Blog Entry #4

This week's readings were chapter 8 (Grading) in First Day to Final Grade, and chapter 10 (What to Do About Cheating) and 11 (The ABC's of Assigning Grades) in McKeachie's Teaching Tips. There were several useful tips in this week's readings that I can apply in my own teaching. Here, I focus on a few of the most useful ideas.

In chapter 8 of First Day to Final Grade, Curzan and Damour provide tips for maintaining control of the time it takes to grade assignments (p. 147). For example, they suggest that grading most undergraduate papers should only take 20 to 30 minutes. I was very surprised by this suggestion. As an undergraduate, writing a good paper can take several weeks. For an instructor to determine a grade so quickly seems alarming. However, I understand the reasons behind the authors' suggestion. I am anticipating up to 70 students in the course I am teaching in the Spring and I intend to assign a 5-8 page paper due near the end of the semester. If I take 30 minutes to read and grade each paper, I will have taken 35 hours. 35 hours is a lot of time near the end of a semester! Consequently, I will need to set a time limit on the amount of time I devote to grading papers and other assignments.

Also related to time management and grading papers, I found Curzan and Damour's suggestion to point out problems but not solve them important (p. 150). The authors argue that it is the instructors job to identify problems in student assignments, and it is the students job to solve those problems. I feel that this is a good time management strategy. However, I wonder how many students are capable of identifying appropriate solutions to the problems that their instructors pose. In my own teaching, I intend to follow the suggestion of the authors, but I also intend to be available to students who are unable to identify appropriate solutions to the problems I pose.

I also found McKeachie's perspective (p. 127) and Curzan and Damour's perspective (p. 162) on late work interesting. McKeachie suggests that penalizing students for late work influences grades so that they no longer exclusively represent knowledge and understanding, but rather are diluted by assessment of responsibility, maturity, and other factors. Curzan and Damour suggest that penalizing students for late work does not account for real emergencies. They provide the example of a student whose assignment is 1 hour late due to a power failure. I agree with these suggestions. As an undergraduate, I wrote a paper in my social psychology course suggesting that grades were a better measure of conformity than intelligence. I used many of the same arguments that McKeachie presents. Of course, it is also important that aside from special circumstances, students regularly turn assignments in on time. In my own teaching, I do not intend to mark students down for turning in assignments late. However, I do intend to schedule deadlines for assignments and express the importance of these deadlines to my students.

Below are a couple additional resources that relate to this blog. The first link provides techniques for managing time more effectively, and includes a printable to-do list. The second link is a forum discussion regarding penalizing late work.

http://www.glencoe.com/ps/teachingtoday/weeklytips.phtml/27

http://www.teach-nology.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-975.html