Ah, Grading...
I would hazard a guess that most of us agree that grading (at least in the humanities) is our least favorite component of this job. It's boring, it's often disheartening, it's sometimes uncomfortable, it's so delicate (with dozens of egos on the line).
And yet it's so, so important. A friend of mine once said that she considered that her grading was the best one-on-one teaching that she could consitently do, and knowing how infrequently students come to office hours, I'm inclined to agree. Of course this means grading is worse for me.
Right now a tyipcal paper has three major comments on every page. Here's an example:
OK, to make this significant claim justified, you need to really present much more evidence to illustrate each of these. Without quote evidence, your claims are simply hypotheses.
I know that comments needn't be so detailed, but I find that tone is very important in comments, despite being the enemy of speed. I also find that in addition to locating a problem, a margin comment must also compare that problem against a larger rationale.
I've taken that logic to the end comment as well, where I typically type a half to 3/4 of a page of end notes, and with particularly tricky papers, I'll type up a full page.
Here's the thing. I've been told, "Oh, you'll overwhelm them with comments," but that's never what my students themselves tell me. On the student evaluation question about the usefulness of feedback, my aggregate score over five sections was a 4.79 out of 5. And the best indicator of all: students use the feedback on this first paper...they read it, and they implement those suggestions in their future papers, admittedly to varying success, but they're reading.
This means for me that I spend more time commenting, and therefore more time procrastinating on the commenting...that's the kicker. I've had this batch of papers fo almost a week now, and I've graded two. It was a busy weekend, but still, I'm procrastinating, and it's only going to delay the response further. At least I can justify it by saying the trade-off is detailed feedback.
technorati tag: teaching-carnival
Comments
I tend to give a lot of comments, too, and my students respond similarly - particularly my stronger students, who often say that no one has ever commented on their work before. That said, I've had to find ways to streamline the commenting process because with a 4/4 load, I do not have the time to type up long end-comments, etc. Now, in lieu of a long end comment, I usually have a checklist that I fill out. I might just write one or two things at the end of a paper in addition to that. Also, in writing classes, I meet with students rather than writing lengthy comments to them. I can spend a half-hour on lengthy comments at the end, where these meetings are only 15 minutes, and I can be much more sure that they're getting my tone, etc. This also forces me to grade the papers almost immediately, because I've got to have them done for the scheduled conferences.
Posted by: Dr. Crazy | September 26, 2006 10:32 AM
I'm taking a break from grading papers to read your blog right now.
Yes, I too think the comments are important -- but I wish I could figure out how to write them faster. That's the big problem with grading. It's just so time-consuming.
Maybe if I didn't keep stopping to surf blogs ....
Posted by: jo(e) | September 26, 2006 12:51 PM
The other good thing about writing longer comments is that it is a time-saver in the end, because (most) students then don't have to come up to you separately after class or in office hours to get you to explain how they could have done better, justify their mark, or to interpret cryptic comments like, "Nd mr xplnation" (I got that on an undergrad essay once as the ONLY comment).
Posted by: styleygeek | September 26, 2006 7:58 PM
Dr. C...I actually feel guilty for not doing more mandatory conferencing, and the "I don't have time for it" excuse certainly doesn't hold up to your model. Frankly I've only ever used it in writing classes, but not in the lit survey. Perhaps I'll try it for the final paper...
Posted by: Cats & Dogma | September 26, 2006 8:46 PM
Oh, and Jo(e): What do you think I'm doing right now? procrastinating by blogging...
Posted by: Cats & Dogma | September 26, 2006 8:47 PM