My approach to grading is characterized by principles of transparency, feedback, and revision. I strive always 1.) to clearly explain the assignment parameters and goals, 2.) to make myself available during office hours and by phone for consultation and to recommend CTL resources where necessary, 3.) to assess projects according to a rubric derived directly from the assignment parameters, and, in writing-focused classes, 4.) to require (sometimes multiple) drafts on which I will offer detailed feedback, taking into account the students' needs. I offer comments for further development on final drafts exclusive of end-of-term essays, as these essays cannot be revised. (For essays that are revised, I do not replace the original grade with the revised grade, as it is essential for students to work with feedback in a timely fashion and treat the essay as a tool for personal growth. To that end, while I always allow revisions, I average the two grades together. This strategy ensures that students must do the hard work of drafting and revising, rather than simply "fixing errors."
Day-to-day activities are typically graded on a 10 or 20 point scale, as check/check plus/check minus, and I will usually drop the lowest one or two grades to account for off days. This is one way I factor participation. While I take attendance every meeting, I emphasize to students that being in the class on its own does not count as participation or thoughtful participation in that class. For this reason, I typically do not deduct for attendance, though our Composition Program has a program-wide policy by which I abide.
Please note that Canvas has some idiosyncrasies when it comes to downloading and displaying annotated essays; as a result, the downloaded essays do not display my annotations correctly.
Composition is one of the foundation classes that all students take at Marymount, and I consider my work in this class to be essential for the continued development of our students. While each faculty member may choose the theme of her course and redevelop the details of the major assignments, our composition program has a common syllabus focusing on summary, informational literacy, rhetorical analysis, and research writing for a variety of audiences. I consider accurate, complete summary to be the most important skill I teach in our composition courses, and I focus a great deal of energy on it; all of my other courses--from survey to senior seminar--are rooted in accurate summary and clear comprehension. To help students from the outset learn about information literacy, I teach articles that students, themselves, locate and share with the class. These "essay shares" are available for students to write formal summaries on, as well. I describe this assignment in full in the Outstanding Teaching section.
Summary assignment for EN101 and rubric
Sample graded student work at a variety of levels
Student essay and comments/assessment (A-)
Student essay and comments/assessment (B)
Student essay and comments/assessment (C)
Student essay and comments/assessment (D)
In my 200-level survey courses, I focus on getting students to fulfill a small constellation of related assignments designed to elicit many of the goals of the courses. My survey courses are typically organized around 1.) weekly personal journalling to solicit engaged personal response, 2.) midterm and final exams, 3.) in-class activities, and 4.) brief 2-3 page essays. Here is the (most recent version of the) writing assignment I give to all students in EN203 World Literature 1500-1800, accompanied by sample student work with my feedback/comments at varying skill levels. Students complete this assignment on three different occasions during the course of the semester. In addition to helping students understand key content, my goal with this assignment is to emphasize the skills of identifying appropriate topics, and reiterate the need to focus on specific and well-chosen evidence. In-class activities are to help students understand the purpose and goals of the writing assignment (which is linked to the exams). For instance, this essay-prep group activity on--not coincidentally, as I teach the essay as a historical genre tied to the development of modern thought--Montaigne's Essays replicates the basic structure of the writing assignment. In recent years, I have evolved the use of a clear rubric for these essays, and today I feel very comfortable with this assignment and its goals. I plan to implement a similar approach in my other survey class, EN207, which I teach much less frequently. Students who do poorly on this assignment are often not following directions or have not read the assignment sheet, using texts we have not read or not referencing the actual material we've looked at. In the Expected Teaching section, I explain how I have revised the assignment you see below.
Contextual Illustration 2-page essay assignment
Sample graded student work at a variety of levels
In addition, here is a student essay responding to this assignment that was published in Magnificat, which I use as a model.
I invited Dr. Marguerite Rippy to observe my EN207 Theater History course, a LT-2 core course, in Spring 2017; her observation is available here.
EN340 Major Women Writers before Austen
The LT-2 course I teach most frequently is EN340: Major Women Writers (Women Writers before Austen), which I teach through the theme of literary canonicity, publicity, and the politics of women's writing during the early modern period. In this class, I incorporate research in the final project; however, I spend a great deal of time and energy focusing on the language itself, and the act of writing, as that is a major theme throughout the term. In this mid-term essay, I ask students to create a targeted close reading that is clearly framed by class lecture and/or introductory readings. Students are drawing on brief but highly-focused 2-page essays that look at one particular text's imagery or theme within a context of summary, so they have experience with close reading, and these essays are revised, so revision is an important component of the grade. Students who might have a good draft but do not revise from feedback will see that reflected in the "revision" portion of the rubric grade. Here is a sampling of my in-line comments and rubric with final comments on student work.
Sample student work and comments/assessment (A)
Sample student work and comments/assessment (A-)
Sample student work and comments/assessment (B)
Sample student work and comments/assessment (B-)
Sample student work and comments/assessment (C-/D+)
I have also experimented in iterations of EN340 with writing for the web. In 2014, I offered students a choice for their final project between a traditional thesis-driven research essay or an informational, researched webpage. For context, here is the assignment sequence as a whole. Again, my grading philosophy is intensely focused on offering feedback at the earliest stages. Students write proposals (which sometimes require revision), write annotated bibliographies (which also sometimes require revision), present their work in progress, workshop it, meet with me in one-on-one contexts, and take feedback on drafts. I place less weight on the "technological polish" of the work, because I want students to focus on the content. I continue to strategize pedagogical methods that help students produce the best work possible, merging content and form.
Sample feedback on proposal (A webpage), and earlier draft (C- webpage).
I invited Joe Provenzano of the Center for Teaching and Learning to observe my EN340 course in Spring 2017. His observation is available here.
EN426 Studies in the Novel: Digital Clarissa
In Fall 2015, I taught EN426, Studies in the Novel with a digital focus. Our ambitious goal was to construct an online edition of the longest novel in the English language, Samuel Richardson's 18th-century epistolary novel, Clarissa. Students read a single novel throughout the course of the entire term, and each week, were responsible for posting specific letters on our course blog site. We worked together as a class to devise a schema to guide our posts, given our goals of making this very long and inaccessible text available for a modern, digitally-informed audience--what kind of vocabulary would we use to cagetorize each post? What logic would inform our tagging of each post? How do we discover the dates of the letters, when not all are indicated directly? How do we represent in our version the different editions of the text? What about the "editorial" footnotes Richardson used, or the idiosyncrasies of the author's attempt to render "manuscript" in print? We sought to render it searchable, sortable by author and addressee, and available by date, as well. At the end of the term, we began to add cross-references, to learn a bit more about how an interactive text might function. Given that the novel is told in letters, the blog form seemed an excellent modern corollary to explore many of the same themes of authorship, privacy, publicity, gender, and power. At the end of the term, students were to reflect on the project's strengths and weaknesses, embedding images from their own course work with the blog, and then propose their own digital project.
I was very proud to have led students through this major text, a novel that many people who begin it never finish; however, this was my first attempt teaching a course that fully embedded both the practice and the theory of digital humanities. Immediately after teaching this course, I was sure I would never teach it again, as students were not prepared to sustain a major undertaking over the course of the whole term and had noted difficulties with the language and historical context. Additionally, the technological component of the course proved daunting for a specific, vocal subset of the population. Students were very resistant to the course concept, and I asked my colleague Dr. Robert Otten--also an 18th-century scholar--to observe the class. In retrospect, I know students learned a great deal--as you will see from the essays below. I would recommend skimming through the final project essays, below. I think now I would teach the course again, and with the same novel, but with more scaffolding, more research opportunities (specifically, by having the class begin annotating/linking from earlier in the term), and more in-class lab time. At midterm, students were asked to craft a research report about a major historical or cultural context in the novel. I include a sample of student work, below.
Sample Letter (note links, tags, and calendar)
Final Project Assignment and Rubric and Rubric
Midterm Research Report and Rubric and Rubric
Student Essay and Assessment (A)
Student Essay and Assessment (C+)
Student Essay and Assessment (D)
Informal ECCO Presentation and Sample Student Work
Digital Tools Team Presentation and Sample Student Work
Final Project Assignment and Rubric and Rubric
Student Essay and Assessment (A)
Student Essay and Assessment (C)
Student Essay and Assessment (D)
Published student work from this class: “The Gendered Social Norms in“The Gendered Social Norms in Clarissa," by Kadie Aaron
I invited Dr. Bob Otten to observe this class, and his observation is available here.
In courses that are required of English Majors/Minors, I spend even more time on revision and feedback, incorporating more intensive full-class workshop, because these courses are more focused on discussion and development of original thought within an explicitly theoretical context. They are typically taught "seminar style," and given the makeup of the courses, workshop can be robust. Students will often work on a major project for close to the entirety of the term, in addition to completing briefer formal assignments and in-class/homework activities. For a sense of this, here is an example of a full-class workshopped final essay using Google docs in EN290: Introduction to Literary Theory. Presentations are a key component of this class dynamic. Here is the team presentation assignment I give to students for in-class discussion leadership about a theoretical/critical essay assigned in EN424: Senior Seminar, which I teach through the theme of the ethics of literary analysis.
The writing process is an essential component of these classes, as is the research process, and I routinely assign pre-writing projects and annotated bibliographies that I expect will be detailed, thorough, and well-written. Here is the annotated bibliography assignment (8 sources) for the final project in EN424: Senior Seminar, and below, please find a representative sampling of graded student work:
The final seminar paper project (and rubric) in EN424 is a 12-15 page essay with 7 required secondary sources. Because it goes through such a rigorous drafting and revision process, it is rare to have low grades in this course for which a C is required to pass.
Published essays from this class:
“Ethical Translation and Intertextuality in Foe and Robinson Crusoe," by Leticia Zelaya
“The Power of Voodoo,” by Angelica Brewer
“Considering the Autobiographical ‘I’: Between Self-Narration and Fiction,” by Ashley Tucker
While the final seminar essay in EN424 is between 12-15 pages, I assign a closely-related midterm essay of 5-6 pages (rubric) that captures the premise of the final project in miniature. Below, please find a representative sampling of graded student work:
Essay and Assessment (A)
Essay and Assessment (B)
Essay and Assessment (C-)
Essay and Assessment (D+)
I also assign innovative hands-on projects in my courses for the major. In EN490: Major Authors, which is required for the major, I teach the work of Alexander Pope and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu as a focused examination of the role of gender, disability, and access to the marketplace of print in literary history. The final project options for this class is an innovation I am very pleased with, as the assignment produces such extraordinary results. Students write "critical introductions" of 5-6 pages to a specific text, and accompany that critical introduction with an audiobook or a correction of dirty OCR, as I describe in more depth in Outstanding Teaching. Students also have an opportunity to re-write a Wikipedia article, accompanied with a reflective essay; to date, no one has chosen that option in this class.
Audiobook Project Sample
OCR Project Sample
Range of Final Projects
Final Project Essay and Comments/Assessment (C-) note: grade minimum of C- for this class
In graduate courses, I focus on archival work, analysis, original argumentation, and professionalism. I typically incorporate a substantial blog-and-response component, as well as an archive assignment, a ~6 page proposal and ~15 page seminar paper , and the sequence required for a conference presentation (a conference paper, a conference abstract/proposal, and a presentation). These courses are highly discussion-oriented, and I expect almost never to lecture. My grading for these courses runs the range of grades for graduate classes, where C is considered deficient and is not transferable. While I do grade in the range from A to C, I provide individual attention and feedback at every stage of the writing process, from idea generation to drafting and revising to polishing for public dissemination. Below, I have included sample graduate conference papers, based on seminar papers of 15+ pages, accompanied by an abstract for submission to a regional or national professional conference.
Seminar paper, conference paper, abstract and my evaluation (A) **Note that this paper was presented at a regional professional conference, the East-Central American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Seminar paper, conference paper, abstract and my evaluation (B-)