So. Much. Grading. How can I streamline the grading process?

Let’s face it. Grading is one of the most time-consuming, least-fun components of the job. However, providing instructor feedback for students is one of the most important tasks to promote student learning and overall success. Therefore, we must figure out how to balance the task so that we are providing constructive, descriptive feedback in a timely manner while maintaining our own sanity. For both formative and summative feedback, there are many tools and features in the LMS and external technology that can help us streamline the grading process. Providing detailed, meaningful feedback for the formative assessments (please see our teaching guide How do I offer feedback on formative assessments?) helps streamline feedback on the summative assessments, allowing you to provide less descriptive, written feedback since those comments have been left on prior drafts or assignments, if your summative assessment is scaffolded. In short, summative assessments do not require as much descriptive feedback if you have given students good feedback on their formative assessments along the way, allowing you to provide mostly evaluative feedback.

Instructional Solutions

According to Kulik and Kulik, as paraphrased in Flower Darby’s Small Teaching Online, “One meta-analysis of more than 50 studies on this question found that feedback on lower-stakes assessments such as quizzes or classroom activities was more beneficial when it was immediate,” which addresses feedback on formative assessments, whereas “feedback on more major assessments, such as tests, was more beneficial following delay, perhaps allowing students some time to rest their brains and process their performance before reviewing the assessment and hearing the feedback,” which addresses feedback on summative assessments (111). Taking that into consideration, we need to consider different methods of grading for formative and summative assessments with formative feedback being more quick and descriptive/thorough and summative feedback being more delayed and evaluative.
For summative, or higher-stakes assessments, consider the following tools to provide evaluative feedback for students:

Intelligent agents are a tool in CourseDen that allows you to collect data with the option of sending automatic emails to students. For example, you could set up an intelligent agent to detect who has not submitted an assignment by the due date and automatically send an alert to those students with information on next steps for them. Likewise, you can set up an intelligent agent to collect the data regarding which students missed an assignment due date, then view the results of those data in order to manually reach out to each of those students via their University email, since they may not be logging into CourseDen, or by placing a phone call to those students to discuss their situations. Similarly, you can set up an intelligent agent to email students who made below a certain grade on an assessment with suggestions on supplementary material or available student resources, such as the University Writing Center or the Center for Academic Success.
Rubrics are used to evaluate an activity or item based on a predefined set of criteria. They help ensure that activities and items are evaluated fairly and consistently. Rubrics can be used to assess discussions, quizzes, and assignments in CourseDen, and once they are created in CourseDen, you can easily grade, or assess the rubric by selecting the corresponding level for each criterion.
Inline Grading is a grading tool in CourseDen that allows you to evaluate and notate student assignment submissions with personalized comments and highlighting. There is no feature in the Inline Grading tool that allows you to save comments for future use; however, you can easily keep a Google or MS Word doc that contains your customized, commonly-used comments from which you can copy and paste into your documents when using Inline Grading. However, if you find yourself frequently using certain comments for certain assignments, you may want to consider adding a criterion to your rubric for that particular assessment instead.
Turnitin, a plagiarism detection software that is integrated into assignments in CourseDen, contains a grading layer, GradeMark, that allows for easy notation and review of student submissions. The only feature that GradeMark offers that is not available for the Inline Grading tool is QuickMarks, which allows you to save commonly-used comments used for grading that you can customize.
Video Note is a video capturing tool integrated into CourseDen that allows you to quickly record simple videos. You can record videos giving an overview of the feedback for each student, and if you are not camera ready and want to only leave audio feedback, you can simply cover your camera and record. Video and audio feedback provide a great connection between you and your students since they can see your body language and/or hear the inflection in your voice, both of which are a large part of communication and often lost in the online environment.
If you would rather provide video/audio feedback in addition to a screencast of a student’s assessment, such as an essay or other writing, you can use tools to capture both the screencast and video/audio simultaneously, such as Yuja, which is an integrated video capture and storage tool, or Loom, which is an external tool that is free for educators. These tools allow you to point out and read over certain parts of the submission while providing commentary for the student.
Conferences, or one-on-one meetings with each student is time consuming; however, it is time well spent (CITE SOURCE HERE). Although you might not want to use conferencing for evaluative feedback on summative assessments, you can use individual conferences leading up to the due date of a summative assessment in order to provide an outlet for students to ask you questions and ensure they are on the right track before submitting that summative assessment, which is typically worth more weight or points in the gradebook for them, to increase student success. In order to host these individual conferences, you can use your choice of several available video conferencing tools, such as Zoom, which is integrated into CourseDen, or Google Meet, which is an external video conferencing tool.
For a less formal way to chat in an instant messaging format, consider using CourseDen Chat, an integrated communication tool, or Google Chat, an external communication tool
Finally, don’t forgo the trustworthy (scheduled or impromptu) voice call by using your office phone or a Google Voice number attached to your cell or home phone if you prefer that students not have your cell phone number. If you are not worried about students taking advantage of your number, don’t be afraid to post your cell phone in an announcement and/or on the syllabus for students to reach out through voice or text throughout the semester!

So. Much. Grading. How can I streamline the grading process?

Instructional Solutions

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