You know how a fair number of the young folks you see on campus are looking at their phones at any given time? What are they looking at?
I mean, I can check facebook, and my email, but all the folks I'm likely to text work (except my Mother, but she keeps plenty busy) and don't text me unless there's something up.
So I asked my students while we were waiting for the class hour to begin. A few mentioned texts or facebook messenger, and email. But weirdly, several of them were looking at our on line course management system, looking for grades. One said they'd turned in a paper the week before break, but still hadn't received a grade on it. And that was like opening the spigot, because pretty much all of them said they were having similar experiences.
So, in a big course, papers, it can take more than two weeks (and certainly an instructor may actually have taken a break over break). But the number of students who talked, in those few minutes, about their frustrations with not getting graded stuff back, or not getting feedback, was pretty high, and each person who came in as we were talking, quickly chimed in.
Now, let's take these with a grain of salt. One student who complained about not getting anything back in a first year writing course acknowledged that she'd received extensive feedback on her work, just not actual grades. It turns out she got an A in the course. I don't know what the feedback looked like, but usually when I give feedback on an A paper, I write things about the smart ideas, good organization, strong thesis, overall high quality, and then maybe make a suggestion about how to tweak one thing to make it even stronger. And the student said that others in the course got grades.
So, I don't know. It seems weird that the student didn't ask the teacher, doesn't it?
On the other hand, it also seems weird not to give students feedback that includes a grade unless you're using a portfolio system, in which case your feedback includes revision suggestions and opportunities, probably.
Do you folks post grades on a course management system? (I don't.)
How long do you think is okay to take to grade and return a short essay assignment (under, say, 5 pages)? (I aim for one week, but sometimes take two.)
Do you give feedback without grades? (I'm sure you have a good reason. Please share.)
In my comp classes, I do give feedback without grades; and I do this on papers in my upper-level English classes sometimes as well.
ReplyDeleteI do this because my experiences has shown me that students learn almost nothing at all from grades. Grades show them either "Yay! I won!" or "Man, I suck." They don't teach them what works in writing, or how to make their writing work, which especially in composition classes is what we're there for.
So what I'll do is meet with them over the initial draft and explain what's working, and talk to them about what isn't working, and how they can fix it. Then they're allowed to submit a revision, which I read again, and return to them (usually by the next class period) with more comments. (Comments like: "Good job! You fixed the content! But you still need work on giving us support for your claims. Find more evidence for X, Y, Z. Also...")
Students can return their papers for further evaluation and receive more comments until both they and I think they're excellent papers, or until we run out of semester. By the time we reach excellent paper level, usually the student knows something about what a good paper looks like -- and, more importantly, the level of work and revision that goes into writing a good paper.
THAT's my main aim. Showing them how real writing works.
That sounds like a great way to teach writing, though massively labor intensive! And even if they don't have grades, they have a pretty good idea of where they stand, sounds like. (The student who's willing to sit on a B, for example, because they need to spend their time on another course, needs to know they're in B land and not actually in C land.)
DeleteAnd of course I get students who never do the revision work. They take the comments from the first conference and do nothing at all -- just turn in the original paper, unrevised, at the end of the semester. But these students are very few, I've been pleased to find. Most students, if you'll work with them, work on their writing.
DeleteIt *is* a lot of work, but because it's not wasted work (that is, their writing does get better) it's far less frustrating than just assigning papers and having to read terrible essay after terrible essay, without being able to do much about it, which was what teaching comp used to be like for me. :D
It's GREAT to see improvement, though!
Delete1. I do post grades in Blackboard, though for the first few weeks of the term, those are all pass/fail, since they are smaller assignments leading up to a larger assignment.
ReplyDelete2. On draft essays, I give feedback, and I show them where they stand in meeting the criteria so far---but no actual grade. However, when they revise and resubmit, they must also explain what they revised and why---and they get a grade for that self assessment, as well as for the revision (partly graded on whether or not they attempted to make serious revisions, rather than superficial ones).
3. I take a week for shorter assignments, unless I'm swamped with all of my classes, but even then, rarely 2 weeks or more. Usually, my feedback is too necessary before they move on to the next assignment. This is incredibly time consuming and stressful to me, alas.
Hi Stacey (if I may), I really like the idea of them writing a rational for their revisions. My sympathies about the stress, though.
Delete1. I do enter grades into Canvas as soon I've graded each assignment; in fact, I grade most everything electronically on Canvas anymore anyway.
ReplyDelete2. My syllabus has a declared policy giving me 2 weeks to grade major essays and exams. I usually end up taking all of it, alas. Usually by the time students actually turn in the paper, I've had 15-30 conferences with them (depending on whether a conference is mandatory for them or not), and I'm so fried and tired of thinking about thesis statements that I have to take a few days before I can grade the final product. Then I'm up against the deadline before I know it...
3. I always gives grades with feedback, but I've fantasized about teaching at the handful of universities that give students written evaluations rather than grades in each class. It seems like so much of what I write in comments is in service of defensively justifying the grade, which takes any fun out of the process.
Hi Shane, I, too, find that a lot of my comments are about defending the grade; I'd be able to be a lot more encouraging if I weren't grading at the same time.
DeleteI'm fascinated by the way you use "anymore" in your first sentence. I hear people up in the Midwest use it this way, but it doesn't come naturally to my speaking or writing.
I do post grades on our LMS. Never feedback without grades. Sometimes, however, the system is confusing enough that I think I've shared the grades but they're not visible to students. Our LMS (D2L) has multiple roadblocks - in the dropbox you have to publish feedback. In the Grades spreadsheet, you have to make final grades visible. Neither tool is intuitive to the novice user, so that might be an issue with some of these other instructors.
ReplyDeleteHi Janice, I've never put grades up on our course management system. (The students get their work back with a grade and comments.) But I wonder if you're not right that there may be difficulties making the grade visible.
DeleteIf there's a portfolio system, students may get only feedback and not grades.
ReplyDeleteHi Undine, That makes sense. Do you think they should get an approximation, so they know where they stand?
DeleteI do, but I don't teach in the classes that have that option. I'm a believer in letting students know where they stand.
DeleteI don't write a grade on a paper copy of a paper. I put the grade AND my comments on the LMS. That way, I can refer to the comments I've made in the past if I want to. I do write marginal comments, and/or make some minimal corrections on papers that I hand back. But I only out the grade on the LMS. it helps with handing back papers too -- no one can see anyone else's grade. (Although you can put that on the last page too for similar effect.)
ReplyDeleteI haven't taught writing for a while, but I do extensive comments on papers in my literature classes. The comments somewhat justify the grade, but usually I'm reacting to what they have written and telling them what it made me think about. I always make sure to say a good thing as well as something constructive about trying to work in their writing. Usually my comments run between 4-8 sentences. So I write a lot on their papers. They say they read the comments. I urge them to do so. And they always say that no one else in the department gives them as much feedback as I do. Perhaps there's something wrong with me.
No matter what class I'm teaching, I always give grades on papers. Students are acclimated to getting grades and want to know where they stand. So I give them grades to let them have that footing. I don't disagree with others who don't give grades. I think it's up to the teacher. I just know that I personally like to know where I stand, so I give in to my personal preferences and give grades.
I usually give myself two weeks to grade papers. I tell the students on the first day of class and every time I collect papers that it will take up to two weeks. It helps keep the restlessness down if I remind them.
Knowing where you stand with stuff such as classes, jobs, is really important!
DeletePlease forgive typos. Writing on my phone makes for less-than-perfect commenting.
ReplyDeleteRemember that today's college students have often been raised on instantly available online grades since middle school. The expectation of this kind of feedback is pretty much hard-wired by the time they graduate high school. Peace - JR
ReplyDeleteGood point. Thanks.
DeleteI make extensive use of Blackboard's gradebook function (making sure everything is weighted & averaged properly), because I want students to be able to see exactly what their grade is in each category (& overall) at any time. I also tell them that it's their responsibility to check and to communicate with me if there are any questions--if they se a grade is missing for something they know they turned in, for example, or if they want to talk about how to improve their quiz grades, or whatever. In my experience, students really like having this kind of access and responsibility, and there are--or should be--no surprises.
ReplyDeleteI return all essays of up to 6pp. within a week and a half. I use a rubric for comments, but do also assign a grade. The only time I don't assign grades is on essays with a mandatory first (& then subsequent) draft, for the reasons noted above: I want students to focus on the feedback itself.
I think not grading drafts makes perfect sense. And students should know where they stand. A week and a half is fast, unless your classes (or load) are really small.
ReplyDeleteI have a good mix of kinds of classes, which makes it manageable even when teaching three courses--maybe one writing intensive course (3-4 papers with multiple drafts), with about 20 students, a bigger survey class (30-35),with just two papers (+ exams, etc), and a more advanced seminar or grad class with 10-15 students. And I'm careful about scheduling. But I definitely couldn't do it with four classes or with lots of writing-intensive ones.
DeleteThough I am in chemistry, I routinely read long laboratory reports (10-25 pages) for 50-60 students at a time. I keep their grades updates on an LMS. I send them back the reports within 2 weeks of submission, and the next report isn't due until after they have received grades on the previous. Feedback consists of a rubric + comments + a grade. I still hear and see on my assessments that the students feel I don't provide enough feedback. Short of tutoring them through writing it individually, I'm not sure I could do more.
ReplyDeleteWe also have toyed with Calibrated Peer Review as a mechanism for peer review. It's good, not great. I'd use it again for intro courses, but maybe not the upper division.
Thanks, Doc. It's interesting that you find the peer review less useful in more mature students. I wonder why? (That's not my experience with lit students.)
ReplyDelete