Clear Expectations and Criteria for Grading

Clear communication about expectations and grading criteria can help guide students’ learning by preventing confusion about expectations or frustration about their grades. Grading criteria can also help instructors and teaching assistants grade more efficiently, as assessing and providing feedback takes less time when more students understand the expectations and criteria for the assessment.

Key Features:

  • Clear description of the process for determining grades 
  • Detailed criteria, rubrics, or annotated examples provided for students

MIT Examples:

Determination of Final Course Grades. The following is the process used to determine the final course grades at the end of the semester. First, the weighted scores on the midterm exams and final are used to determine the initial letter grade borders for the semester.

  • At a final 5.12 Staff Meeting, Professor Danheiser and the Teaching Staff review all students somewhat above and below each initial letter grade border and discuss whether the course letter grade assigned to that student will be for above or below that border. Typically the grades of approximately one-third of the class are reviewed in this fashion. The determination is based on the following considerations:
  • Participation and performance in recitation as reported by the officially assigned TA.
  • Attendance in lecture as given by percent of classes in which the student answered clicker questions.
  • Any special circumstances as reported by the officially assigned TA (e.g., one poor midterm grade was due to the student having been ill during part of that unit or having had multiple exams within a day of a midterm exam)

  • The preliminary report will be evaluated according to a grading rubric and assigned a letter grade. Students are provided with two examples of preliminary reports from students in a previous iteration of the course.
  • The oral presentation will receive a grade of check, check+, or check-. A check+ will move your preliminary report grade up one letter, a check- will move it down one letter, and a check will not change it. (E.g., if you receive a B on the preliminary report, and a check+ on the presentation, your “preliminary report + presentation” grade is an A.) 
  • For the final design report, students are provided with a detailed handout that outlines characteristics of a good evaluation as well as the rubric that will be used to assign a letter grade. 
  • You can see all of the resources for the design project (including an FAQ and list of specifications) here.

A member of the staff should be present for the scrum meeting. Each session, a different student in the team is responsible to lead the meeting.

*This is a summary of resources in the syllabus rather than a direct excerpt from the syllabus.

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If you have any questions or want to talk through your syllabus, please contact Teaching + Learning Lab, GradSupport (for graduate courses), or S3 (for undergraduate courses). If you want to go deeper, please visit the TLL’s Syllabus Checklist to Support Student Belonging & Achievement, a comprehensive, evidence-based syllabus checklist which informed this resource.

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