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M. Hadley, mary.hadley@mnsu.edu1,
Jeffrey R. Pribyl, jeffrey.pribyl@mnsu.edu1, and John A.
Kaliski, john.kaliski@mnsu.edu2. (1) Department of
Chemistry and Geology, Minnesota State University, Mankato, 242
Trafton Science North, Mankato, MN 56001, (2) Department of
Management, Minnesota State University, Mankato, 150 Morris Hall,
Mankato, MN 56001
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| Providing students accurate, consistent and
meaningful communication about their performance on laboratory reports
can help them better understand the material. Providing feedback in a
timely manner also allows students to make adjustments to their studying
and provides a solid base upon which to build new material, and can
improve student satisfaction with the learning process. Unfortunately,
faculty members often find it difficult to provide students with timely,
consistent and meaningful feedback when class sizes are large or when
there are multiple assignments in a class. To address these
difficulties, an automated, rubric-based system know as FastGrade was
developed. This study tests the effectiveness and satisfaction resulting
from automating the rubric process. Several different laboratory
assignments from a beginning level chemistry course were graded using
both FastGrade and the traditional, hand graded methods. When the
answers to questions are more than just correct or incorrect, grading
using FastGrade was statistically significantly faster than the hand
graded method. Results from a survey of students about their preference
of grading method will also be discussed. |