Information on Performance Assessments at D-GESS

Students should understand how their grades are formed. In conformity with existing ETH regulations¹, performance assessments² must be transparent and based on the requirements announced at the outset of a course.

1. General Communication

• Provide clear, written information at the beginning of the semester outlining:
  • Students' requirements for passing or receiving a grade.
  • The type of evaluation for each assessment (e.g. pass/fail or numerical grade).
  • Rule of thumb expectations for student time investment for each assessment, respecting the general rule of 25-30 hours per 1 ECTS (including classroom time). In communicating these expectations, recall that there are students with different levels of prior knowledge and competencies, especially in Science in Perspective courses.
  • The evaluation timeline (when each assessment is to be submitted and when it will be graded).
• Specify contact points (e.g. teachers, teaching assistants) and contact channels (e.g. email, office hours) for administrative and academic queries.

2. Evaluation Criteria

• We recommend that you clearly define the learning goals for each element or unit of the course, specifying what students should achieve and demonstrate in graded assessment. Then create assessments or examinations that test the achievement of these goals.
• We recommend that you ensure clear and concrete task descriptions to enable a transparent and equitable evaluation process.
• We recommend transparent grading rubrics to outline the evaluation criteria and contributions of each criterion to the grade of each graded assessment. Clear grading rubrics can improve fairness and reduce bias. Grading rubric examples are provided in Appendix 2.

3. Timely and Comprehensive Grading

• Ensure the timely communication of grades for graded assessments, allowing students to use feedback to improve their performance in subsequent assessments and in their future studies. Rules of thumb for grading times are provided in Appendix 3.
• Final grades should be submitted within one month of the final exam or end of the semester. If this is not possible, inform students of the grading schedule and, if possible, offer expedited grading to students who need it sooner (e.g. to officially complete their studies and apply for jobs).
• Every assessment that contributes to the final grade needs to be graded separately and the grade needs to be communicated to the student. If an assessment is composed of several stages graded as a whole, make sure to provide feedback early enough to be incorporated into the next stage.

4. Viewing of performance assessment records

• Students have the right to view the records of their performance assessments, regardless of the examination format (e.g. multiple choice tests, oral exams, essays).³
• Examiners may arrange a time for the whole group of students to attend the exam review. If examiners do not offer such a viewing for all students, students are entitled to view the documents individually.
  • On this occasion, students can expect to receive written or oral answers to questions regarding corrections and awarding of points.
  • Depending on the format of the examination, these viewings must not only include the tasks and the students' solutions, but also the corrections, information on the number of possible points per task, the grading scale and – if available – the sample solution.

   

  _{1 - ETH Directive Download Viewing and transfer of performance assessment records (PDF, 86 KB) [German, English]; external page Leistungskontrollverordnung ETH Zürich [German, French, Italian]; ETH Download Guidelines on Grading (PDF, 424 KB) [German, English]
  2 - “Assessment” covers both semester performances (“Semesterleistungen”) and examinations
  3 - ETH Directive Download Viewing and transfer of performance assessment records (PDF, 86 KB) [German, English]}

Faculty play a vital role in fostering student learning and development through timely and constructive feedback.

5. Providing Feedback

• Provide constructive, task-specific feedback with the goal of having students reflect on their strengths and weaknesses and be able to perform even better in the future. Refer to Appendix 4 for detailed guidance on providing effective feedback, as well as examples of individual and collective good feedback formats.
• The feedback for each assessment should reflect the expected time investment – one or two general feedback sentences alone are not adequate for a task that requires many hours to complete.
• In addition to sufficiently detailed performance feedback and the right to view performance assessment records, we recommend that teachers communicate their willingness to clarify the feedback in person (respecting teachers’ time constraints). Please provide contact points and channels for such discussions. Feedback discussions are not an invitation for students to negotiate grades, but only to clarify the feedback. Note that clear written or classroom feedback can reduce the demand for individual feedback meetings.
   

According to ETH guidelines, written examinations should be graded anonymously.⁴ Anonymity can reduce both real and perceived bias.

6. Pseudonymous Submission

• We recommend that all assessment submissions be made anonymously via moodle (documentation on anonymized⁵ submission via Moodle can be found external page here). When participants submit something, their names are replaced by random numbers, so that you as the evaluator do not know whose submission you are looking at.
• Some assessment may involve multi-stage feedback processes, making anonymity challenging. However, prioritize anonymity where feasible.
  

_{4 - ETH guidelines state that examination deliverables and student work are submitted in anonymized ways. Refer to ETH Download Guidelines on Grading (PDF, 424 KB) (2.2.2 on Anonymization).
5 - Moodle uses the term anonymization. The correct term is pseudonymization.}

Students can seek help from student representatives, members of the respective teaching committees, faculty or the D-GESS Help!Point if they face difficulties in ascertaining any of the above, or feel that they require advice or mediation on the matter. These mediators are not qualified to interfere in grading.