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Designing and grading exams doesn’t have to be overwhelming. By following a few thoughtful practices and leveraging AI tools, teachers can create fair, engaging assessments that truly support student growth. Small changes can make a big difference—for both educators and learners.
If you’re a teacher, you must be designing and grading exams for your students every few days. But are you doing it right? Maybe, maybe not. And if you aren’t, this blog can help.
Exams help determine how the students are doing or how well they’re grasping the lessons. However, you can only trust the exams if you keep a few important things in mind while creating and grading them. What are the things you need to keep in mind? Well, read along to find out.
This blog talks about 5 Best practices for designing and grading exams. Following these practices will help you create better exam papers and grade them in a way that’s beneficial and rewarding for your students’ future. What’s more, you’ll get a chance to evolve as a teacher. So, let’s get started.
5 Best Practices for Designing an Exam
1. Always Have a Clear Objective in Your Mind
What’s the objective of the test that you are creating? Do you want to test your students’ memory, logical thinking, or anything else? If you have answers to these questions, you’ll instantly be able to create better exam papers. How?
When you have a clear objective in mind, you can include a particular type of question that serves the purpose.
For instance, if you want to determine how well your students explain a topic, descriptive questions will help and not MCQs. And in case you want to test memory or logical thinking etc., MCQs or Fill-ups can help.
2. Include Smart Questions
Do you always frame questions in a particular manner like: “What is X Or What is Y?” If so, you need to stop. It’s because sooner or later your students will be able to predict the exam paper. And you won’t be able to monitor their performance appropriately.
Instead, start including smart questions that make them think. But how can you do that? Well, PrepAI has got your back. PrepAI is a smart, AI and ML-based test paper generator that helps you create quiz assignments or exam papers within minutes using 5 easy steps.
You can create exam papers that include smart, intuitive, and thought-provoking questions that’ll motivate your students to think. This way students will get to use their brains more and you won’t ever become predictable. Cool, right?
3. Provide Clear and Easy Instructions Regarding the Exam
Make sure that you provide clear instructions to your students regarding the exam. Otherwise, they might misinterpret the instructions which can lead them to trouble. Here are some common instructions or things you need to make clear on the question paper:
- How many questions do you want the students to attempt?
- Do you want answers in bullet points or paragraphs?
- What’s the total time allotted for the exam?
Please Note. The questions given above are just an example. You may add or remove instructions/questions as you like.
4. Phrase the Questions Correctly
Some teachers intentionally use idiomatic phrases, or double negatives in questions to make things complex. However, this does no good to the students, especially if they’re international.
Here are some examples of unnecessarily complex questions:
- Use of Double Negatives: Markus didn’t have no money. True/False
- After Correct Phrasing: Markus didn’t have money. True/False
OR
- Use of Idiomatic Language: Why did Mark spill the beans?
- After Phrasing: Why did Mark reveal the secret? Spilling the beans means revealing a secret.
Did you notice how, after phrasing, the questions became so easy to understand? Well, that’s what you need to do.
5. Try to Keep The Test Short Unless Completely Necessary
Try your best to keep the exam papers short and brief. However, that never means, you shouldn’t include any descriptive question at all. The point here is to improve the assessment process and not to bore the students with lengthy exam papers.
With these practices, you can significantly improve the way you design exams. However, the story doesn’t end here. You need to pay equal attention or probably more attention to grading the exams. After all, grading is what tells how well the students performed, right? Let’s learn more about that below:
Why Do You Need Principles for Grading?
Assigning grades has always been difficult, isn’t it? Well, this happens because grades serve multiple purposes such as:
- Grades help the teacher determine which student is understanding the concept and which isn’t.
- The parents use grades to understand how well their kids perform in the class.
- Also, grades sometimes decide whether or not the student will get a scholarship, if eligible.
Therefore, some set principles are necessary around which your grading process should be based. Otherwise, it could really have a negative impact on the lives of your students and their parents.
Grading System Vs. Marking System
While the terms may sometimes be used interchangeably, grading and marking are distinct methods. Marking is a more traditional practice for assessing student performance in examinations. It includes using a number or a descriptive score for the answers/ assignment. For example, if a test is conducted for 25 marks, each question carries specific marks based on complexity and the length of the answers needed. The teachers allot marks depending on the answers written by students. They cannot exceed the marks assigned to the question.
In the marking system, there is a risk of measurement errors, especially when individual components are marked separately and the total is added at the end. However, this can be avoided by using an exam generator to conduct and mark the tests. Another drawback is the lack of context where the individual elements are measured without considering the bigger picture. For example, a student might answer one question correctly but not the others. Here, it is easier to miss the patterns in answers that can help students improve.
Grading exams instead of marking them is a more recent phenomenon. It is a holistic approach to assessing students’ performances using a broader scale. For example, the letter grades (A, B, C, D, E, and F) are commonly used to grade assignments and yearly performances. Instead of focusing on individual elements, the grade provides a comprehensive view of the student’s activities or learning. Typically, when grading a test, teachers follow a pre-defined guideline or rules to assign the value.
Let’s take an assignment as an example. If the submission aligns with the topic and shows quality writing, good research, and an in-depth understanding of the concept, the assignment is likely to get a higher grade like A+ or A. Grading is a more consistent approach than marking and reduces the risk of subjective bias to some extent. Moreover, grades can encourage and motivate students to do better and aim for a higher benchmark.
Even though grading gives generalized feedback compared to the marking system, it is easier to align the standards of different institutions and measure which students have delivered better performance in the exams. Since grading looks at the overall picture, it includes not just textbook education but also extracurricular activities, capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses of each student. The challenges in the grading system can be overcome by using artificial intelligence-based EdTech tools to conduct tests and monitor student progress throughout the educational year.
3 General Principles to Keep in Mind While Grading Your Students
1. Always Stay Fair
You should never hold your students accountable for things not in their control. For instance, not every student has equal access to resources such as Wi-Fi, the latest mobile devices, educated parents, etc. So, always assign and grade assignments while keeping this in mind.
Artificial intelligence solutions should be used with a pinch of salt because of the ethical issues surrounding the data used by these generative AI tools.
2. Be Honest No Matter What
Don’t give everyone in your class A unless they deserve it. Otherwise, it can shatter the healthy competition among the students that keeps them going. Also, assigning the same grade to everyone will make it hard for parents to understand how their kid is actually doing.
Therefore, always paint a clear picture of the student’s progress, skills, and learning.
3. Individualized Grading
Most institutes follow the one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to grading. However, this approach isn’t fair as no two students are alike. Therefore, it’s imperative that you follow individualized grading wherein each student gets treated individually.
And you can do that by analyzing other factors such as participation in class, homework effort, demonstration of skills along with correct and wrong answers in the exam paper. This will help you offer grades that are more fair and individualized.
Now that you know what your grading policy should be about, let’s help you make the grading process better.
5 Best Practices for Grading an Exam
1. Create a Grading Guide or Rubric
Assigning grades can be hard. However, a rubric can make your job easier.
The rubric is a grading guide that divides the assigned tasks into smaller components with clear descriptions for teachers. You can add custom requirements in your grading guide and grade the students accordingly.
While there are different types of rubrics such as analytic rubrics, developmental rubrics, holistic rubrics, and checklists, we’ll consider holistic rubrics for this example.
Here’s what a Holistic rubric looks like:
| S. No. | Components of an Answer | Points |
| A | The student mentioned the date, place, and the reason behind the war along with the casualties. | 4 |
| B | The student mentioned everything but missed one aspect. | 3 |
| C | The student mentioned everything but missed two aspects. | 2 |
| D | The student mentioned just one aspect and missed the remaining. | 1 |
| E | The student did not attempt. | 0 |
According to this rubric, the student who mentions everything gets 4 points. And the inability to mention any one aspect costs them points. This is just an example. You can tweak the rubrics in whatever way you want. Refer to this link to learn more about other types of rubrics.
2. Provide Feedback That’s Actionable
Merely leaving remarks such as “needs improvement” aren’t good enough for the students. You need to let the students know exactly where they lagged behind.
For instance, if a student was unable to define a term properly, instead of saying “inappropriate definition”, you can say important aspects were missing or something more detailed. Doing this will help the students understand their mistakes better.
3. Let your Students Know About the Grading Procedure
While most students will agree with whatever grades you assign them, some might raise questions. And this can be quite frustrating. So, try to inform your students about your grading procedure beforehand. Also, don’t make abrupt changes to the grading procedure without intimating the students.
4. Grade One Question at a Time and Not One Student
Most teachers grade all the questions of a particular student at a time before moving to the other one. While this is a standard procedure, it’s not impactful enough. Because using this procedure, you cannot follow a consistent grading criterion.
Solution? Grade questions of a particular type for every student. For instance, grade all the descriptive questions for each student in your class and then go for MCQs for each student and so on. This will help you consistently follow the grading principles or criteria.
5. Grade Papers in a Peaceful Environment and Take Frequent Breaks
If you’re angry, under stress, or are unable to find a peaceful environment, stop grading right away. A peaceful and stress-free environment is essential for grading fairly. Otherwise, your stress could reflect in the grades because of which students might have to suffer.
Also, try to take frequent short breaks if you have a huge list of papers to grade. This will help you keep your mind fresh and will protect you from burnout.
These were some best practices for designing and grading exams that you can start implementing right away. However, you aren’t bound to exactly mimic the above best practices for designing and grading exams. You can always tweak them according to your convenience for the best results.
Benefits of AI Test Maker for Teachers for Grading Exams
Artificial intelligence can be highly beneficial for grading an exam, be it a class test or a final yearly assessment. Let’s look at a few ways AI helps teachers in grading.
Speed and Time Saving
The biggest reason to use an AI EdTech tool is to automate the process and save time. Artificial intelligence is efficient in automatically performing repetitive tasks by following the given set of instructions. This allows teachers to save the time spent on manually reading the submissions and assigning grades. Moreover, AI tools are quick and complete the same task in a few seconds. For example, PrepAI can automatically convert the given input into different types of questions. After students submit the answers, the tool can evaluate the responses and give instant results. This allows teachers to finish their work quickly.
Efficiency
AI grading tools are efficient as they are trained for the purpose. The tools follow pre-determined rules and instructions to repeat the same action as many times as necessary. So, when a teacher takes ten minutes to grade one assignment, an AI tool can grade all the assignments at the same time. The tools are scalable and built to handle large workloads. That means all teachers in the school can use the same grading tool without compromising efficiency. This also allows them to focus on important tasks.
Consistency
Consistency is necessary for grading in education to meet the benchmarked standards. Technology doesn’t get tired or suffer from depleted energy levels. Teachers are humans and can be exhausted after grading some papers. If they don’t take a break to revive their energy, they are likely to make mistakes or give a wrong grade. However, an AI tool has no such issues. It can work around the clock and still be consistent. This also removes the pressure on teachers as they can afford to take a breather and not feel guilty.
Reduced Bias
Grading AI is also essential to ensure fairness and reduce bias. The human brain cannot help but recollect personal experiences at times, which might affect the grading process. Even when some submissions are graded anonymously (like the board exams), a writing style or a phrase could trigger a memory that might inadvertently affect the teacher’s mood. Such issues can be avoided using AI tools. Since the algorithm has no emotion, it doesn’t feel biased. However, teachers should make sure the answers finalized by the AI tool are accurate as the submitted responses will be compared and evaluated accordingly.
Personalized Feedback
You may wonder how teachers can provide personalized feedback when they don’t assess the submissions. AI exam generator tools like PrepAI provide in-depth analytics about the submissions. This data helps teachers to track students’ performances and identify their strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, teachers still read the submissions. They use AI tools to ease the pressure, reduce bias, and highlight patterns they might miss. All this enables teachers to give personalized feedback to each student and discuss the details with them.
Reduce Workload
As a teacher, you almost always have to deal with quizzes and tests. Wouldn’t it be easier to conduct online exams? EdTech classrooms allow students to bring smartphones, tablets, and laptops for studying. Exams can be conducted online within the classroom. The answers can be instantly evaluated by the same tool. The remaining time can be spent on discussing the test. This eliminates excess workload and allows teachers to prioritize their tasks and focus on the students.
Wrapping Up
Grading and designing exams can be really complex and at times stressful. However, you need not go through that stress, if you follow the best practices for designing and grading exams as stated above.
These tips or best practices are easy to implement and can be customized as per convenience. So, whether you teach in a college, primary school, high school, or a university, you can use them to the fullest. All you need to do is make some tweaks and you’re good to go.
