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[cs_prof]

I have a much longer section in the rubric that explains what I mean by "thoughtful" and "engaged".  The upshot is that the student makes connections between the class material, daily life, and other areas that were not mentioned in class in ways that demonstrate journeyperson-level of application of material.  Merely repeating what was said in class or on the assigned readings/activities is not full credit.  Giving several sentences of boilerplate is not thoughtful or engaged.

Understood. Frankly speaking, I would not envy the instructor who has to deal with a class of thirty while grading weekly homework reports written by students by meticulously applying these vague criteria. To save time for more productive work, we need to find some magic method that could prevent this waste of time from happening. I do not have such a method though. Maybe someone else in this forum could suggest some bright idea.

[theblondeassassin]

I have a much longer section in the rubric that explains what I mean by "thoughtful" and "engaged".  The upshot is that the student makes connections between the class material, daily life, and other areas that were not mentioned in class in ways that demonstrate journeyperson-level of application of material.  Merely repeating what was said in class or on the assigned readings/activities is not full credit.  Giving several sentences of boilerplate is not thoughtful or engaged.

Understood. Frankly speaking, I would not envy the instructor who has to deal with a class of thirty while grading weekly homework reports written by students by meticulously applying these vague criteria. To save time for more productive work, we need to find some magic method that could prevent this waste of time from happening. I do not have such a method though. Maybe someone else in this forum could suggest some bright idea.

Hahahaha hahaha hahahahaha hahahaha! Well, I'm glad to know that my teaching is all a waste of time.

[cs_prof]

Hahahaha hahaha hahahahaha hahahaha! Well, I'm glad to know that my teaching is all a waste of time.

I do not mean it on the absolute scale. I meant relative to what is aspired. And of course nothing personal.

I have to teach courses with vague evaluation criteria some times and am concerned about making these criteria more precise. This saves my time on grading and ensures that no complaints from student would follow. When the criteria are measurable, there is no room for complaints.

[polly_mer]

When the criteria are measurable, there is no room for complaints.

Hahahahahahaha!

I teach mostly engineering classes.  I have rubrics for some problems like "Used the ideal gas law on a liquid, 0 points".  I still get complaints out the wazoo because "That's only a minor mistake and that's way too much of a deduction for a minor mistake". 

I actually get the same number of complaints for my somewhat-fuzzy grading based on essays as I get on the iron-clad "this is math.  It's right or wrong" grading.  The only difference is the student population.  Some of my students will fight anything that isn't full credit and some students will reflect, look at the examples/answer key, and accept that their work wasn't as good as the example.

[cs_prof]

I would like to share some my experience.

While teaching software programming courses, I used to struggle with the black-and-white grading for a long time. The student's program either runs the test cases correctly, or it does not. No or very little gray area remains. To soften this pass-or-fail grading, I started using peer reviewing of student homework reports. In my class, students get access to all peers' reports and must review two reports and post their reviews for the whole class for a small grade. Then they have a chance to resubmit own corrected report. The grade is raised if in the second attempt student has given a detail explanation of what she had learned from her mistakes as a result of peer reviewing. I am doing so both in my online and face-to-face classes alike.

This builds up student morale; before I introduced this approach, many were just dropping my courses from the frustration.  Now, judging from their feedback, my students feel much more comfortable and presumably learn better. This improvement comes at a cost, of course. Now I have to grade about half of homeworks for the second time and all peer reviews. To minimize the overheads, the whole process should be properly organized.