow the evaluation from assignment n + 1 to replace that from assignment n if it improves the students overall evaluation.

Applicability

This play can be done in any context where the evaluation of learning outcomes is preformed multiple times throughout the course. Either in similar formats (e.g., subsequent tests or assignments) or different formats (e.g., a quiz question being over-written by an exam question)

How to Implement

If an evaluation applies to a specific learning outcome, and that outcome has already been evaluated at an earlier stage in the course, the later evaluation can supercede the earlier. A concrete example: if a student’s ability to write a while loop is evaluated on assignments 1, 3 and 5, any student who gets a better result on assignment 3’s evaluation of while loops (under any grading rubric) can have that evaluation replace the while loop component of assignment 1. For assignment 5, the evaluation could be applied to assignment 3 or both 1 and 3.

Variations:

This could be implemented within assessment type (e.g., assignment component grades replacing earlier assignment components, final exam question grades replacing midterm grades for similar questions), or across components (e.g., exam grades for a skill replacing quiz, assignment, and midterm evaluations on that same skill).

Source

Source: João Paulo Barros. 2010. Assessment and grading for CS1: towards a complete toolbox of criteria and techniques. In Proceedings of the 10th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research (Koli Calling ‘10). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 106–111. https://doi.org/10.1145/1930464.1930483

Described by: Brian Harrington

References

_probably a common one

Community Discussion

Community members are free to comment on, ask questions about, share experiences, or otherwise contribute to knowledge about this play by posting comments below. See Chapter 33. Join Our Discussions for details.

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