Assessment & Grading Prompts

ASSIGNMENT & ASSESSMENT PROMPTS

  • Begin by asking students what they hope to do when they graduate and what interests they have. Then customize this assignment to individual interests but maintain the same number and complexity/difficulty of problems/questions/activities/scenarios for every student. Support and guide students to deepen their understanding. You can provide hints and mini lessons in content, as needed, but do not do the work for them. Use the learning goals as your guide.
  • Present me (the student) with a unique problem or scenario and then ask me to analyze it. Prompt me with follow-up questions until I have demonstrated understanding to level X. Then create further problems and scenarios, responding to my requests to adjust the content. 
  • Be a kind teacher and have a dialogue with me (a college student) about the attached content. Ask me questions to determine my comprehension. Adapt to my responses, asking easier questions if responses are incorrect or poor and asking progressively harder questions if responses are good. If I provide verbatim responses, ask me to explain concepts in my own words. Be encouraging but continue until I have mastered the material.
  • Ask students to submit their code/story/lab report/business plan and respond by pointing out the security breaches/inconsistencies/loopholes/unforeseen problems. Ask students to improve answers and resubmit. Continue the process until the student has reached the first level in the attached rubric. 
  • Test my knowledge/application of Y by (a) asking me a series of questions, and/or (b) creating a series of tasks/exercises to assess my learning of Y. After we have completed Z rounds, please assign a grade to my answers using the rubric.
  • This assignment is complete when the student reaches standard C for each goal in the rubric.
  • After the student has completed this role play/task/simulation, grade their performance against this rubric. 
  • If the student succeeds in improving the US economy beyond what was accomplished by the actual US President in their selected time period, enter “pass” into the gradebook. If not, allow the student to play again until they pass.  

CREATING EXAMS & ASSESSMENTS

  • Suggest performance tasks that align with these learning objectives.
  • Design an “exit ticket” that students can do in less than 3 minutes to help me learn what they understood about this class.
  • Using the OpenStax X textbook as your source, create 10 multiple choice questions based on the contents of the chapter entitled Y. Provide an answer key at the end of the quiz.
  • Generate # multiple-choice questions for audience A about subject B/article C in a table format that can be imported into Kahoot!
  • Make # customized versions of this test for students with interests in X, Y and Z.
  • Develop a comprehensive exam for course A/this syllabus
  • Draft a make-up midterm of the same content and level of difficulty.
  • I am teaching a class on X and I am hoping students will learn Y. Suggest ideas for assessing student learning during this teaching plan/slides/outline/assignment/class activity. Create some exit ticket questions I can ask students or some other ideas for assessing the learning during class. 
  • Create an alternative assessment for this learning outcome.
  • Provide grades and feedback for these student essays/problem sets/lab reports. Use my rubric, these previously graded essays and these samples of my feedback to calibrate your feedback to write and grade in my voice. Before you begin, ask me questions to clarify what is most about this assignment and my feedback to me.
  • Create 10 ideas for college-level assignments in course X that can assess these learning outcomes. Make sure the assignments will be meaningful for students and that the process for doing the work align with my goals for the class.

GRADING PROMPTS

  • Provide detailed and constructive feedback to students in my voice using this rubric, previously graded assignments/essays and feedback. Focus on code readability and efficiency.
  • Here is an assignment and a corresponding set of student essays/work. I need to provide useful and meaningful feedback and grades.  Assist me by providing a list of general feedback with common mistakes and how to fix them.  Also provide draft feedback for each essay focusing on only ONE improvement for each essay.
  • Apply this rubric to these assignments and provide a score and feedback in each category.
  • Grading and feedback tools like TimelyGrader, CoGrader (and more above) are proliferating rapidly and are already being integrated into your LMS. Each of the big platforms also has a way to build and then distribute your own fine-tuned applications: GPTs (from OpenAI), Assistants (from HuggingFace), Bots (from Poe). Faculty developed writing tutors, for example, include one from Mark Marino, AI Tutor Profrom a group of Canadian faculty and MyEssayFeedback in beta from Eric Kean. Here is an easy way to try this yourself (use Claude 3.5 or GPT 4o).
  • The first half of this next prompt is adapted from Ethan Mollick https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/almost-an-agent-what-gpts-can-do?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
  • You are a friendly and helpful university grading assistant who helps faculty give students effective, specific, and concrete feedback about student work. You have high standards and believe that students can achieve those standards. Your role is to give a grade and helpful feedback in a straightforward and clear way. Your only role is to give a grade and thoughtful and helpful feedback that addresses the assignment. Follow these steps exactly. Ask for the assignment instructions and the grading rubric or the goal of the assignment and critera to assess. Ask for sample student essays and the corresponding grades and feedback. Compare the samples to the grading rubric you have been provided and identify any discrepancies. Provide a summary of what you think are the most important criteria for this assignment and why the best essays received high grades. Ask if you have done this correctly and ask for any clarification. Ask for the essays or work you are to grade. Once you have the assignment, assess that assignment given all you know and create feedback within the document only that addresses the goals of the assignment. Output the assignment in a beautifully formatted word document and write your feedback all in red at the very top of the document in a new section titled GENERAL FEEDBACK. If appropriate, also annotate the assignment itself within the document in red with the same red font with your comments. Each annotation should be unique and address a specific point.  Remember: You should present a balanced overview of the student’s performance, noting strengths and areas for improvement. Refer to the assignment description itself in your feedback and/or the grading rubric you have. Your feedback should explicitly address the assignment details in light of the student’s writing. After you have completed this task, produce a second beautifully formatted word document that includes the student’s name, the title of the essay and a copy of the grading rubric. For each criterion (row) of the rubric select the box which best describes the level the essay has achieved for this criterion and put a red circle around the box. Average those scores to establish a final grade for the essay and mark that below in red. Add a brief statement to justify this final grade.

GRADING APIs

  • Your choice here is either to use one of the best (smartest) frontier models (see above) but understand that is is naive and you will need to provide lots of very specific instructions (it needs a recipe) or you can use one of these already fine-tuned models (that already knows how to cook) that often use and older, cheaper and less smart (GPT 3.5) to do the work. There are already over 70 AI grading tools available.
    • GradeWiz extracts students names before grading and then sends anonymous essays to multiple AIs and then compares the results.
    • CoGrader does general grading and feedback and integrates with Google classroom. Try the 2.0 version here: https://v2.cograder.com/
    • TimelyGrader can import assignments from your LMS and export grades back to it.
    • AI For Teachers: Free for ChatGPT Plus users
    • Gradescope: Also from Turnitin.
    • Kangaroos AI: Customizable rubrics and bulk uploads.
    • EssayGrader: Free option (with limited rubric customization) and allows bulk uploading.
    • Smodin: Limited free version but includes language translation.
    • GradeCam: Instant feedback that integrates with some LMS.
    • SnapGrader: Includes a scanning feature. 
  • ChatBot Assignments with Grading: Mostly K-12 at the moment, but look for new platforms like Parlay and Mizou that create specialized chatbots for problems or situations and then grade student interactions–all within a protected environment.

AI for ASSESSMENT & ACCREDITATION

  • Evaluate these essays using rubric Y and assess what % of essays meet the X standard.
  • Write my departmental accreditation report using this format, and these guidelines and data.
  • Suggest assessment measures and performance tasks that align with these learning objectives for an undergraduate degree at X.
  • Create an alternative assessment for this learning outcome.
  • Analyze this student feedback, social media, reporting or email with faculty and identify the top ten key concerns. Categorize the issues into groups and provide 20 strategies for improving each area.
  • Suggest 20 scholars who would be appropriate assessors for our university accreditation considering…
  • Write my departmental accreditation report using this format, and these guidelines and data.
  • Create an image that compares graduations rate by first year grades, intro course faculty and time of day.
  • Using this data, create an analysis/recommendation/strategy…
  • Analyze the CVs of our visitation team, accreditation guidelines and examples of successful reports. Identify common elements, ideas, methods, structures, or language that might have contributed to success. Recommend how I might adapt our current report to be more successful. What might the committee find objectionable, confusing or lacking in this report materials?
  • Suggest ten ways to make this assessment report more compelling.
  • Find me # relevant examples, stories or videos (from the news/TikTok/YouTube/campus social media or campus website) that demonstrate how  university X has implemented strategy/goal Y and give me a summary for each that includes its content, reliability and source.
  • Pretend you are an experienced X accreditor on a visit to campus Y. Read this report and the guidelines for campus visits. Interview me as if you were [name of assessor]. 
  • You are a relentless and experienced accreditation assessor from X and you are here to help me prepare for accreditation at the university of Y. Using the attached guidelines and report, prompt me with specific feedback that will challenge me. Include feedback with inaccurate information and require me to correct you will real data. You may also use feedback that looks like a compliment but really is not.