Joe SafdieGwyn Enrighthttps://twitter.com/evinsmj/status/699984054154694656One of the things that I took away from this session is that the presenters don’t respond to every student’s discussion post. It’s important (clearly) to read them all, but the amount of time it takes to respond to all of them, when they have 5 English comp classes, each with 25-30 students, and each class having 10 discussion forum assignments—it’s a ridiculous amount of time, not to mention unrealistic. Instead of responding to every student, they create an announcement at the end of the assignment that gives the highlights of the topic and provide credit to students within the announcement (for their “10 minutes of fame”).About half-way through the presentation and we’re talking about rubrics. Rubrics are definitely worth having and not only makes grading easier but more consistent. What I’m not hearing is how the use of rubrics is actually “effective,” as the title denotes. As the presenters switch out and we begin hearing about the other instructor’s approach to grading, I don’t consider this session to be about “effective” teaching. Some of the things offered are certainly efficient, but how is it effective? What are students saying about the online grading that proves what you’re doing is effective?The 2nd presenter makes a good point…
It is true that we need to make text-specific comments, not generic ones: “the teacher holds a license for vagueness while the student is commanded to be specific.”
He teaches with a flipped classroom, but instead of the vague definition, he provided some examples of what he does, most notably having the students create the rubrics. While he uses rubrics, he strives to make them more conversational in nature and less focused on the percentages for each standard/category.In terms of paper writing, he recently started reading first drafts. The draft submission is required and is worth 40 points out of the overall 200 points for the general assignment. He then spends most of his time commenting on the draft – providing guidance and comments. Then when the final version is turned in, he’s primarily focused on what the student did between the draft and the final version. This makes the grading easier and faster (again, efficient, not effective).Overall, not real thrilled with this session. It wasn’t innovative and the content definitely didn’t live up to the title of the session. If you’re interested in more information about rubrics, here are some crowd-sourced resources:https://twitter.com/amy_swing/status/699993267115421697https://twitter.com/amy_swing/status/699992875308724224
Matthew Evins 