Paul at Nue-Thinking is dealing with marking. I’m marking some work from my first batch of adult students and I like his suggestion:

The week that was
For the comments I stuck to the rule of:

Specific Positive Remark +Improvement Point = Good Feedback

So they were something like this:

“Some excellent comments about the copyright of the logos. To improve this explain whether you think they are good logos, and why.”

This took quite a long time, but seeing as I was marking 3 consecutive weeks of homework, I was able to complete each group in 2 hours. Then I printed the comments on coloured paper and attached to the homeworks. This was a long winded process, and I am not sure I could sustain it for a large number of classes.

I like the idea of 1 positive + one improvement, for my adult group I might add one target as well. Still, Paul has a point it could be quite a time consuming process.
Dave suggested automating the comments:

create a bank of them in excel, then use drop down lists to select ones for each pupil. A quick mail merge takes care of the formatting, print them onto coloured paper, or stickers and you’re away (make sure you set the merge to pull in the pupils name as well. Made that mistake once, never again!)

I’m less thrilled with this idea.I’ve been on the receiving end of the cut and paste comments method & I have to say once student start comparing them it severely damages the tutor’s credibility! I suppose it might be more sustainable but if you are going to do it that way be honest with them from the outset and then they won’t feel cheated. I was deeply shocked when someone shared their feedback and what I had assumed was a well thought out reaction to something I’d worked hard on turned out to be a generic reply. Not good

On the other hand, how do you deal with lots and lots of marking? Suggestions welcome!

Share This

I am about to embark on a new venture. I will be teaching NCFE level 2 with a group of teaching assistants for a few hours a week. It’s exciting and daunting at the same time. It’s an opportunity to put into practice all my constructivist ideals and my commitment to web 2.0 but it’s going to be a challenge. I’m putting all my teaching materials online in the Teaching Assistants area of usefulwiki and I hope to attract other UK based TA trainers and students to get involved.

Like the web head I am the first thing I did was ask round in the TA forums for people’s impressions and experiences of the course. I got lots of helpful advice and encouragement and a great book list! However one of the main thing that they agreed on was that sometimes the tutors ‘waffle on’ about things that don’t seem very relevant to the evidence based assessment criteria. This instantly rang bells for me. I could be wrong but this may be a case of surface versus deep learning. The TAs want their ‘bit of paper’ and as stressed, busy people, they want to achieve it by doing ‘just enough’ work to get them through. The tutors though have other objectives, they want to produce rounded, competent TAs who are reflective about their work, apply theory to their practice etc. Is this starting to sound familiar to any one? Especially people at Ultraversity?

I have no idea how to resolve this at the moment but I think the key is in carefully structured assessment assignments that encourage a reflective attitude without overburdening the students. Oh, and finding a variety of ways of providing evidence for meeting the assessment criteria. Time to put the money where the mouth is! Watch out for a batch of blogging TAs!

Share This