The Western Conference on Science Education

Simplifying the grading of written assignments in a large, introductory biochemistry course using Crowdmark

FNB 2210

Developing the ability of science students to write is challenging, partly because grading written work and providing effective feedback is time-consuming. However, the ability to communicate effectively in writing is essential to a university science student’s education. To give our students practice writing at an early stage in our program, we introduced a written assignment into our introductory biochemistry course, which typically has an enrolment of about 1200 students. Expectations for the assignment were communicated through carefully constructed instructions and a simple but detailed rubric. Students uploaded their assignments to the software Crowdmark, which allows instructors to assign TAs to specific submissions, follow their progress, and track time spent by TAs on marking. TAs generated their own comment bank, and assigned grades using instructor-created comments carrying point values such that grades on each assignment were automatically summed. Marks and feedback were returned to students electronically. In this session we will explain how the assignment was designed to develop students’ writing ability and show how Crowdmark was used for grading. The benefits of an online tool for grading many written assignments included easy distribution of assignments to TAs, automatic summing and recording of student marks, and rapid entry of legible feedback.