the "things you wish you could say" thread

[AvidReader]

Perhaps if the "departmental expectation" is that instructors 1) download every student essay, 2) proofread every student essay, 3) annotate every student essay, 4) save every student essay as a PDF, and 5) re-upload every student essay to the LMS individually, that expectation could have been included in some document, guidelines, or other materials BEFORE MARCH 19. Telling me in March that my past 1200+ graded essays are inadequate because students like to see the feedback "on their actual papers" rather than in the feedback box at the bottom of the page is really not very useful to any of us (nor do I think it is especially beneficial to the students, who will now never download the papers and thus never see my feedback).

AR.

[Langue_doc]

Perhaps if the "departmental expectation" is that instructors 1) download every student essay, 2) proofread every student essay, 3) annotate every student essay, 4) save every student essay as a PDF, and 5) re-upload every student essay to the LMS individually, that expectation could have been included in some document, guidelines, or other materials BEFORE MARCH 19. Telling me in March that my past 1200+ graded essays are inadequate because students like to see the feedback "on their actual papers" rather than in the feedback box at the bottom of the page is really not very useful to any of us (nor do I think it is especially beneficial to the students, who will now never download the papers and thus never see my feedback).

AR.

You can write comments on the actual papers if students are submitting their essays on Blackboard or Canvas. On Canvas, click on "Speedgrader" to see the assignment and also edit it. Students can see the corrections/comments on the essay and also the comments in the "Comments" box.

[AvidReader]

Thank you, Langue_doc! I don't know if we have this ability (Moodle), but I will do some frantic googling. It would save a lot of time.

AR.

[ergative]

Thank you, Langue_doc! I don't know if we have this ability (Moodle), but I will do some frantic googling. It would save a lot of time.

AR.

My school uses Moodle. You can annotate directly on the papers, but it is a clunky, ghastly interface. I cannot possibly overstate how horrible the on-paper annotations are in Moodle, and strongly recommend you not even try to use it.

[Langue_doc]

Thank you, Langue_doc! I don't know if we have this ability (Moodle), but I will do some frantic googling. It would save a lot of time.

AR.

My school uses Moodle. You can annotate directly on the papers, but it is a clunky, ghastly interface. I cannot possibly overstate how horrible the on-paper annotations are in Moodle, and strongly recommend you not even try to use it.

My sypmathies. Feel free to bonk your admincritters on the head for using such an antiquated LMS.

[AvidReader]

My school uses Moodle. You can annotate directly on the papers, but it is a clunky, ghastly interface. I cannot possibly overstate how horrible the on-paper annotations are in Moodle, and strongly recommend you not even try to use it.

My annoyance is that they have agreed that the quality of the feedback is acceptable, but they want it physically on the papers, and uploaded, rather than in the perfectly adequate comment boxes. I like the comment boxes because I and the students can see all the feedback for the whole semester at a single glance, and the student views the feedback alongside the grade. Uploading the feedback on an annotated document means that 80% of my students will never view it.

I appreciate the caution, ergative! I'm going to try it once anyway, because my biggest fear is that I will upload the wrong paper. My classes are huge and lots of my students have similar names. Removing that complication from my grading flow would make this less stressful even if I lose time in the annotations.

AR.

[FishProf]

SRSLY?  I would estimate 80-90% of the comments I give on papers is the same mechanical stuff.  I use iAnnotate because it allows me to make stamps so marking papers gets easier.    Things like "Comma splice (see p28 in writing guide)" is easier to enter repeatedly.  If I were told WHAT I have to use for feedback, I would reconsider my writing requirements.

[AvidReader]

Mine are also consistent across most essays. I save every comment I write, and then copy-paste as needed, but with the in-LMS comment boxes, I can also make sure I either don't repeat the same comment for the same student, or add "As I noted on your last essay," to the front of it.

Chair and course coordinator say that writing "comma splice (see p. 28 in the writing guide)" beside a comma splice is better than posting this comment at the end of the essay: "There are several comma splices in this essay, such as the one between the two clauses in this sentence: '[paste student sentence]' or the last sentence of your third paragraph. In this instance, the comma between 'word' and 'word' could be a semicolon or a period, or you could add a conjunction (and, but, yet) after the comma. See p. 28 in the handbook for some practice exercises."

iAnnotate sounds interesting. I once used a version of TurnItIn that had a similar functionality, which I really liked, but no later schools have paid for that feature. It was also in-browser.

My current plan is to put the comments I would have put in the comment box on the pages where they are most relevant, but that still leaves me struggling to figure out a workable upload system that keeps the papers straight during the most hectic time of the year. Also, I'll now need two systems, because my syllabus lets students submit Word files and also PDFs, but the annotation for each format is different. Ugh.

AR.

[arcturus]

@AR: Perhaps you could actual say "what you wanted to say"? This seems like an unreasonable expectation for instructors in your department. Particularly this late in the school year. I, personally, think that comments in the provided comments box is both more efficient from the instructor standpoint (there should *never* be a requirement to download student papers onto your computer) and from the student standpoint. I will note, however, that at least some of my students do not know to look for comments in the comments box (one student told me it was very difficult to find such comments, in Canvas). Since I do not know how things look for students, particularly if they are using a cellphone as their primary electronic device, I did not have a good response for that. Nonetheless, perhaps a class announcement to each of your classes letting students know that there is individualized feedback in the comments section would be enough to stop whatever complaints are registering at the department level.

[mamselle]

Save the text as a .pdf if you don't already make them submit in that format.

Adobe has commentary options.

Comment.

Re-Save with your initials at the end of the file name to show there are now comments in the document.

Upload, go on.

Done.

M.

[AvidReader]

Thanks, mamselle. I will be doing a version of that, but essays already in Word will get Word comments and then be saved as PDFs. I don't think it's fair to ask students to switch essay formats this late in the semester.

arcturus, the sense I get is not that any students are complaining, but that this is how the dept. has always done this and this is what some students, somewhere, preferred--not my students, in particular, but the generic masses. I have indeed taught my students how to find grades/comments, and one of the things I like best about Moodle is that they can see a master list of all grades and the accompanying comments whenever they click on their course grade (even on a phone). The reason this is now an issue is because I teach some dual enrollment courses and was asked to make sure that I uploaded all the student essays with feedback to Moodle so the adminpeople at the schools could have access. In hindsight, what I should have said was "All my feedback is available on Moodle." What I said instead was "All my feedback is posted in the comment boxes, so I don't have anything to upload." It's already been through the dual enrollment course coordinator and my Chair. From this point on, I'm keeping my head down and my mouth shut and trying to do whatever is best for my students until the semester ends.

AR.

[fishbrains]

No, no, no, no, no! It is not the faculty's job to "ensure student success." We can provide the opportunity. We can chart the path. We can eliminate the barriers. But it's the student's job to ensure their own success. They actually have to do something, at some point, and at a certain quality level. Why is that so f*cking hard to understand?

I'm so glad I can mute and turn off my screen in Zoom meetings.

[the_geneticist]

I'm taking an online course in "best practices" in teaching online.  Our first assignment is to reflect on several questions including how to improve "student satisfaction" in our courses.
Nope.
Nope, nope, nope.
I want students to think my classes are challenging, but fair.  That all students were held to the same standards and expectations.  That science is relevant and useful to their lives.
If they happen to enjoy that sort of experience, great. 

[downer]

Presumably the most direct way of ensuring student success and getting student satisfaction is to give every student an A without them having to do anything.

[the_geneticist]

Presumably the most direct way of ensuring student success and getting student satisfaction is to give every student an A without them having to do anything.

That's basically how the previous instructor ran a class I just inherited.  Attendance? Optional! Earn points for just watching a video? Check!  Make most of their grade based on easily Googled basic questions?  Of course!  Dumb down the science content so a clever 10 year old could pass without studying?  Why not!  Ask students to do math, make predictions, graph data, or interpret results?  Oh heavens no! 
And for the cherry on top: All of the answers to all of the exam questions are also available on Chegg and CourseHero too.
Did I mention this is a required LAB course for majors?  And it has prerequisites of math and chemistry.