![\"essay](\"https:\/\/facultysites.etown.edu\/mooret\/files\/2016\/07\/try-harder.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe standing-room only talk “Giving Students Feedback on their Papers”\u00a0hosted by Sal Meyers and Brian Smith offered compelling evidence-based research about better\u00a0ways of respond to student papers.\u00a0 I am eager to adapt my grading in light of their great ideas: respond thoughtfully, respond in summary, and respond with technology.<\/p>\n
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We are allowed to “tsk” thoughtless correspondents who type their emails\u00a0in ALL CAPS. \u00a0It turns out that students read many of the remarks on their graded papers as all-caps attacks on their identity. Professors who face stacks of essays may quickly dash off marginal notes like “Try harder.”<\/p>\n
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In the study reported on in this talk, it came to light that students read professor comments through the lens of their own insecurities. \u00a0If they had the opportunity to treat the marginal note like an instant message, they might respond with “Don’t yell at me,” or “I was trying.”<\/p>\n
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If we recall the need to be positive, we might scratch “Good” next to a paragraph, but even this comment could be improved. \u00a0Students benefit from explanations of why something is “Weak” or “Excellent” much more than seeing passages simply identified. \u00a0These explanations take time, and so it turns out a summary note at the end of the essay makes the most positive impact on students seeking to improve their writing.<\/p>\n
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In these summaries, it is best to limit comments to three main points students could work on in upcoming drafts or essays. \u00a0We could create separate Content and Mechanics summaries, to highlight the points in each category in its own summary.<\/p>\n
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Grading takes time, and grading kindly takes much, much longer. \u00a0The room full of energized instructors offered many options for speeding up the process of grading with summaries. \u00a0Some use TurnItIn (or other grading apps) to preset common QuickMark comments that can be dragged to the appropriate point in the digitally submitted essay. \u00a0“Bad Citation” in the handwritten grading scenario can turn into a much friendlier, instructive note:<\/p>\n
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“I’m glad to see you included a citation here. \u00a0Always remember to include both the author’s name and the page number, if it is a paper source. \u00a0The first element of the works cited entry must <\/strong>be the word that appears in the intext citation so that the reader can quickly leap from this citation to the works cited without having to guess at all. That leap should be as simple as using alphabetical order.” \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Other graders use voice recordings or screen-casting, depending on the content being graded. We might also consider setting up a requirement for students to actually read our grading comments. \u00a0Students could be required to summarize feedback and resubmit it as a mini-assignment before we enter the tentative grade.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Grading feels like it takes up a lion’s share of our time as instructors. \u00a0It makes sense to make this massive effort as useful as possible as an instructive tool, not just a means of calculating a number.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The standing-room only talk “Giving Students Feedback on their Papers”\u00a0hosted by Sal Meyers and Brian Smith offered compelling evidence-based research about better\u00a0ways of respond to student papers.\u00a0 I am eager to adapt my grading in light of their great ideas: respond thoughtfully, respond in summary, and respond with technology. We are allowed to “tsk” … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/facultysites.etown.edu\/mooret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/facultysites.etown.edu\/mooret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/facultysites.etown.edu\/mooret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/facultysites.etown.edu\/mooret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/facultysites.etown.edu\/mooret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/facultysites.etown.edu\/mooret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":866,"href":"https:\/\/facultysites.etown.edu\/mooret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions\/866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/facultysites.etown.edu\/mooret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/facultysites.etown.edu\/mooret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/facultysites.etown.edu\/mooret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}