Blogging Pedagogy

I'm trying a new grading strategy this year. I use a table with two columns. The first column lists the grading criteria and how much each aspect of the paper is worth, for example:

1. Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the evidence in the essay (this may include a discussion of statistics). 25 points.

2. Write a concise, relevant introduction. 5 points.

The second column includes my comments on that aspect of the paper as well as the total points the student received.

The London Times Higher Education Supplement has an editorial up on the practice of marginal annotation in paper grading. Here's the link:

Margins Aren't Meant to be Written In

My comments after the break ...

Thanks to a tip from someone over at the Blogora, I've started testing out a new tool called Annotate (check out their website for a 30 day trial). Annotate is an add-in for Microsoft Word 2007 (a version for Word 2003 is forthcoming) that gives you many more options for commenting on student work. There are a lot of stock comments for things like comma splices or transitions.

My students this semester have so far seemed bright and engaged--quite easy to teach and get along with. And, after my agonizing first assignment last semester, I deliberately kept my instructions short and simple, not even giving length or format requirements. Still, the average student has failed to follow the paper assignment directions on 3 separate counts.

And does it work? I've been griping to colleagues over the last several months about my failures to inspire good class discussions, and some have simply said, "up the participation percent." Folks, does this work for you? If so, what was the magic number?

Ever since Peg Syverson first introduced me to the Learning Record, I have anxiously awaited the semester when I'd get to use it to evaluate my students. I probably have the same criticisms of traditional grading systems that most of you do--even those who continue using them despite their limitations--and hoped the LRO would be a productive way out. Actually, I think I saw it as a potentially perfect grading system.... And then the disillusionment set in...:

My class this semester has been sequestered by a First-Year Interest Group, or FIG, a group of students with similar interests or majors who take several classes together. According to the FIG office, the purpose of these groups is:

* to help students connect with each other, advisors, faculty and ultimately, to help them feel connected to the institution
* to help students make the transition from being a high school learner to a university learner

I prefer to grade essays in a random order, so that people with last names near the end of the alphabet don't necessarily get graded last. I also like my list to be truly random, and I hate doing it with dice. So I wrote a neat little list randomizer using random numbers generated by random.org. The randomness comes from a computer in Dublin which records static from a radio tuned to an unused frequency and extrapolates an unpredictable stream of binary from that.

The upshot is I've made a web page where you can type in a list of names (or anything really) and have it rearranged into a random order. Here it is. I hope you find it useful. If anyone is interested, I can provide source code.

This list of ways to be good at giving bad news translates well to the task of giving bad grades.

One thing I always do in my undergraduate writing classes is to encourage them to argue their way to a better grade -- and lay down the ground rules for what constitutes a good argument. It gives students an option that doesn't involve telling me how hard they worked or assuming that I am just punitive. And occasionally these arguments are convincing and I'll budge on the grade.

A recent article on Kairos caught my attention: http://english.ttu.edu/kairos/10.2/binder2.html?coverweb/sorapure/index.html

In my own experience, multimedia assignments are notoriously difficult to grade. It isn't so much that I can't easily see the time and energy put into these projects; rather, it is hard to provide a transparent grading model to students. In other words, classes taught in computer classrooms (and esp here at the CWRL) should find ways to utilize all the available technology we have; yet, at the same time, our grading models are constrained to written texts. Should we give grades to visual or film texts that are unique to the media? Or, should we find ways to translate the grading of written texts into the visual? Does visual text count as 'writing' in an institutional sense (SWC) or not?