Grading W3P1 Research

Research for W3P1 showed big differences in how attentively students read the tasks and how they visit Moodle (even after the reviews). I gave an extra day for the students to read the reviews and make some corrections in order to improve the grade. Some students that were in REAL need to do the corrections ignored this opportunity.
In W3P1 I stressed the importance of reading the tasks in order to satisfy the requirements. Then the description of grading clearly stated the deductions to be done for less than 3 references and for the lack of bolding and proper credits to the external source of the information (even if rephrased). Still a number of students didn't do the bolding or didn't correct this problem after reviews mentioned it. In such cases if the posts were also done on a below average level - the grade was zero. In some cases I added bonus points for the research work that was above average.

An experiment with hidden grading showed differences in the level of critical analysis. The grades assigned by the students this week were significantly lower than when they were shown to the authors.

I also want to remind you that the grading is done on the curve and although the max points for the research are 9 - nobody got it. It means that more important was to get a grade above normal work showing an extra effort. Since nobody had highest points for the task - 6 or 7 points showed advanced efforts and quality moving students up the curve.

For future research - please pay attention to the requirements (that basically will be the same) and do not cut on time of reviewing your work once again to make sure that all referencing is done properly with necessary bolding of the used external material. The focus/conclusion should be clearly stated and REALLY serve the goal of narrowing this small research without covering generalities from wikipedia.

Grading was quite average (average of 4 points) with nobody doing really adequate reviewing. But the proper spreadsheet work made the points for grading somewhat higher than would have been otherwise.