Diane Thompson

For online courses, the final barrier is grading online. I have talked to many instructors who say that they want the students to mail in their work, even though the course is online. The reasons include: presentation is important; email messes up text; I can't stand to sit at a computer and grade papers; and I have to print out papers in order to grade them and it's too much trouble. 

All these reasons make sense, and they certainly reflect the way we teachers have done our business for a very long time. However, there is a compelling reason for grading online--speed of turnaround. I believe that one of the strongest bonds between students and their courses on the www is the speed with which they can receive feedback for their work. Ideally, I can respond to posted student work within a day or two. This means that the student still has the work fresh in mind when receiving my comments and the grade. 

Certain sorts of student work are clearly more suitable for online grading than others. A one page essay might be just right to post to a forum and have the teacher grade online, while a ten page report might be more difficult to work with online, both for the student and the teacher. A piece of technical writing that relied heavily on format might be difficult for the student to post unless he/she knew how to use an html text editor. Clearly there are special problems in disciplines that require special characters, such as math, foreign languages, and many sciences. There are technical solutions for these problems, but unless the teacher has plenty of technical support, they may be difficult to apply.

Further, some work is more suited for email, while other is better for a discussion forum. If the task is a short quiz, then email is clearly better than a forum, because it prevents other students from reading the other students' answers. However, if the assignment is an opinion or analysis piece based on a student-selected topic, then other students can profit from seeing how their peers handle the issues, because they will be doing different work on different topics.

Handling online grading can be very simple. If it is email, select "reply," open the message box to its largest size, and greet the student at the top. Then, enter the text of the message itself and make your comments, using brackets to separate them from the student writing. When you are done interjecting comments, go back to the top, add a few general comments about the work, add the grade, and SEND.

Responding to student work on a forum can take a couple of extra easy steps. If you only want to make a few general comments in response, select the REPLY option on the forum, greet the student, and say what you will, being tactful, because this is public. If you want to interject comments on the student's actual work, use copy/paste to put that work into a new message box, and then treat it just as you would an email, interjecting your comments, set off by brackets. In either case, send the grade privately by email. If you have any personal comments, such as "drop this course because you'll never pass," or "you need to go to your nearest NVCC campus counseling office to arrange for a tutor," put that in an email message, not on the forum.

Long student papers can be a bigger problem. After many years of working online, I have increased my ability to work with several screensful of text at a time, without needing to print it out. However, that took more than ten years of steady computer use, so you may not be there yet (or ever). In that case, if you wish to assign a long paper, it could always be sent as an attachment. This of course requires opening it, risking a virus, and then printing it out. You might prefer snail mail for this one, at least at the start. 

I think the best approach is to look on the speedy turnaround on the www as a tremendous asset, and online work as desirable, but not always feasible, and plan assignments based on trying to work online where possible, but facing the need for other ways where necessary.