In the past I have done a lot of homework assignments from review questions in the text book. Instead of the students writing their answers on a blank sheet of paper I think I will make short answer worksheets with the questions typed up to simplify my grading. That way the question and answer are on one paper.
Teresa, So nice to hear that you have found a program that can help this way. I love grading programs that allow students to check their scores independently. Some of these programs also provide rich feedback on the questions students got wrong too.
Dr. Melissa Read
Eric, Small class sizes are great and most of us do not have that luxury. If your schedule and class sizes give you the wiggle room you need to continue to offer essay exams, go with that. If your class sizes start to change, it will be nice for you to know you've got these methods for streamlining grading in your back pocket!
Dr. Melissa Read
I am new to teaching and I have been engrade. I enoy the fact that I can input a students grade and they can check their grades and overall class precentage without me having to interupt my instruction time.
Our school has access to an online test generator. I have yet to use it due to the initial investment in time that it takes to get things set up. Some of my topics and types of questions would also be difficult to do on this system. Due to these obstacles I have not yet implemented it. I value the flexibility of tailoring each question as I see fit, incorporating a mixture of short answer, matching, true/false, and considering many my course are drafting/CAD related, even hand sketching and drawing. Though I greatly like this level of flexibility, the time it takes to grade is sometimes more than I would like. I may try to split the more straight forward questions out from the rest of a test to do online or reformat certain tests to utilize this feature so the assessment time can be decreased as it will do the grading instantly.
Since it is difficult to get away from essays being included in some of my exams, I will continue to use the methods of questioning I have for the past 6 years. They make take me a little longer to grade at times but my class sizes are typically small.
Heather, Yes, seeing those letters to the side of your exams can make them so easy to scan and quickly grade. It's a tremendous time saver.
Dr. Melissa Read
I use Examview to make my quizzes and generally I try to have multiple choice in my questions with a few fill in the blanks as they are easy to check. When I started teaching I would take work at home and with my experience I started grading paper at work and getting more organised.
I like multiple choice exams. We currently do not have a scantron machine. I like the idea of them writing out the letter of choice so that it better enables me to compare it to the right answer.
Chuck, I like your approach. Even in situations where we have access to only standardized materials, we can still find a way to streamline our efforts and make them more efficient.
Dr. Melissa Read
Susan, Excited to see you try it with success! Underlining and highlighting can significantly speed essay grading. It also encourages our students to focus on the most important parts of their answers too - increasing their chances of providing complete answers.
Dr. Melissa Read
our test are standerized also most of the labs are to but haveing the student high light sounds good that should save some gradeing time.
As the materials, assignments, etc. are prepared by a different group, it is not possible for me to make changes to them. It might be possible though to ask students to underline the important elements of their work which would really help when grading. This is something I will consider for the future.
I mostly use true and flase tests, but when I do use the essay test, I will know have my student underline the important content for easier grading. That is a wonderful idea. I am excited to see how it works.
The tests that are given here are all pre written tests and cannot be change by us instructors. However I do check there retention/ progress by their study guides and how they conduct themselves in lab. I also ask a lot of question to the students to see if they have been paying attention.
I use many of these techniques and plan on implementing others that I learned in this class.
Angel, Sounds like a great and highly productive tool. Thanks for sharing. It sounds like your administration made the right investment. I understand your challenge of being a new instructor and not knowing about this tool to start. A lot of times, our administrations and fellow faculty members have wonderful assets and tools for us to use, but do not do a great job of communicating their existence. Sometimes we've got to be proactive and ask to see what's out there. A lot of times, we are pleasantly surprised.
Dr. Melissa Read
At the career school where I teach, we have a web application called ExamView that allows us to create web based exams to test our students. This REALLY cuts down on the grading time because it grades everything but any open-ended questions/answers. This is a huge time saver for me. When I first started teaching I didn't know about this application and I used to grade everything manually. This type of application has been a great tool in time management and to streamline our testing process. We are working on using this tool for homework assignments also.
Currently I'm teaching two classes, one of wish almost every test is a multiple choice or short answer and all the homework assignment are short answer. The grading is pretty quick but there is a lot of paper work involved. I have been having issues with this paper work due to lack of proper organization. I have to define a space to keep all this paper work and file it so it is easier to handle.
The other class I'm teaching has no paper work as all homework is handed in online. The problem with this class is that all the homework is in the essay form. I am lucky that I only currently have two students in the class but I will have to modify it before I have a class of 25 in the same course. The workload would be to great to complete in a timely manner if that was the case.
My current grading system is working great. I tend to grade Lab Tasks and Tests as they are turned into me. This method has helped to relieve stress by not leaving the class with a lot on my desk to be completed. In addition, it has also helped with student interaction and overall learning experience because I grade their Labs while they are there, so if there is anything that needs attention I can clarify it immediatley. In the future I might not make grading Labs such an immediate procedure, as I can see that this might lead to other problems of immediacy.
