Grading papers: please share motivational tips
July 14, 2018 2:59 AM Subscribe
I've been teaching college for a long time and yet I still struggle with motivating myself to grade papers.
I hate it when I end up doing them all in one batch at the last minute, but have never managed to stick to logical, commonsense strategies like grading 4 a day (or 3 a day, or 2, or 1). It's a humanities field, and I've worked hard to write assignments that are as interesting to the students as they are to me. I've also learned to assign tasks from which students can learn regardless of the grade they receive. But although these tweaks have made grading more pleasurable when I get around to doing it, they don't get me doing it any faster. How do you psych yourself up to get grading done in a timely fashion?
I hate it when I end up doing them all in one batch at the last minute, but have never managed to stick to logical, commonsense strategies like grading 4 a day (or 3 a day, or 2, or 1). It's a humanities field, and I've worked hard to write assignments that are as interesting to the students as they are to me. I've also learned to assign tasks from which students can learn regardless of the grade they receive. But although these tweaks have made grading more pleasurable when I get around to doing it, they don't get me doing it any faster. How do you psych yourself up to get grading done in a timely fashion?
Best answer: Grading papers will never be pleasurable, because we are simultaneously assessing ourselves as instructors and assessing the students. We wonder why this happened but this didn't; we wonder if we're being too tough, or too easy, or insufficiently clear. It is an inherently anxious task, and human beings try to avoid anxiety.
I am primarily a composition instructor, so what I suggest may not fit your workflow. For me, the key is to find a *purpose* for the grading that I find productive and meaningful. Ultimately, I stopped marking final papers in great detail; instead, I mark drafts. There, I can motivate myself to barrel through a stack because a) the deadline for turnaround is tighter, since students need feedback to help them revise; and b) my comments can be about what could be done to improve the draft, what is already working well. I get to ask questions rather than offer assessments. For the final paper, I fill out a quick rubric and offer a global comment, usually informed by progress from the draft.
In general, then, I get around the dread of grading papers by making the commenting part of grading all about the prewriting and the scaffolding. I have also applied this to the literature survey course I teach; more scaffolding ahead of the paper and more commenting there, less commenting and less time, frankly, spent on the final paper. And so the stack of final papers goes fast, in small chunks.
Beyond this work to make final paper grading itself less anxious and less time-consuming, I motivate myself with a schedule built around a planning/rewards system: "I'd like to have most of Saturday, and the papers need to be turned around, so how many do I need to get done each day? For each stack of X papers that I grade, I'm this much closer to my goal and can justify fun activity Y." Even so, I take long breaks every three to four papers (five or six if I'm on a roll and the students are largely where they need to be). And at the end of the semester, there's simply no escape from marathon grading sessions.
posted by kewb at 4:02 AM on July 14, 2018 [20 favorites]
I am primarily a composition instructor, so what I suggest may not fit your workflow. For me, the key is to find a *purpose* for the grading that I find productive and meaningful. Ultimately, I stopped marking final papers in great detail; instead, I mark drafts. There, I can motivate myself to barrel through a stack because a) the deadline for turnaround is tighter, since students need feedback to help them revise; and b) my comments can be about what could be done to improve the draft, what is already working well. I get to ask questions rather than offer assessments. For the final paper, I fill out a quick rubric and offer a global comment, usually informed by progress from the draft.
In general, then, I get around the dread of grading papers by making the commenting part of grading all about the prewriting and the scaffolding. I have also applied this to the literature survey course I teach; more scaffolding ahead of the paper and more commenting there, less commenting and less time, frankly, spent on the final paper. And so the stack of final papers goes fast, in small chunks.
Beyond this work to make final paper grading itself less anxious and less time-consuming, I motivate myself with a schedule built around a planning/rewards system: "I'd like to have most of Saturday, and the papers need to be turned around, so how many do I need to get done each day? For each stack of X papers that I grade, I'm this much closer to my goal and can justify fun activity Y." Even so, I take long breaks every three to four papers (five or six if I'm on a roll and the students are largely where they need to be). And at the end of the semester, there's simply no escape from marathon grading sessions.
posted by kewb at 4:02 AM on July 14, 2018 [20 favorites]
Best answer: Hello, I'm a professor and struggle with this as well. I can't really ever do two or four papers a day, but (if I have 25 papers of 7 pages each, say) I have a few strategies to get them done.
1. I tell the class what day they'll have their papers back. It builds in the accountability. It's usually two weeks.
2. I get a friend who also has grading and we go to a cafe. Just sit there for 3 hours and do as much as I can before I feel I'm unable to respond anymore. This gets the first third done and makes it easier to do the rest later. I often do all the grading at a cafe, returning the next few days. I put it on my calendar.
3. Like kewb I started using a rubric this year. It's a program built in to the university's grading system, and I never liked it before. But now I find it helpful. It allows me to comment more on some areas of the paper than others. And some students just get more comments than others.
4. I tell the students "Be conscious that you're writing this paper to an addressee, to ME, imagine me actually reading it. You are writing me a kind of formal, organized letter. It's not just something you're putting into the void to get a grade, you're communicating your ideas. You can't get an A if it is adequate but seems phoned in; I have to not be bored, and I'll not be bored if I read your actual voice, and sense your pushing yourself to have insights and make connections." This just makes a bigger percentage of the papers less hollow. For me the worst part of grading is when there's nothing seriously wrong with a paper but it's just so uninspired and bland and formulaic and lacking in depth that I can't really tell them what to improve except to suggest they expand this or that point. So, if I have more sincere papers, even if they aren't any better technically, I am less inclined to avoid reading them. I actually look forward to at least a quarter of them, wanting to see what specific students are going to say.
posted by velveeta underground at 4:56 AM on July 14, 2018 [17 favorites]
1. I tell the class what day they'll have their papers back. It builds in the accountability. It's usually two weeks.
2. I get a friend who also has grading and we go to a cafe. Just sit there for 3 hours and do as much as I can before I feel I'm unable to respond anymore. This gets the first third done and makes it easier to do the rest later. I often do all the grading at a cafe, returning the next few days. I put it on my calendar.
3. Like kewb I started using a rubric this year. It's a program built in to the university's grading system, and I never liked it before. But now I find it helpful. It allows me to comment more on some areas of the paper than others. And some students just get more comments than others.
4. I tell the students "Be conscious that you're writing this paper to an addressee, to ME, imagine me actually reading it. You are writing me a kind of formal, organized letter. It's not just something you're putting into the void to get a grade, you're communicating your ideas. You can't get an A if it is adequate but seems phoned in; I have to not be bored, and I'll not be bored if I read your actual voice, and sense your pushing yourself to have insights and make connections." This just makes a bigger percentage of the papers less hollow. For me the worst part of grading is when there's nothing seriously wrong with a paper but it's just so uninspired and bland and formulaic and lacking in depth that I can't really tell them what to improve except to suggest they expand this or that point. So, if I have more sincere papers, even if they aren't any better technically, I am less inclined to avoid reading them. I actually look forward to at least a quarter of them, wanting to see what specific students are going to say.
posted by velveeta underground at 4:56 AM on July 14, 2018 [17 favorites]
I have sometimes built in some accountability for myself. I announced in class (and in later classes, put in the syllabus) that I would return graded work in the next class period, and if I didn’t, I got a “strike.” After 3 strikes, I brought the class a treat (bagels or donuts, usually). What usually happen was I got 2 strikes, and then brought them a treat at the end of the semester anyway.
posted by BrashTech at 4:59 AM on July 14, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by BrashTech at 4:59 AM on July 14, 2018 [4 favorites]
Grading everyday sound horrible. I've graded many papers the last several years. What works for me:
Starting grading while still awake, at maybe 1 or 2 in the afternoon. Spend more time on the first 3 to 5 and think about how I feel about the papers and how the students did and how to give out points. Set papers away until after dinner/child bedtime.
8pm. Get out papers. Put on Netflix reruns. Grade til 12 or 1. Maybe with a glass of wine. Repeat for a second night if necessary. You are just supporting student learning with comments/points (grades). You are not actively assessing anything else.
posted by Kalmya at 5:18 AM on July 14, 2018
Starting grading while still awake, at maybe 1 or 2 in the afternoon. Spend more time on the first 3 to 5 and think about how I feel about the papers and how the students did and how to give out points. Set papers away until after dinner/child bedtime.
8pm. Get out papers. Put on Netflix reruns. Grade til 12 or 1. Maybe with a glass of wine. Repeat for a second night if necessary. You are just supporting student learning with comments/points (grades). You are not actively assessing anything else.
posted by Kalmya at 5:18 AM on July 14, 2018
Best answer: I went back to school at a later age. Things that I thought would be hard aren't. Studying with younger people is actually quite awesome, the subject material is not too difficult, and I'm not too old to learn completely new things. But wow, I had not anticipated the stress of waiting for grades. And I used to think that was probably just me, that other students would not feel that. But that's not the case, many of my classmates are exactly the same. (I'm probably in a different country than you are, but I assume that at least some of this is probably universal)
I think that kewb is exactly right about the anxiety that grading involves. Maybe it helps to think about the anxiety that your students feel? Grading quickly is among the kindest things professors can do. I appreciate it so much when they do that.
posted by blub at 5:23 AM on July 14, 2018 [4 favorites]
I think that kewb is exactly right about the anxiety that grading involves. Maybe it helps to think about the anxiety that your students feel? Grading quickly is among the kindest things professors can do. I appreciate it so much when they do that.
posted by blub at 5:23 AM on July 14, 2018 [4 favorites]
Best answer: I became a lot more relieved as an adjunct when I realized that all the full time faculty where I teach also hate grading. I rejiggered my class a lot so that more of the assignments I created were pass/fail and the major ones would be me mostly commenting on drafts so students could assemble a better final project (and then some of the assessment was how well they could follow instructions to finalize their draft). A few things that help me.
- realizing how long this stuff really takes and knowing that grading will just be two hours (or whatever) if I don't screw around
- depending whether you are grading print/digital (does anyone grade print anymore?). If print: print them all out and take them somewhere nice and sit and grade somewhere you are happy to be. If digital, I set up a browser that was just my "grading browser" where I would automatically open all the tabs with all the student work (they had weekly assignments and I had them just add them to the top of one Google doc that they used for the entire class except for the final) and then close them as I completed the grading
Also it helped for me to write grades down and then move them into whatever the grading mechanism was, not have to snap in and out of whatever method I was reading papers in to fuss with a grading interface, maybe this would work for you?
posted by jessamyn at 5:50 AM on July 14, 2018 [2 favorites]
- realizing how long this stuff really takes and knowing that grading will just be two hours (or whatever) if I don't screw around
- depending whether you are grading print/digital (does anyone grade print anymore?). If print: print them all out and take them somewhere nice and sit and grade somewhere you are happy to be. If digital, I set up a browser that was just my "grading browser" where I would automatically open all the tabs with all the student work (they had weekly assignments and I had them just add them to the top of one Google doc that they used for the entire class except for the final) and then close them as I completed the grading
Also it helped for me to write grades down and then move them into whatever the grading mechanism was, not have to snap in and out of whatever method I was reading papers in to fuss with a grading interface, maybe this would work for you?
posted by jessamyn at 5:50 AM on July 14, 2018 [2 favorites]
Assuming you have an office, one thing that helped me be more productive was working more in my office. It's easy, when we have a job that can (at least in part) be done anywhere, to work anywhere... but for me what that added up to was "working all the time", where that really meant doing a couple of papers or a little prep or something and then some dishes and then a little more and then walking the dog - until I was working some seven days a week and never really feeling like I had downtime.
Then my wife got an 8 to 5 staff job at the university I work at and we're too cheap to pay for two parking permits, so I'm there a lot more 8 to 5. It's not perfect - I still pop out during the day for errands or doctors appointments or coffee with friends, and I'm a doc student too so I've got my own classes I'm taking - but I'm spending a lot more time at work and getting a lot more done at work, and spending less of my evenings and weekends 'working from home'. Even though I do some grading/answering emails in the evening, it's nice to have work be work and home be home for the most part.
posted by joycehealy at 6:00 AM on July 14, 2018 [4 favorites]
Then my wife got an 8 to 5 staff job at the university I work at and we're too cheap to pay for two parking permits, so I'm there a lot more 8 to 5. It's not perfect - I still pop out during the day for errands or doctors appointments or coffee with friends, and I'm a doc student too so I've got my own classes I'm taking - but I'm spending a lot more time at work and getting a lot more done at work, and spending less of my evenings and weekends 'working from home'. Even though I do some grading/answering emails in the evening, it's nice to have work be work and home be home for the most part.
posted by joycehealy at 6:00 AM on July 14, 2018 [4 favorites]
Best answer: Grading always depresses me because it makes me question my motivations for teaching. It's when I discover that most (sometimes it feels like ALL) of my students are there just to get credentials and otherwise have no interest in the subject, aren't interested in learning (actually, they don't understand that learning is an option for them) but merely memorizing, etc. And I feel my employers are mainly in the credentialing business as well and that I am a pawn in some capitalistic charade.
That doesn't answer your "How do I motivate myself" question but speaks to what makes it difficult. The way I motivate myself is:
1) deadlines.
2) eagerness to escape from all those negative feelings I listed above by getting it over with.
3) taking it as an opportunity to connect with particular individuals being graded.
4) trying to learn from my own experience of the process--about myself, about teaching, about evaluation, about life.
posted by Obscure Reference at 6:15 AM on July 14, 2018 [6 favorites]
That doesn't answer your "How do I motivate myself" question but speaks to what makes it difficult. The way I motivate myself is:
1) deadlines.
2) eagerness to escape from all those negative feelings I listed above by getting it over with.
3) taking it as an opportunity to connect with particular individuals being graded.
4) trying to learn from my own experience of the process--about myself, about teaching, about evaluation, about life.
posted by Obscure Reference at 6:15 AM on July 14, 2018 [6 favorites]
These may not be helpful as they are for a different subject and different age group but...
- facing up to the agonies that kewb correctly identified - even more when the student's final outcomes depend on your grades, and you are judged on their performance, creating a perfect storm of insecurity. Even worse if you are a perfectionist. Lean in to this, accept it's hard, but also give yourself credit. You try your best to be fair. You can do no more
- as common mistakes crop up, collate and then use codes to give feedback and suggestion for development - my super productive friends create 4 or 5 suggestions for each assignment and then put them on the board- each student gets given a code to their biggest issue/most useful suggestion
- where possible mark sections not whole papers (e.g. all question 1, then all question 2) so you get in a flow and also can memorise all the decisions you've made about acceptable answers (not really much use for essays though)
Ultimately, it is the most depressing aspect of teaching as so many students barely read your comments anyway and sometimes I realise my comments are targeted at the inspector not the kid... Thank you for reassuring me that I am not alone and this is a universal struggle....
posted by Heloise9 at 6:17 AM on July 14, 2018 [4 favorites]
- facing up to the agonies that kewb correctly identified - even more when the student's final outcomes depend on your grades, and you are judged on their performance, creating a perfect storm of insecurity. Even worse if you are a perfectionist. Lean in to this, accept it's hard, but also give yourself credit. You try your best to be fair. You can do no more
- as common mistakes crop up, collate and then use codes to give feedback and suggestion for development - my super productive friends create 4 or 5 suggestions for each assignment and then put them on the board- each student gets given a code to their biggest issue/most useful suggestion
- where possible mark sections not whole papers (e.g. all question 1, then all question 2) so you get in a flow and also can memorise all the decisions you've made about acceptable answers (not really much use for essays though)
Ultimately, it is the most depressing aspect of teaching as so many students barely read your comments anyway and sometimes I realise my comments are targeted at the inspector not the kid... Thank you for reassuring me that I am not alone and this is a universal struggle....
posted by Heloise9 at 6:17 AM on July 14, 2018 [4 favorites]
Oof. It can be rough. So many good suggestions above.
I found something that really helped my rhythm, sanity and productivity in university classes ranging from 12 to 16 students: Skim all the papers first and separate the papers into three piles roughly grouped by above average, average, below average. So you either do all the below-average papers first, or all the average ones, then the below-average ones, etc. This probably works best if you've assigned these papers/topics before so you can tell at a glance what the common pitfalls are, what a below-average paper looks like, etc. (Of course, in fairness a below-average paper may edge into average territory and ultimately receives those points. The first read is not about assigning a grade. It's about triage for how time-consuming it may be.)
I just didn't appreciate surprises. Reducing the surprise element made it easier for me to tackle them.
posted by veggieboy at 6:32 AM on July 14, 2018 [3 favorites]
I found something that really helped my rhythm, sanity and productivity in university classes ranging from 12 to 16 students: Skim all the papers first and separate the papers into three piles roughly grouped by above average, average, below average. So you either do all the below-average papers first, or all the average ones, then the below-average ones, etc. This probably works best if you've assigned these papers/topics before so you can tell at a glance what the common pitfalls are, what a below-average paper looks like, etc. (Of course, in fairness a below-average paper may edge into average territory and ultimately receives those points. The first read is not about assigning a grade. It's about triage for how time-consuming it may be.)
I just didn't appreciate surprises. Reducing the surprise element made it easier for me to tackle them.
posted by veggieboy at 6:32 AM on July 14, 2018 [3 favorites]
It may not be compatible with your teaching style or philosophy, but you can grade in the way law professors do it (especially in the big lecture classes with 100-plus students): with a predetermined grading rubric that breaks down available points by category, with some categories being more subjective than others. I'd often get law school papers and exams (which are really just time-pressured in-class essays) back with the grading sheet actually stapled to the front, showing which points I'd manage to harvest in which category, and maybe a sentence or two of handwritten remarks. Sometimes the paper would have little tally marks in the margins and the points earned on that page subtotaled at the bottom. Sometimes this would be all the feedback you'd get on the only exam you took in a semester-long course.
This works best if you are assigning the subject matter, but it can be adapted. You may not want to expose the mechanics in the same way law profs do, I could see humanities students developing feelings about it. But it's really none of their business as long as you are grading fairly and consistently.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:51 AM on July 14, 2018 [4 favorites]
This works best if you are assigning the subject matter, but it can be adapted. You may not want to expose the mechanics in the same way law profs do, I could see humanities students developing feelings about it. But it's really none of their business as long as you are grading fairly and consistently.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:51 AM on July 14, 2018 [4 favorites]
I schedule my grading time.
Strict rubrics.
Audio record feedback.
Shorter and fewer papers.
posted by k8t at 7:12 AM on July 14, 2018 [3 favorites]
Strict rubrics.
Audio record feedback.
Shorter and fewer papers.
posted by k8t at 7:12 AM on July 14, 2018 [3 favorites]
Nthing many of the suggestions here (especially creating an accountability deadline, scaffolding so the final grading is less onerous, and working with a friend).
Another thing I have learned to do is tailor my comments a bit to the motivation of the students, if the class is small enough to know them. My tendency is to provide tons of written feedback, but if I know the student doesn't care and may not even pick up their assignment I will leave much less detailed feedback, trying to highlight the major issues.
I also make sure when grading papers to be aware of what is done well, and comment on that too. I think students appreciate balanced feedback and it makes me feel better about the capitalist factory that is the university.
Also lots of coffee, and tasty snacks. I always splurge on lattes when grading!
posted by DTMFA at 8:28 AM on July 14, 2018 [2 favorites]
Another thing I have learned to do is tailor my comments a bit to the motivation of the students, if the class is small enough to know them. My tendency is to provide tons of written feedback, but if I know the student doesn't care and may not even pick up their assignment I will leave much less detailed feedback, trying to highlight the major issues.
I also make sure when grading papers to be aware of what is done well, and comment on that too. I think students appreciate balanced feedback and it makes me feel better about the capitalist factory that is the university.
Also lots of coffee, and tasty snacks. I always splurge on lattes when grading!
posted by DTMFA at 8:28 AM on July 14, 2018 [2 favorites]
Best answer: I still follow a rule that I was taught when I first started teaching English composition:
Read through the entire paper first, before making any comments. Then choose a small number of issues (no more than three) that you would like to see the student work on for the next assignment or next draft. Also, always find something positive to say about the paper.
This makes feedback much less onerous and anxiety-inducing, for me. I don't use feedback as a way to "justify" my grade; they can come talk to me if they really want to know. And it makes the feedback process seem less... soullless? Because the feedback is all in the form of advice students can follow. It also makes them read my feedback, because I let them know that improvement on issues I've pointed out is taken into account when I grade.
This might strike you as very basic if you've been at this a long time... but whatever, I'll put it out there.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 9:15 AM on July 14, 2018 [9 favorites]
Read through the entire paper first, before making any comments. Then choose a small number of issues (no more than three) that you would like to see the student work on for the next assignment or next draft. Also, always find something positive to say about the paper.
This makes feedback much less onerous and anxiety-inducing, for me. I don't use feedback as a way to "justify" my grade; they can come talk to me if they really want to know. And it makes the feedback process seem less... soullless? Because the feedback is all in the form of advice students can follow. It also makes them read my feedback, because I let them know that improvement on issues I've pointed out is taken into account when I grade.
This might strike you as very basic if you've been at this a long time... but whatever, I'll put it out there.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 9:15 AM on July 14, 2018 [9 favorites]
One thing that has been effective for me - if not fun in itself - is using a timer. I grade almost everything electronically as Word docs on a desktop or laptop. Knowing that these two-pagers should get 15 minutes each, or that these six-to-eight pagers should get 45 minutes each, and then having a clock on a timer app right there, persistently reminding me that I've been doing this one for 18 minutes and should really be through three pages or so by now, helps me. For me, when I'm averse to something, various parts of my brain just starts following other tangents in a desperate bid to escape. The timer corrects for that every so often.
As I said, it doesn't make the process more interesting or rewarding as I'm doing it, but being frustrated and distracted and not getting the work done ends up being a lot worse in the long run.
posted by el_lupino at 9:54 AM on July 14, 2018
As I said, it doesn't make the process more interesting or rewarding as I'm doing it, but being frustrated and distracted and not getting the work done ends up being a lot worse in the long run.
posted by el_lupino at 9:54 AM on July 14, 2018
Not grading specific, but I find pomodoros to be helpful when tackling enormous, time-consuming, mentally numbing tasks. The format of 25 min "work" time followed by 5 min "refresh" time works well.
posted by basalganglia at 1:31 PM on July 14, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by basalganglia at 1:31 PM on July 14, 2018 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Thanks everyone, these are really helpful. I especially like the suggestion of expending the greatest amount of evaluative energy commenting on drafts. It makes the act of marking constructive, it builds in a deadline, and it creates a transparent logic for interpreting the actual grade when it is assigned. I don't know much about rubrics, but have found some online resources to get me started. September is only six weeks away, and so is a newly-invigorated professor Morpeth.
posted by Morpeth at 2:32 AM on July 15, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by Morpeth at 2:32 AM on July 15, 2018 [4 favorites]
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