{"id":11868,"date":"2012-11-30t08:00:44","date_gmt":"2012-11-30t13:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/?p=11868"},"modified":"2013-03-09t22:18:13","modified_gmt":"2013-03-10t03:18:13","slug":"ask-professor-pedagogy-a-mountain-of-grading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/2012\/11\/ask-professor-pedagogy-a-mountain-of-grading\/","title":{"rendered":"ask professor pedagogy: a mountain of grading"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
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ask professor pedagogy<\/strong> is a twice monthly advice column written by 2022年世界杯中国小组赛积分 staff. one aspect of our mission is to cultivate dialogue about teaching and learning, so we welcome questions and concerns that arise in the classroom; particularly those from vanderbilt faculty, students, and staff. if you have a question that you’d like professor p to address, please send it to us<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

dear professor pedagogy,<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

it\u2019s fall semester, and all summer i was eager to get back into the classroom, engage in interesting discussions with my students, and see what new ideas and experiences they bring, but i’ve absolutely dreaded the mountain of grading that awaits me.\u00a0 this time it takes me to grade their papers and exams is ridiculous, and i end up overwhelmed as this dread overshadows anything i like about teaching.\u00a0 help!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

drained by grading<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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dear drained by grading,<\/p>\n

never fear, professor pedagogy is here!\u00a0 in my younger years, i had many days of wishing i could do something to scare all of my students into dropping the course before their first major assignments were due\u2014or at least just assign multiple-choice tests to be graded by someone else (or a machine). \u00a0i suspected that i spent more time grading each paper than the student spent writing it.\u00a0 i became crabbier with each paper, imagining the giant stack of grading as a creature ready to gut me and steal my soul all at once.\u00a0 in retrospect, i\u2019m sure these feelings came across in those copious comments in the margin:\u00a0 \u201cwhat?\u00a0 you can\u2019t be serious!\u00a0 this is the most ridiculous statement i\u2019ve seen all day.\u00a0 oh, except for the one in your previous paragraph.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

i then came across the notion of \u201clight grading\u201d and the advice to \u201climit your comments or notations to those your students can use for further learning or improvement\u201d on our 2022年世界杯中国小组赛积分\u2019s \u201cmaking grading more efficient\u201d section of the \u201cgrading student work<\/a>\u201d teaching guide. it made me remember something i\u2019d heard about years before from a colleague who taught english. she talked about \u201cminimal marking,\u201d based on an article in college english <\/em>in 1983. i hadn\u2019t given it any thought since i figured it was, well, for college english classes, but according to this material and some research on student reading practices with comments on graded essays, the more \u201cminimal\u201d we can be in our marginal comments, the better. let me explain.<\/p>\n

first, what is \u201cminimal marking\u201d? richard haswell\u2019s version applies primarily to grammar, punctuation, and other micro-level issues:<\/p>\n

all surface mistakes in a student’s paper are left totally unmarked within the text\u2026. each of these mistakes is indicated only with a check in the margin by the line in which it occurs. a line with two checks by it, for instance, means the presence of two errors, no more, within the boundary of that line\u2026.. where i feel it is useful, mistakes are explained or handbooks cited\u2026.. until a student attempts to correct checked errors, the grade on the essay remains unrecorded.<\/p>\n

haswell\u2019s specific approach saves grading time for the instructor and encourages revision and better editing from the student, but minimal marking can be extended to include larger issues of content and organization.\u00a0 this video<\/a> effectively illustrates additional versions of minimal marking:<\/p>\n