Revising by Numbers: Promoting Student Revision Through Accumulated Points

Published Nov 5, 2015

Authored by Mark McBeth, John Jay College of Criminal Justice/CUNY

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Abstract

By revealing his own numerate inadequacies, this author describes a grading system where students accumulate points over a semester of assignment submissions and re-drafting.  He claims it offers students more autonomy in controlling their “earned” grade as well as incentivizes their investments in the revision process.  In contrast to the normative percentages approach to grading, this point accrual system not only gives students a less ambivalent form of grading but, also, moves them past surface-level revision and into rhetorical re-structuring.

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