Effective feedback has a powerful influence on learning because it provides information to students on three levels: What are the goals of learning? What progress is being made to these goals? What activities need to happen to make better progress? (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). However, students often struggle to make sense of feedback, due to factors such as lack of instructor clarity about these levels, management of the emotional aspects of critical comments, or understanding what actions to take on feedback (Boehler et al., 2006; Carless & Boud, 2018). Technology can help to address some of these barriers to students’ use of feedback, such as by enabling instructors to provide more timely feedback (e.g., online quizzes), helping to promote bidirectional conversation (e.g., using metacognitive comments in Google Docs), and encouraging a supportive tone (e.g., video feedback) (Borup, West, & Thomas, 2015; Winstone & Carless, 2020). This guide offers strategies and technology tools for efficient grading, which also help to promote principles of effective feedback.
Grading efficiency is a matter of using particular approaches and tools. Use this guide to learn how to apply these approaches and tools in your course.
Approaches that Increase Efficiency
Consider Whether the Work Needs to be Graded
Consider whether the assignment needs to be graded with commentary. Could it rather be marked complete? Could you then offer general feedback and guidance to the class? Formative assessments, or low-stake assessments that allow students to test out their knowledge, lend themselves to not being graded. This “effort-based grading” approach can save instructor time and also has the potential to encourage heighten student motivation and encourage practice (Schinske & Tanner, 2014).
Batch Scoring
Arrange student work into groups and grade each group of papers according to certain criteria (grammar, say, or argument). Do this over a two-week period. This approach encourages a more holistic approach that allows you to assess student work in parts.
Consider Alternatives
Determine whether complex assignments can be made simpler. The assignment could be made shorter and/or be presented in a different way (a paper, for example, could be turned into a presentation).
Critique
If the students seem amenable, and you can survey them to see if they are, conduct a critique of work voluntarily submitted by students who have agreed to a critique, either from a past or current class. This means pointing out what the student has done well and what could have been done better. These critiques should be performed either via an announcement or a live session. Because you offered a detailed critique of the most common issues as represented in the submitted papers, the remainder of student work can then be quickly graded, either according to a rubric or simply looking for completion.
Use of Rubrics
Rubrics can make grading easier by establishing criteria that you can use to quickly evaluate student work. When crafting your rubric, make sure the criteria are clear and that students understand the expectations. Using rubrics can ensure that your grading is quick, consistent, objective, and reduce the chance of grade disputes. This Sheridan Center resource offers support for creating a new rubric, based on the work of Stevens & Levi (2005).
All-Class Feedback
To provide feedback to students without the need to comment on every assignment, identify problems, as well as strengths, the students have in common. Either make an announcement offering solutions, or discuss these problems in class.
Student Self Evaluation
Have students evaluate per a grading rubric their work ahead of turning it in. Ask them to identify one or two areas they would like you to address and what they believe are strong points of the work. You can also use peer review as a stand-in for instructor feedback.
Stagger Due Dates
If you are teaching multiple classes, make sure you don’t have multiple major assignments due the same day/week in all of them. Stagger your deadlines. Even if you are teaching the same course multiple times in the same semester it might make sense to have slightly different deadlines.
Make Note of Common Problems
If you do not want to make a rubric then make notes of common mistakes or problems. You can group these comments according to type. (Note that tools like Gradescope and Canvas can facilitate the storing of common feedback.) You can then copy and paste these comments into student work and make slight edits, if necessary.
Proven Comment Models
Use a proven model for providing student feedback. One approach entails commenting on the intention of the assignment, specific things the student did well and how they can improve, and offering additional resources or related items they can consult for more information. Portions of this feedback can be copied into a comment bank and reused.
Focused Feedback
Tell students that you will be correcting only one aspect of an assignment. For a first paper, for example, you could focus on grammar or argument. On all subsequent assignments, resist the urge to correct those types of mistakes.
Determine Grade Standards Beforehand
Pick out one solid A, one solid B, one solid C, and use them as guides to help figure out where the other papers and assignments would fall. This can potentially save time that would be spent determining exactly what grade to give each paper, and will make your grading more accurate.
Let Students Choose Between Assignments
Avoid grading monotony by allowing students to pick between assignments. You can also have them do this several weeks in advance so that you can anticipate the grading workload.
Consider Alternative Grading Approaches
Specifications grading (Nilson, 2014) is an approach that needs to carefully be designed at the start of a course but it does have the potential to save time on grading. In essence, instructors provide very detailed specifications for what constitutes an acceptable quality of work, and assessments are graded pass/fail. To achieve certain grades, students must successfully complete different numbers of modules, or bundles of assignments and assessments. Because this type of assessment involves significant planning up front, it is important to consider this approach carefully. Streifer & Palmer (2021) have published a helpful guide to address these considerations.
Tools to Aid Efficiency
Canvas Speedgrader
Speedgrader allows you to annotate student work, leave feedback, and enter grades – and all in one place. You can copy and paste from a comment bank when leaving feedback on common student problems. Speedgrader also lets you leave comments via a speech recognition feature. You can also leave video or audio feedback, which can be faster, more personal, and less likely to be misinterpreted because it includes tone.
Speedgrader also allows you to use the “Comment Library” feature, which will create a bank of comments you can reuse while grading.
Canvas Comments Bank Tool
Speedgrader allows you to create a “comments bank,” or a place where you can paste comments that you wish to reuse while grading.
Canvas Speech Recognition Tool
Using Canvas’s speech recognition tool can help you grade faster, as you do not need to type out comments.
Canvas Rubrics Tool
The Rubrics tool can help you grade faster by providing an easy way to select the appropriate feedback or grade by the same criteria for each student. After you attach a rubric to an assignment and configure it for grading, you can use the same grading criteria for all student submissions. Canvas will then automatically calculate the total score for you in Speedgrader.
Canvas Announcements
Use Canvas Announcements to give your class general feedback on an assignment. You can then give more targeted feedback on individual student submissions, or simply mark them complete.
Gradescope
Gradescope is another tool that enables efficient and transparent grading. Foremost, Gradescope prompts instructors to grade by question rather than by student. Within each question, the platform enables graders to create a dynamic, shared digital rubric that allows for expedited, collaborative grading and point altering. Advanced options allow graders to leverage artificial intelligence to group answers and grade in batches; this option can greatly reduce grading time, especially in large courses that leverage exams with semi-uniform answer possibilities. Finally, Gradescope supports online exam assignments and offers an auto-graded exam option similar to Scantron for multiple choice questions.
Harmonize Milestones
Harmonize, a discussion tool that integrates with Canvas, has a “Milestones” feature that can automatically grade student posts – that is, it marks as complete when students submit a specified number of posts. This can be useful for discussion prompts that ask students to engage with one another and where the responses are more informal.
Need Help?
Would you like to learn more about efficient grading? If so, please sign up for a consultation or email [email protected] with any questions you might have.
Resources
- Strategies for More Efficient Grading from the University of Iowa
- Techniques for Making Grading Efficient while Remaining Objective from the University of South Carolina
- Using Rubrics from Cornell University
- 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half by Jennifer Gonzalez
- "What Is Writing to Engage?" from Colorado State University
Additional Reading
Margaret L Boehler, David A Rogers, Cathy J Schwind, Ruth Mayforth, Jacquelyn Quin, Reed G Williams & Gary Dunnington. (2006). An investigation of medical student reactions to feedback: A randomized control trial. Medical Education, 40: 746-749.
Jared Borup, Richard E. West, & Rebecca Thomas. (2015). The impact of text versus video communication on instructor feedback in blended courses. Educational Technology Research and Development, 63:161-184.
David Carless & David Boud. (2018). The development of student feedback literacy: Enabling uptake of feedback. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 43(8): 1315-1325.
John Hattie & Helen Timperley. (2007). “The power of feedback.” Review of Educational Research, 77(1): 81-112.
Linda B. Nilson. (2014). Specifications grading: Restoring rigor, motivating students, and saving faculty time. (Sterling, VA: Stylus).
Dannelle D. Stevens & Antonia J. Levi (2005). An introduction to rubrics (Sterling, VA: Stylus).
Jeffrey Schinske and Kimberley Tanner. (2014). Teaching more by grading less (or differently). CBE - Life Sciences Education, 13: 159-166.
Adriana C. Streifer & Michael S. Palmer (2021). Is specifications grading right for me?: A readiness assessment to help instructors decide. College Teaching, DOI: 10.1080/87567555.2021.2018396
Naomi Winstone and David Carless. (2020). Designing effective feedback processes in higher education. London: Routledge.