Online grade books are indeed an excellent way to communicate with students. Good point James. They serve a few additional purposes beyond helping with organization.
Using on line grade books is a great way to communicate with students, as well as keep them on track to where they are at in terms of class performance.
The majority of our tests are all mulitple choice, true/false, matching, and short answer. We have a few tests with cost cards that are time consuming to grade so what we have done to make grading easier is put it in multiple choice format for final graded answers. This allows the students to do the math on the cost card sheet but the instructor only grades multiple choice answers, this is a major time saver. One good method I would like to incorporate in our tests in moving the location of the answer like suggested in the reading. Moving this away from the question makes grading faster.
This will work for me in my community college courses as I design the course content for those classes. However in my online courses the content and assignments are done by the instructional design team, so I am not able to implement much of this. Robin
The current class that I teach does not have much grading that goes into the class. However, I did enjoy reading about the different ways to do grading in the classroom to make it more efficient.
Teaching online, my sylabuss is already established for my classes. I have learned to streamline my grading by having a grading rubric in which I am able to apply when grading homework assignments. Teaching online, I already have a lot of the online resources that was mentioned in the technology portion. When I first started as an instructor, grading took up so much time. I now am able to streamline grading by making sure essay questions provide the required answers. However, I found that grading work from assignments that have mathmatical or only one correct answer is less time consuming.
I have developed a quick way to grade exams as long as there is no essay questions to be evaluated. I have students grade each others exams. This makes them pay attention as we review the exam in class as well as helps them learn the material through repetition. I spot check 5 random exams each time to look for accuracy. If there is issues, I will go through each exam, but I have been doing this for about a year, and never once had a mistake.
Rather than having so many essay questions, I may try to be more specific and turn these into short answer questions. This will still allow me to see if the students understand the material and also lessen my time of grading. Thanks.
Currently, I take the quiz/exam information out of the workbook and the test bank that is offered for my courses. My final exams were a combination of multiple choice, short answer, true-false, and matching. I think the easiest way to streamline the grading process for these is the answers in a two column form with the answers, including the short answer. My next version of quizzes/exams will have a space on the left for the answer which will indeed make it easier to grade.
You make a great point Maria. Streamlining the grading process can be highly effective but we must balance the benefits of doing so with student learning needs.
Oral communications classes definitely make grading easy. You are right in that often times, the test is verbal and can be graded in class and immediately. When tests are in a presentation style format, the class can grade the speaker too and learn a few things along the way.
Tirizia, you indicated that you like short essay exams more than In terms of ease of grading, I agree with you. However, I am torn about how much I am actually teaching the students when I am not requiring them to organize their responses in a well-written essay instead. What are your thoughts?
Bruce, you indicated that the exams work fairly. I have found that some students do not do well on exams. Have you done anything to help them with it? For instance, have you extended the amount of time they are allowed to take the exams or offered them study guides?
As an online instructor, I do not have much control over the way that I format exams and homework assignments. What I can do, however, is to offer guidance so students not only organize their work better but do so in a way that it is more efficient for me to grade.
Hello Everyone,
Considering I am presently using grading rubrics to grade assignments. The only thing I believe will aid in grading of 30-45 student is more time. For example 72hrs to grade assignments with 10 or more elements is difficult to complete in a short period of time.
In my online courses, students are required to write essays for every assignment. I will immediately begin to have students highlight or underline the key topics in their assignments.
Those of us grading English papers have to make the same comments on many, many papers. In order to streamline the grading process, I have Word docs with the most frequently used comments so I can cut and paste every time I have to tell students to "avoid stating their opinions as fact."
When it comes to exams, I would use online sources to help make this easier for time management. I will consider multiple choice exams or even having the students grade each other's exams with an answer key. Since I teach oral communications, a lot of my exams are done orally and when class is over, my grades are already done. I do not like to assign much homework, other than preparing their next speech.
Most of the work I grade is done using a set product the students have to return. Usually a formatted Word document, so the grading is actually very fast. I can usually determine if all of the required parts are there in a brief glance.
I think you make a good point. Multiple choice and short answer exams are far more objective. Essay exams can be subjective and at times hard to grade.
