Calibration
What is Calibration and why do it?
Grading calibration is a process that helps bring awareness to grading consistency. This ensures alignment with a scoring rubric, as well as being confident that learning outcomes are being met. Overall, the calibration process increases the reliability of the assessment data. Calibration helps instructors to better interpret the rubric and work together to discuss the discrepancies and rationales within the scoring. While using a rubric for grading can help keep up some grading consistency, rubrics still have areas that are open to interpretation. Through the calibration process, instructors become more familiar with the grading expectations and can focus on how the rubric applies to different examples of work. This reflective practice helps increase accuracy, reliability, and consistency.
There are two types of calibration activities we do at WU:
i.College/program-wide calibration
ii.Calibration checks
College/Program-wide calibration
In this college/program-wide calibration activity, you are asked to complete the following 3 steps (using GAP and Zoom):
Familiarize yourself with the rubric and its descriptors – you may want to take 3-4 minutes to review it to increase your awareness of the upcoming calibration activity.
Read a sample student assignment and use the rubric to grade it.
Attend our live follow-up session. This session will go over the results of the calibration activity, allow for some discussion on individual grading rationales, and clear up any inconsistencies or discrepancies. Some of the debriefing topics for your consideration are:
a. Debrief: Discuss the following questions after the calibration:
i.What did we notice about scoring student work and using the rubric?
ii.What would be the next steps for instructing this student?
iii.What revisions should be made to the task and instructions?
iv.What are the implications for our instructional practice?
b. We will have a zoom link with the date and time of the follow-up session. It will last about 20 minutes and will be recorded if you are unable to attend. Please note- if you are unable to attend, please watch the recording and write a summary including your own grading rationales.
Calibration Checks
In this service, you can request a colleague to grade student assignments in your course. After you each grade the assignments using the course rubric, you will meet (in person or via Zoom). This is a useful tool for new faculty who would like to be in line with the university’s expectations. It is also helpful for experienced faculty who would like to do periodic checks or maintain a united grading front.
You will discuss the following points in your 15-minute live session:
i. What did we notice about scoring student work and using the rubric?
ii. How similar were your results? What areas differed? Why?
iii. What are the implications for our instructional practice?
Deans and Program Chairs can request calibration services for programs. Faculty may request calibration checks.