Reviewing my 2019 grading practices for #SocWorkEd – Part 2
As I started the Spring Semester back in January, I reviewed my grading practices to make this assessment process more manageable and enjoyable for me. I wrote about this review in the following post – Changing my grading practices in 2019: Tips for #SocWorkEd. I focused on feedback from colleagues on Twitter to identify three main practices I wanted to adopt: 1) Rubrics and Grading Comments; 2) A list of Common Writing Mistakes; and 3) Creating Intentional Grading Practices. In this post, I want to share what I learned, how it worked, and some of the tools I developed.
Rubrics
Creating detailed rubrics was by far the best use of my energy. It took some time to create the rubrics and input them into my institution’s learning management system (Canvas), but by the middle of the semester, the rubrics were all set up and easy to use. I would highly recommend doing this before the semester starts so that students can see the criteria for their grades in advance. Because I started late in creating my rubrics for the semester, I made sure that the rubrics were available to the students at least two weeks before an assignment was due and asked the students to review for questions or comments. Here is an example of one of the criteria I used for grading FlipGrid Discussion Posts:
You can access the entire rubric here. If you are curious about FlipGrid, please read Todd Sage’s blog post Incorporating Flipgrid into the Social Work Classroom: Tips for #SocWorkEd.
For next semester, I am going adopt Kristen Samuels’ approach for naming the indicators of my rubric criteria, which includes “Does not meet expectations”, “Approaches Expectations”, and “Meets Expectations.” You can read about why she uses this approach in her blog post Using Rubrics to provide Strength-based Feedback for Social Work Assignments.
Group Grading Comments
Thanks to Katie Linder, I am now a big fan of group grading comments. While grading each assignment last semester, I typed out my written feedback into a word document that, in the past, I would have sent to students as individual comments in Canvas. When I finished grading with the rubrics, I formatted and polished up the group comments in the word document, which I then sent as announcement to the student in Canvas. Over time, I developed the following structure for my group grading comments:
- Salutation and goal of the feedback
- Evaluative summary about the quality of the content and/or presentation of the discussion posts
- Common themes from the content of discussion posts with my advice, recommendations for further reading, or tips for future social work practice
- Common reasons for reduced points on the assignment
- Sign-off and how to reach me with questions
Here is a sample group grading comment that I wrote early in the semester for one of the first FlipGrid Discussion forums. Taking advice from my colleague, Rich Furman, I only offered detailed feedback on one or two common themes from each assignment. This kept my group notes from getting too unwieldy.
If students reached out to me about a grade for a specific assignment, I asked them to check the rubric and group grading comments first, and then get back with me for a more detailed discussion. My TA also used this approach if she got questions about assignments that I graded.
Common Writing Mistakes Handout
One of the ongoing debates in social work education is when and how to assess student writing. I have heard some educators talk about how they choose not to grade for writing at all while others focus on it more than the content of the assignment when grading. I hope that I am somewhere in the middle. Writing is typically not a learning objective in my social work courses, and I do not typically spend class time teaching the mechanics of writing (i.e. how to write a sentence, active voice vs. passive voice, how to use a comma, etc.). However, writing is part of professionalism in social work and because I want my students to become professional social workers, I address writing in my courses by focusing on why it is important to write, giving them resources to help with their writing, and grading for writing in assignments, which is usually a small part of the overall assignment grade.
My dear colleague Karen Zgoda recommended having a centralized list of resources and then direct students to that list. She has a great example of a list in this blog post – Most Common Student Writing Mistakes and How to Fix Them. Inspired by Karen’s idea, I created a centralized resource (a web page in Canvas) with handouts as well as some additional links to writing resources. I numbered each writing topic and provided directions for students to refer to the appropriate topic based on the numbers. Here is a screenshot of what the list looks like in Canvas, my institution’s learning management system:
Here is a link to a folder on Google Docs with copies of all these writing handouts.
When I deducted points on a student’s assignment for a specific writing error, I sent them an individual grading comment that went something like this: Under Quality of Written Presentation in the assignment rubric, points were taken off for subject-verb agreement. Please see # 11 on the Writing Help List for the course: https://uab.instructure.com/courses/1495136/pages/writing-help. Please let me know if you have any questions. Also, please consider visiting the UAB Writing Center for help with writing: https://www.uab.edu/writingcenter/.
Overall, this process worked well for me. I was able to give specific feedback about writing very quickly when grading. For next semester, my goal is to create a similar list for video discussion forums.
Intentional Grading Practices
Creating intentional grading practices was the most challenging for me, and was the most helpful action I took over the semester. It is easy to plan to squeeze grading into the small moments of the day or in the evenings after dinner. Instead of treating grading as an afterthought, I shifted my thinking about grading as a primary job responsibility and started treating it as such. I blocked off time for grading in my digital calendar and kept the appointment with myself.
All of my assignments are due on Sundays at 11:59 PM. This gives students the opportunity to complete work over the weekends or plan their time accordingly over the week. Thus, I wanted to start grading on Mondays to get feedback to them as quickly as possible. Every Monday afternoon, I blocked two and half-hours for grading, and then used a digital timer to help me manage the time. I set the timer for 30 minutes, and then took a five-minute break to get up from the computer and move around. I turned off email and silenced my smart phone. When I was done with grading, I made sure I had scheduled some self-care activity such as going to the gym or talking a walk with a friend.
At first, I needed more time to finish the grading, but by the end of the semester, I could finish my weekly grading in about two hours. If there was a big assignment to grade, I just blocked off another grading period in my calendar. The combination of protected grading time with a timer, followed by a self-care activity, worked great for me. Not only did I get a major work task completed, I felt better about the feedback and time commitment that I was giving my students. After all, I ask them to put time and energy into completing the assignments; I should be giving the same time and energy back to them.
I am very curious to hear from you about how you approach grading, or if you have other ideas for me. Please leave a comment below or tweet me at @laurelhitchcock.
How to cite this post:
Hitchcock, L. (2019, May 27). Reviewing my 2019 grading practices for #SocWorkEd – Part 2 [Blog Post]. Retrieved from: https://laureliversonhitchcock.org/2019/05/27/reviewing-my-2019-grading-practices-for-socworked-part-2/
