The biggest problem with assigning work...
...Is that you then have to grade the work.
Mid semester grades are due tomorrow, so I finally had to ratchet down and grade the work that had been piling up on my desk. Hard to give people an idea of how they are doing in your class when really you have no idea of how they are doing in your class.
Well, now I know.
I had mid-term exams to grade along with homework projects. In an effort to make exam grading less gloomy I watch the scores in real time, sort of like a race. Reading 30 papers which ideally ought to have at least comparable if not identical answers gets to be a little mind numbing. I go 5 questions at a time, doing five from one test and then the same five from the next, working my way through the entire stack. It is chipping away at the mountain a little rather than trying to do the whole thing at once. Plus it, I think, helps me be more consistent with partial credit - doing all of one question in close proximity timewise. I think it makes for more consistent grading across all the papers.
It also lets me enter the scoring five questions at a time. I can also sort the columns by score after each group of five, so I can see who is "in the lead." "Will it be a grad or an undergrad? Will it be a dramat or an out of department student? Ooh, such and such started strong, but they are really fading at the end." It doesn't effect individual scores, because I don't look at the name until after I score the answers.
I know it must sound dorky, but it is kind of interesting. Watching someone put on a hard charge at the end to make an A, seeing someone get out of the gate quick only to fade, watching the top score in the class see-saw between a tiny group as their page scores dither from one to the other. It's like a little story to go with the grading.
Perhaps just to be filed under "whatever gets you through the day."
Mid semester grades are due tomorrow, so I finally had to ratchet down and grade the work that had been piling up on my desk. Hard to give people an idea of how they are doing in your class when really you have no idea of how they are doing in your class.
Well, now I know.
I had mid-term exams to grade along with homework projects. In an effort to make exam grading less gloomy I watch the scores in real time, sort of like a race. Reading 30 papers which ideally ought to have at least comparable if not identical answers gets to be a little mind numbing. I go 5 questions at a time, doing five from one test and then the same five from the next, working my way through the entire stack. It is chipping away at the mountain a little rather than trying to do the whole thing at once. Plus it, I think, helps me be more consistent with partial credit - doing all of one question in close proximity timewise. I think it makes for more consistent grading across all the papers.
It also lets me enter the scoring five questions at a time. I can also sort the columns by score after each group of five, so I can see who is "in the lead." "Will it be a grad or an undergrad? Will it be a dramat or an out of department student? Ooh, such and such started strong, but they are really fading at the end." It doesn't effect individual scores, because I don't look at the name until after I score the answers.
I know it must sound dorky, but it is kind of interesting. Watching someone put on a hard charge at the end to make an A, seeing someone get out of the gate quick only to fade, watching the top score in the class see-saw between a tiny group as their page scores dither from one to the other. It's like a little story to go with the grading.
Perhaps just to be filed under "whatever gets you through the day."
1 comment:
Would that all professors made a game out of grading for themselves, which then led to a more honest and thoughtful grading of papers. There should be a thousand more like you out there. But then again, you're one of a kind...
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