READ | TEACHING @ | EVALUATING STUDENT LEARNING
designing | grading | learningAssessing writing
The two most common ways of evaluating student writing are analytic and holistic scoring. The analytic approach to grading considers writing to be made up of various features, such as creativity, grammar, succinct expression of concepts, and punctuation, each of which is to be scored separately. An analytic writing score is made up of a sum of the separate scores and is often a weighted sum developed after multiplying each score by numbers representing the relative importance of the features the instructor wishes to emphasize. A recent development of this approach is called primary trait analysis. This method is similar to other types of analytic evaluation in that it scores the important traits of the work separately, but it then aggregates the data to assess the learning of the entire group as well as each individual student.
Holistic scores are arrived at by comparing individual student essays to model essays or descriptive rubrics representing good, fair, and poor responses to the assignment.
A third variation is a type of global scoring, which assumes that writing is the sum of various features, but assigns the final score without the use of a scale. This method, which is most frequently used in casual approaches to grading writing, tends to result in less precise evaluation and less concrete feedback for the student.
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