Perception surveys reveal differences in grading approach between instructors and teaching assistants, suggesting implications for assessment practices.
Well developed assessments are critical for student evaluation. However, even the best assessments are unable to be fully utilized if grading is done in an inconsistent, unfair, or invalid way. Additionally, poor-quality feedback can be linked to negative learning outcomes. Using responses from two perception surveys, we sought to examine how instructors perceive their instructions to teaching assistants (TAs) and, additionally, how TAs perceive guidance on marking from the instructor. Our preliminary results suggest differences between the perceptions of instructors and TAs with regards to how the characteristics of assessments (i.e. length, number, complexity) impact their grading. There were also differences with respect to the ease of carrying out specific facets of marking (i.e. consistency, fairness, feedback, harshness). Further results suggest subtle differences in engagement with TAs for instructors at different stages of their career (early, middle, and late).
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Giannikouris et al. (2025) studied this question.
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