Grading Guidelines Accommodate Remote Learning
By: Leela Gandhi, Kaylee Chen, Michael Yang
Instructors have altered their means of assessment, as well as their grading guidelines, after the Academy’s second term online. The revised guidelines aim to take into account the unique ways in which the virtual term has affected students. Time-zone accommodations also prioritized counselor and advisory meetings.
Dean of Academic Affairs Laura Marshall said, “it is not possible for the Academy to ‘ensure’ that everyone has an equitable learning experience due to circumstances that are out of the school's control, but we certainly recognize that students are learning in very different environments from one another.”
Senior Joe Laufer found new difficulty in staying organized. “A lot of assignments are asynchronous and so there is more planning that has to be done on my part. On top of that, since we are home, for me at least there are more distractions from work,” Laufer said. He also mentioned that his teachers have been more lenient with deadlines “because of the tumult of home life.”
As a working student, lower Val Whitten has learned to simultaneously handle a job and schoolwork. Although she noted that assignments can “stack up,” Whitten doesn’t “feel like having a job affects [assignments] too much. If teachers want to meet during my shift times, it makes it difficult, but I always finish my work before my shifts.”
Latin Instructor Paul Langford placed more weight on quizzes and homework grades than previous terms. “In part, it’s to try to give students some more structure that they’re keeping up from day to day,” Langford said. “I think also it’s to try to balance out not having as many tests that you have to take in Canvas, which I think a lot of people find pretty cumbersome to do.”
Math Instructor Gwynneth Coogan opted out of testing altogether. “One downside for me [in testing] is that I don't have a lot of wiggle room to really challenge the students because I have to worry that not being able to answer a question on a test might hurt their grade too much,” Coogan said. Coogan currently assesses students with weekly ten-point quizzes, Canvas discussions and hand-ins.
The lack of labs and field trips posed the greatest challenge for Science Instructor Albert Leger. He noted, however, that asynchronous testing was a favorable change. “We like the fact that the assessment is on your own time,” he said.
Some students appreciated the convenience of asynchronous testing. “I find take-home tests pretty manageable, and enjoy the ability to control when I do them,” prep Tallis Guthrie said. “In-class tests are more difficult because of the limited time and the fact that they’re over Zoom. Because it’s online, you have to worry about internet connection and computer issues and what if your work is deleted before you save it?”
In the face of all of these challenges, Coogan has changed her perspective. “The disruption to what we normally do has made us look for other ways to solve this problem of assessing learning, and I think that the basis for doing that is wanting to create an equitable environment for everybody.”