Grading Marathon

Ay yai yai! So I just graded 50 five-page essays for my 373A class in less than 30 hours, and the students will be getting them back during their very next class period. These quick turnaround always mattered to me as a student and as an academic, so I hate dawdling. Overall, I composed nearly 13,000 words of individual feedback, which is about 260 words per student. The last two days were intense, but at least they're done.

Just in case anyone is interested, here are the "general" comments I offered to the class on D2L afterward. They very much align with how I try to present myself as an instructor:
-------------------------
Hey everyone,

So, final essays have been graded, and we have a pretty decent range overall. As you can see from the class statistics below, the average grade was a C (75%). The most common grade was C+ (75-79), and the next most common grade was A (90-94). A few people absolutely knocked it out of the park altogether. I gave everyone substantial feedback, which I hope you'll read and consider, especially if you go for the revision option. In general, everyone gets the same kind of feedback: stuff you did well, and stuff you can improve. When I submit work to academic journals, I can the same kind of feedback as well.

A few general comments:

  • Remember that it's perfectly natural to stress over feedback, especially at this level. Please don't. My standard advice is, “Beware negative self-talk”. Writing isn’t magic; it’s a skill. All it takes is practice ... that, and feedback on strengths and weaknesses.
  • Similarly, please don't interpret my comments as saying, “You didn’t do X, Y, or Z ”. I never mean it that way! Instead, I mean them as saying, "You haven’t done X, Y, or Z ... yet." 
  • Also, take the style sheet seriously. If it says use hanging indents, use hanging indents! Although most people submitted a style sheet, it's obvious that not everyone read it.
  • I also thought it odd that some essays didn't use direct quotations. Direct textual criticism is the bread-and-butter of literary criticism, and it's cited prominently on the grading rubric.
  • Some people did fantastic with MLA citation; others clearly used unrevised (and only semi-accurate) citation generators; and still other people ... well, I'm not sure what you all did, but remember, citations are important.
  • Revision Option due in one week … I grade based on quality and substantive global-level feedback.
  • Reflection also due in one week.

Overall I'm pleased with how everyone did, and I hope you got something out of the process.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Genre Fantasy Bestsellers through 1990

Image
I've been studying Keith Justice's Bestseller Index , which compiles information from two separate bestseller lists -- New York Times Book Review and Publishers Weekly -- up through 1990, and the results are ridiculously fascinating. For instance, you wanna take a stab at which SFF author has the most individual books appear on a bestseller list? No, it ain't Heinlein, Clark, Herbert, or Asimov. It's not even Terry Brooks or David Eddings. No, the answer is Piers Anthony . And even if you somehow pulled that name out of thin air, I guarantee you'll never guess how truly dominate Anthony was. Up through 1990, Anthony had more than double than number of distinct bestsellers than the next most frequent bestseller, Anne McCaffrey. Whereas Anthony had an astounding  22 different books appear on a bestseller list, McCaffrey had "only" 9.** Now, caveats. These numbers need to be taken with one (or two) grains of salt. For instance, although Anthony had 22 two dis
Read more

Thoughts upon Reading Tolkien's New & Expanded LETTERS

So, I'm reading through the newly expanded version of Tolkien's Letters. One thing I hadn't properly realized is that these letters were part of Carpenter's original manuscript back in 1981, but Carpenter had to cut them due to cost. Turns out that Carpenter had a pretty keen eye on what could bear cutting -- most of this new stuff isn't terribly interesting, but I discovered a few nuggets. VINDICATED!! (Me, sorta) Naturally, whenever you read new primary material, your first instinct is to check to see if anything contradicts something you've said in print ... especially biographically. Well, I've made three big "biographical" claims, and here's my sigh of relief: Concerning my claim that, in 1954, Tolkien and colleagues contrived to create CS Lewis's academic chair at Cambridge in exchange for them nominating EM Forster for the Nobel Prize. Nothing in  Letters  supports or contradicts this. In my recent article for  Notes & Queries ,
Read more

Uncovering CS Lewis's First Religious Poem

 So, with my article's official acceptance by the journal English Text Construction , it's time to let the cat out of the bag. Using a combination of metrical analysis and biography, I've ascertained with near perfect certainty the first religious poem C. S. Lewis poem ever wrote .... a short poem, "Sweet Desire," that scholars have never previously paid any attention to. This poem is firmly datable to early 1930, probably January or February is my guess, and given the poem's subject matter, it's clearly talking about CSL's fears and intellectual trepidation about becoming a theist and abandoning atheism for good. It's basically Lewis's version of Caedmon's Hymn . The full metrical details will have to await my article, but one interesting caveat on my claims to firstness. In my peer reviewer's commentary, they recommended I contact a CSL scholar named  Charlie W. Starr, who's been working on Lewis's handwriting for quite a lon
Read more