Does "the curve" qualify for your meaning?

No, that's not what we were doing. We were distributing the marks based on content. The question was out of 10 marks:

First part: 8 marks:
* 0/8 if you had no clue
* 4/8 if you just copied verbatim from the book
* 6/8 if you sensed there was something a bit off about the info in the book but didn't successfully correct it
* 8/8 if you correctly derived the thing we were looking for.
The remaining 2 marks were:
* 1 for showing you put some thought into the second question, and
* 1 for getting the answer right.

This way everyone in the class has their thoughts evaluated fairly, and rewarded if they put the work in.

Curving the grades in a class of only 21 is not a very good idea, especially when there are 3 graduate students taking the course. And most of the rest are a bunch of lazy engineering students who just copy the assignment off one person (often someone who does it wrong, to boot).

Anyway, my supervisor thinks there is a word for laying out the marks just so, being clear about what I am looking for in each assignment, and marking everyone on the same scale. We just can't remember it.