OK, I admit it – my kids 
taught me this. To prevent conflicts with my children I was always willing to listen to good reasons for differences between what I thought I wanted them to do and what they thought they should be doing. I wanted them to be critical thinkers.
If you want a student to be able to think critically it includes thinking critically about their exam and assignments grades. After all, admit it or not, grading is subjective on the part of the teacher. No matter how much you think you have an exact answer that you are looking for, there is always another way to look at the problem and your students will find it.
Allowing students to challenge their exam and assignment grades is one more way of getting them to think critically and prevent conflicts in the classroom. This is not a free-for-all proposition by any means. There are a number of very clear steps that you as an instructor need to follow to make this work.
Step One: Incorporate into your syllabus. Think ahead and let students know from the first day of class that there will be a clear process if they are not happy with the grade on an assignment.
Step Two: Communicate expectations about what you want students to get out of the course and what information they should pay attention to. Lay out your course with the emphasis on the same areas that tests and assignments will emphasize. This seems like a no-brainer but if you spend all your time talking about how to create a matrix table and then test them on how to create a Gantt chart, they are not going to be happy. Remember to utilize a taxonomy of questions that develop the material from basic information to analytic and integrative thinking.
Step Three: Clearly define the challenge process. Provide steps by step instructions that include when, where, and how to challenge a grade. Here is one process that I have used:
1) Wait two days (because we all need to think about it);
2) Write out points that you think were marked erroneously;
3) Explain the reasons you think the mark should be changed – backed up with page references in the textbook or handouts/class lecture notes;
4) Include the original document (assignment or test) and
hand-in (or submit electronically) within one week of receiving the original mark. Make the timeline short and stick to it to prevent that inevitable end-of-term push by students to get a better grade.
Don’t think that you are going to be overwhelmed with the work you will have to do from this. A few things tend to happen: a) only the A students bother and it doesn’t change their grade; b) all students know that they had that option and it was their own choice if they didn’t do it; c) when students go back to write their ‘good reasons’ they find out that the instructor was right after all.
Have fun!!!
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Dr. Marcella LaFever (University of New Mexico, 2005) is an Associate Professor in the Communications Department at the University of the Fraser Valley. She specializes in intercultural communication and brings that expertise to various subjects such as communication for workplace, instruction, social media, team and public speaking contexts.