Dr.

Will Kurlinkus
The University of Oklahoma
wkurlinkus@gmail.com

Steps to Grading Multimodal Assignments

I. Steps to Grading Assignments
1. [Refresh Yourself]: Think back to how you typically grade. What are the best practices
of grading textual assignments? What is hard and easy for you? How do you typically
grade? Multimodal assignments should continue to keep best practices of traditional
grading in mind.
2. [Start from What Youve Taught]: You arent pulling multimodal grading criteria from
thin air. To develop grading criteria, examine your assignment sheet, your course
objectives, and what youve taught in class. Write down 6 or 7 criteria from these 3
sources.
3. [Develop a Rubric]: Make it clear to yourself and your students what you are going to
be assessing. Though first-timers tend to think grading multimodal assignments, like
evaluating art or literature, is subjective, it is not, and a rubric will remind you of this.
4. [Divide Your Rubric]: There are 3 categories you might want to think about when
grading multimodal assignments. Though these categories are somewhat artificial, they
might help you with weighting your different criteria.
Art (Beauty): Art is about communicating the authors identity/vision of the
world through subjective beauty. It is also about surface level skill. Though it is
important to reward skill, art is the hardest to grade and often counts for the
fewest points.
Rhetoric (Theory): Rhetoric is about using the available means of persuasion to
directly communicate a concept to an audience. When evaluating rhetoric we
ask does this argument make sense? Does it balance ethos, pathos, and logos?
Does it take into account the audience? Is this project well researched? Is the text
well developed? Rhetoric is about the direct connection (the message) between
the rhetor and the audience.
Design (Use): Design is writing with use in mind. It is about delivery, context,
and interactivity. The message/persuasion is delivered through immersion and
use of an object rather than through a direct telling. Does this project work and
fulfill its goals? Might someone be able to use this design without the student
explaining what it is?
5. [Design Justification]: Always give students the opportunity to justify their design, to
describe what they built and why they built it. A design justification should serve as a
pitch to a client explaining that design choices werent random nor purely subjective
(art) but rather well researched and carefully crafted.

II. Common Difficulties and Ways Around Them

1. Explaining to students whove only written essays (and to yourself) how much work is
enough?

Dr. Will Kurlinkus

The University of Oklahoma
wkurlinkus@gmail.com

[Dont Compare]: First, try your hardest to avoid comparisons between projects.

They are usually going to be incredibly different from each other, and its
difficult to equate labor across modes.
[Process Documentation]: Have students document the process of creating their
project, showing you their labor through quick photos and/or a timeline.
[Set a Price]: In the real world, often a price is decided upon before a project is
completed. Set a price that you would pay your student as a client, and have
them itemize their labor into that price.
[Sales Pitch]: Have students communicate in their design justification to a client
without knowledge of the project. Imagine a CEO of a company who only has the
time to sit in on final presentations. Anyone should be able to come up to the
project/poster and see why it is valuable, interesting, useful.
2. Im not an expert on multimodal making in the same way Im an expert on writing. I feel
weird grading multimodal projects.
Perhaps you arent an expert on movies, board games, etc. But you dont need to
be an expert on a million specific media. You are an expert at evaluating rhetoric
and audience-centeredness. You have a list of criteria and a rubric that highlights
what you taught this semester, and you are using that to grade, not some
nebulous expertise. Finally, it is the students job to communicate to a non-
expert audience why their design is valuable, useful, useable. Its not your job, in
this context, to be an expertits the students job to teach you. They are they
expert.

Figure 1. Stephen P. Andersens Hierarchy of User Experience from Seductive Design. Multimodal
Assignments should evaluate each level and strive towards creations that are meaningful.