•  Positive effects of criterion-referenced grading criteria.
•  Pitfalls in connection with introduction of grading criteria.
•  How expected learning outcomes, grading criteria and examination are related to one another and to the students' learning.
•  Examples of how criterion-referenced grading criteria have been developed and are used in courses at KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Uppsala University.
•  How one writes criterion-referenced grading criteria.
•  Student perspective on grading criteria.
•  What is needed to make the grading criteria support the learning?
•  Combining assessments to a final mark.
•  Guidelines and support for criterion-referenced grading criteria at KTH Royal Institute of Technology
•  Work on grading criteria and modified assessment of the course participant's own course.

After passing the course, the course participant should be able to:

·         demonstrate how intended learning outcomes, grading criteria and examination are related

·         formulate criterion-referenced grading criteria for a course

·         suggest how examination items should be designed so that they are assessed according to specified grading criteria

·         critically review and reflect on one's own specified grading criteria and those of others

·         give an account of how assessments can be weighed together to a final mark and reflect on the possible effects of this

·         reflect on how the grading criteria can be used in one's own teaching

in order to be able to design criterion-referenced grading criteria and examination that can be used directly in an own course.

There will be four meetings, where meeting one and two are mandatory. There are preparations or assignments to be done before each meeting. After each meeting, the slides from the presentations will be published in the course room. A chronological view of all deadlines and meetings can be found under Syllabus/Kursöversikt.

Language

The main language of the course is English. However, in group discussions it is allowed to speak other languages as long as all in the group understand. The terminology is given in both Swedish and English (see Key concepts below), and you are allowed to write your assignments in either Swedish or English. We recommend that you use the same language in your assignments as the course you are writing your grading criteria for is using.

Schedule

A course in teaching and learning in higher education, for example LH231V Teaching and Learning, is recommended but is not a requirement.

Before the first meeting, please do the following preparations:

• Read the article Chris Rust: Purposes and Principles of Assessment, available at academia.edu (also linked in the welcome email).
• Review the concept of constructive alignment and read about how intended learning outcomes should be written. Please look at these slides to refresh your memory about this. If you need more explanation and examples, please look at the reading list on the last slide.
• In this course you will be working with the design of grading criteria in a course. Decide which course you would like to work with, and go through the current intended learning outcomes (from the course syllabus). If your course is given in Swedish, you should look at the Swedish version of the intended learning outcomes (ILOs).
• Check whether the intended learning outcomes are result oriented, assessable and at a reasonable level. According to the KTH regulations, all intended learning outcomes have to be assessed in the course, and only students fulfilling all intended learning outcomes should pass the course.
  Modify if needed the ILOs so that they are possible to assess. 
• Bring your (modified) intended learning outcomes to the first meeting (in the language of instruction of your course), or if you participate on-line: prepare to share them in a window in Zoom.

Main reading

• Chris Rust: Purposes and principles of assessment, Oxford Brookes University, 2002.
• John Biggs and Catherine Tang: Teaching for Quality Learning at University, 4th or 5th edition, Open University Press, McGraw Hill Education, 2011 or 2022. Chapter 11 and 12.
• Johanna Bergqvist: Att sätta praxis på pränt: En handbok i att skriva betygskriterier. (in Swedish)

Useful tips and examples of grading criteria

Note that grade descriptors or grading rubrics sometimes are used instead of grading criteria in the texts below.

• Examples of grading criteria at KTH, mostly from former participants of LH216V.
• Blomma, a tool for analysing Swedish ILOs (also containing a list of all action verbs used at KTH, SU, Umu, and Miun), 2025.
• Viggo Kann: Advice for KTH teachers introducing grading criteria, 2025.
• Stefan Ekecrantz: Målrelaterade betyg - Att arbeta med betygskriterier och bedömning i sju grader, UPC-rapport 2007:1, Stockholms universitet, 2007. (in Swedish)
• Taxonomies for learning, useful when formulating grading criteria at different levels.
• Swedish action verbs from KTH course syllabuses,  and English action verbs categorized using the revised Bloom's taxonomy.
• Grading student work - tips and examples of Rubric creation from Berkeley.
• Graham Gibbs: Learning in Teams Grading of team projects, among other things.
• Phillip Dawson: Assessment rubrics: towards clearer and more replicable design, research and practice (available online through KTHB).
  Describes and discusses grading rubrics and gives 14 design elements related to rubrics. A useful paper, but a bit hard to read if you are not used to read educational research papers.  
• Lab Report Rubric. An example of a well designed grading rubric from MIT. The lab course is described, together with the ILOs. The scale 0-3 is applied on the eight types of criteria used. How the criteria relate to the ILOs is shown, together with the formula for the final scoring. All in all, this rubric looks like what you are expected to develop for your course within this course (LH216V).
• Scoring rubrics for professional writing. Nine criteria and four scoring levels that can be useful for inspiration on how to work with marking (or peer marking) where writing skills are to be trained and assessed. 
• Scoring rubrics for professional presentations. Eight criteria and four scoring levels that can be useful for inspiration on how to work with marking (or peer marking) where oral presentation skills are to be trained and assessed. 
• Natasha Haugnes and Jennifer L. Russell: Rubrics for artists and designers (available online through KTHB).
• Anders Jonsson and Gunilla Svingby: The use of scoring rubrics: Reliability, validity and educational consequences. A research review showing which benefits of rubrics that have been confirmed in research.

Students at KTH with a permanent disability can get support during studies from Funka:

Funka - compensatory support for students with disabilities

P, F

• INL1 - Assignment, 1.5 credits, Grading scale: P, F

Based on recommendation from KTH’s coordinator for disabilities, the examiner will decide how to adapt an examination for students with documented disability.

The examiner may apply another examination format when re-examining individual students.

An individual assignment in the own subject area is included in the written assignment.

There are three mandatory assessments in the course. It is important that you submit the assignments before the stated deadline in order for the course to work. Please contact the course coordinator if you need to submit a hand-in late.

1. Assignment 1a (ILOs and draft of new grading critieria), submitted before April 9, 2025, at 19:00 in Canvas.
2. Assignment 1b (peer feedback to two peers), submitted before April 14, 2025, at 19:00 in Canvas.
3. Assignment 2 (final version of grading criteria etc.), submitted before May 21, 2025, at 19:00 in Canvas.
   Assessment (with respect to the grading criteria below) and constructive feedback on your assignment 2 will be given by the teachers before the final meeting. A submission fulfilling all criteria will pass. A submission not fulfilling any criterion will fail. A submission fulfilling at least one but not all criteria will receive Fx, and could be completed (see below).

There is also an optional preliminary submission of Assignment 2, which all course participants are recommended to complete by May 8, 2025, at 19:00 and to give/receive peer feedback on preferably by May 12, 2025, at 19:00. You will also receive oral feedback on it during Meeting 3, both from fellow participants and the instructors.

Anyone submitting assignments after the deadline cannot expect prompt feedback. Submissions after June 28, 2025, at 19:00 will not be accepted.

Active participation at course meetings 1 and 2 is compulsory.

Since this is a pass/fail course, the grading criteria are close to the intended learning outcomes. ILOs 1, 3 and 4 have been split into two critera each. 

• account for assessable intended learning outcomes for your own course (ILO 1, assessed in assignment 1a (formatively) and assignment 2)
• account for assessment tasks for your own course (ILO 3, assessed in assignment 2)
• formulate outcomes based criterion-referenced grading criteria for your own course (ILO 2, assessed in assignment 1a (formatively) and assignment 2)
• demonstrate how intended learning outcomes, grading criteria, and assessment are related (ILOs 1 and 3, assessed in assignment 1a (formatively) and assignment 2)
• review critically and reflect on others' grading criteria (ILO 4, assessed in assignment 1b)
• review critically and reflect on ones own grading critera and others' feedback on these (ILO 4, assessed in assignment 2)
• describe how to combine assessments to determine a final grade and reflect on possible effects of this (ILO 5, assessed in assignment 2)
• reflect on how the grading criteria can be used in your own teaching (ILO 6, assessed in assignment 2).

A submission of assignment 2 fulfilling at least one but not all criteria will receive Fx, and could be completed (submitting a new version in Canvas) within three weeks (June 24, 2025 at 19:00) by submitting the new version in Canvas. A new version that is fulfilling all criteria will pass. A new version fulfilling all criteria except one or two may be completed one more time (latest August 15, 2025, at 19:00). Otherwise the submission will be failed.

• All members of a group are responsible for the group's work.
• In any assessment, every student shall honestly disclose any help received and sources used.
• In an oral assessment, every student shall be able to present and answer questions about the entire assignment and solution.

• We inform at the start of the course about the strong correlation between attendance at the optional meetings 3 and 4 and passing without the need for revisions. We also ask the participants to read the advice from the previous course offering (below).
• The collection of KTH grading critera has been extended with some new examples.

Advice from participants from previous course offerings

• Choose the right course to work with – make sure you are familiar with the course content, preferably across multiple grade levels.
• Check the course material before hand.
• I will strongly recommend to attend all the sessions not just learning about course syllabus but also opening yourself to the other department's people. You will learn quite a lot from them.
• Set aside time to collect student feedback [in assignment 2].
• Dare to think outside the box – write the submission as if you didn’t have to consider colleagues, the school faculty board, etc.

• Start shaping your course and let go of the uncertainty that it might seem like very big (and therefore challenging) changes.

  At first, I got stuck trying to fit the learning outcomes and assessment methods in a way that would allow me to keep the exact same course components and structure as before. But when I let go of that and started working more freely, I soon realized that it wasn’t actually that difficult to align everything with the existing course. In the end, only a few minor adjustments were needed to make it all come together.

• Learn this stuff so you won't be one-upped by students who are playing the system.

Course evaluation and course analysis

By the end of meeting 1, a mini-evaluation will be carried out. At the end of the final meeting, we will evaluate the course together, constituting the course meeting of the course (as required by the KTH regulations for course evaluation and course analysis). After the final meeting, there will be an ordinary KTH course evaluation.

After the course, the course coordinator will write a course analysis, that will be published on the official course web page in the course catalog. Course analysis of the 2024 course offering.