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I recently had a conversation with a couple of other instructors at UT about what to do when you've realized you've made a mistake about a student's grade, especially what to do if you've assigned a grade that is lower than what the student actually deserves.
Oftentimes, as younger or less experienced instructors, we have a tendency to believe that we cannot change a student's grade for the better because then they'll always question our grading practices, and then we'll have to deal with lessened authority in the classroom and constant requests for grade changes.
In the conversation with my fellow instructors, we discussed a couple of different solutions that would be, hopefully, fair to the student. One of these solutions was to bump up other grades over the course of the semester so that the student's final grade would be what it ought to be.
The other solution, which is the one I advocated, is simply to tell the student that you made a mistake and change his or her grade. I have done this before (yes, I make mistakes!), with no lessened authority and certainly no constant challenges to grades.
Of course, I have a teaching style in which I try not to be too authoritative in the classroom--I prefer students to feel comfortable challenging what I say because I believe that voicing those concerns allows 1) students to engage with the course and learn more and 2) me to become a better teacher, a better lecturer, and a better defender of rhetoric.
I'm also a "traditional" grader--I assign letter grades to each assignment rather than using a portfolio-based review system, and then I meet with the student. It's in this process of paper conferences that the student and I have the opportunity to discuss grades, wherein I go through the paper with the student and discuss all the comments I have made, which they have already read.
Once or twice in this process, a student and I have gone through a paper together and I've wound up at the end of the conference saying something like "Wow, why did I give you a C? I'm embarrassed that I made that mistake. Here, you deserve a B+. Sorry about that." I think that's totally ok.
In fact, if you're up to date on recent research out of UC Berkeley, you'll know that being embarrassed about mistakes actually makes you seem more trustworthy to others. So, feel free to suck up your pride (or anxiety about mistakes!), act a little embarrassed, and give 'em an A. They'll certainly appreciate a better grade, and they might like you more for admitting your mistake.
