OK....I'm sure this has probably been discussed before but.....
For our General Chemistry Laboratory, we required the students to keep a detailed notebook (including a pre-lab, experimental work and a post-lab) that is submitted for grading each week. The notebook constitutes the vast majority of the assessment of the student's work in the laboratory (we require three abstracts the first semester.....three abstracts and three introductions the second semester....etc. and those are also graded but probably constitute less then 10% of the overall grade in lab).
As you can imagine, the grading of these notebooks is a time sink - checking things like a correct table of contents, significant figures, units, etc. It has been suggested by a couple of my colleagues that we could create a grading matrix (in fact I have one that I use myself) and have our student TAs grade the notebooks. Now personally, I'm having some questions about the ethics of having upper level students grade (and therefore know) the grades of students in a lower level class. My opinion is that even though these are upper level students, they are still peers of the students taking General Chemistry and therefore should not have access to the grades of their peers....for all I know there might even be a law against it.....
I would be interested in knowing what other departments are doing with respect to introductory laboratory grading and if I'm just being an "old fuddy duddy" with my ethics concern...thanks in advance.
We do something similar for our gen chem labs, and have... near as I can tell... forever.
Our graders grade the notebook mechanics (name, page number, written in ink, etc) as well as the Experimental section (procedure and observations). That is worth between 40-50% of the grade on the lab.
The instructor then grades the remaining sections, which is the higher level stuff. Data interpretation and analysis, calculations, and a written summary of the experiment (discussion, conclusion and answering questions).
So, its not exactly the same, but similar.
Also, HMC has a strong honor code, so that may factor into it as well. And, I don't tell the first-years who their grader is (though they usually figure it out).
hope that helps,
Adam
We use student lab TAs to do "notebook checks" that sound fairly similar to what you do. It is only one component of their lab grade though, with the majority focused on the lab writeups/lab reports that are graded by faculty and staff.
We also use student graders for our weekly homework in gen chem. I have never been concerned before about the ethics question although the graders have no idea how the weekly problem sets factor into a particular student's grade. Often, a student's work on problem sets can look very different from their work on exams. We also have a strong honor code at Reed that I expect all the students (including graders) will adhere to. Sometimes, rarely, I have had to speak to an individual grader about the types of "feedback" they write on a student's homework, asking them to consider how it would feel to be on the receiving end. Usually by selecting the best and most personable students from the previous year, I can avoid problems like this. Also, we have a complicated rotation system where each grader gets a different chunk of the alphabet to grade each week to even out differences in any interpretation of our grading/scoring key.
We have our upper-level student TAs check each week that students have done their pre-lab assignment. They grade this with a check, check-plus, check-minus system. They also provide the students with some general feedback about how they could improve their notebook skills. The check grades are then factored in as part of their lab participation grade (which is not a large percent of their overall lab grade).
Sometime around mid-semester we collect student notebooks and give students some feedback ourselves. Then, we give a final notebook grade at the end, which makes up a percentage of their overall lab grade.
Smith does have a strong honor code, and I don't think there are any "laws" against using student graders. I believe both the Math and Physics depts. here use upper class students as homework graders, but as far as I know we've avoided doing that in Chemistry. Perhaps because we can find graduate students to do this nearby at UMass Amherst.
I'm join the chorus... we began using student lab assistants in Gen Chem last year when we expanded to (up to) 48 students in 2 rooms for each lab period. Each room has its own Gen Chem Lab Assistant (GCLA) and that GCLA ends up doing the majority of the grading using a very detailed rubric that I provide. I'm rather picky about which students I hire and I think that has limited the problems of students knowing what other students get for grades. In a few cases, it has actually helped for the GCLAs to grade because, much like the faculty instructors, if they see that a student is struggling (but putting in an honest effort), the GCLAs can be a little more attentive with that student.
As for the legal questions, yes, FERPA is looming, but I have a FERPA discussion at our first big meeting of the semester and all of our GCLAs have to go through the little FERPA training powerpoint that our HR office (or whatever office it is...) requires and sign a form acknowledging that they understand FERPA as it relates to their position. I would venture to guess that some of my GCLAs have a better understanding of FERPA (and are more compliant) than some faculty on my campus. Again, I think being very selective in the students I hire is probably the most important step here.
On the purely ethical side, I guess it comes down to what lets you sleep well at night. To some extent, our department was forced to look at some creative options to the way we offer labs to address budgetary problems, I'm sure everyone knows what that "pinch" feels like. There was some uncertainty (I wouldn't go so far as to call it "resistance") to the idea of using GCLAs in the labs and for grading, but personally, I see almost nothing but upsides in this situation. The students in the class will get their materials graded in a timely manner, the student lab assistant will get some great experience that will help them write better papers in their own classes, and the faculty will free up a little bit of time to do some research or committee work or sleep more than 3 hours a night. Win-win-win situation!
Eek, I'm writing a book here. I've been considering doing a poster or talk on our transition to GCLAs at the Anaheim ACS meeting, I guess I should work on an abstract...