ONLINE COURSE STRESS!

[HigherEd7]

With the number of students taking an online course and high enrollment, it makes it impossible to get anything done to enhance or improve your career. Most online courses follow the normal online course requirements:

Weekly discussion questions
Journals
Weekly quizzes
Several assignments
Exams

Plus responding to emails because students do not want to take the time to read the course syllabus or directions, or something happened on their end and they are not able to get their assignment turned in.

If you have a weekly discussion question with 50 students in a class and they are required to make two posts that's a 100 post a week, and now multiple this by 15 weeks and this is just for one course.

Being at a smaller school, we do not have the luxury of a TA that helps with grading. Has anyone developed a better system to juggle this?

[fishbrains]

If you have a weekly discussion question with 50 students in a class and they are required to make two posts that's a 100 post a week, and now multiple this by 15 weeks and this is just for one course.

This is nuts. Divide your class into three sections. Have one section do the weekly discussion board and the other two sections complete a quiz or short writing response or journal kind-of-thing that's super-easy and quick to grade. Then rotate the groups around throughout the semester so they all get a turn on the boards.

Having all the students completing all these different assessments isn't good for you or for them. You are working way too hard for no real benefit (which is probably why you posted in the first place).

[HigherEd7]

I agree, but we are required to follow the online model to show that students are logging in and they are engaged in their learning.  I have to admit the majority of people I know follow this model.

If you have a weekly discussion question with 50 students in a class and they are required to make two posts that's a 100 post a week, and now multiple this by 15 weeks and this is just for one course.

This is nuts. Divide your class into three sections. Have one section do the weekly discussion board and the other two sections complete a quiz or short writing response or journal kind-of-thing that's super-easy and quick to grade. Then rotate the groups around throughout the semester so they all get a turn on the boards.

Having all the students completing all these different assessments isn't good for you or for them. You are working way too hard for no real benefit (which is probably why you posted in the first place).

[histchick]

My discussion posts are low-stakes assignments, graded essentially for completion.  It forces students to stay on task and engage with the material, and gives me an idea of how they're doing with it. 

I like Fishbrains' idea, though I haven't tried it. 

[clean]

I dont have any idea of the subject so My solution may not be appropriate for you.

I have an online class in Principles of Real Estate. The class had to be approved by Distance Education before I was allowed to teach it in our online program (and they are a pain in the ass!)
They required an interaction component, so here is what my class envolves:

They take exams
They 10 modules for assignments that have essentially a quiz over the chapters in the module.

For the interaction component, I require that the students each write 5 multiple choice questions for each chapter. They post those questions on the group discussion board. (there are 5 in a group).  They have 48 hours after the deadline to take a survey that evaluates the questions for the group. Each group member can nominate up to 4 questions per person as 'best questions'.  IF 3 or more nominate a particular question, then I add that to the a word document.  IF I have time, I upload those nominated questions into the software that creates quizzes and then make practice quizzes from the Best Questions. (If I dont have time, I email the class the nominated questions word file).

The biggest headache with this is that the software to create the practice tests has a format that I require everyone to use, and it takes several weeks, usually at least 4 modules to get the students to adhere to the format.

They are graded on their surveys, so IF they say that a team member followed the format but did not, then the evaluating student's survey answer is wrong and points are deducted.

Students that have questions nominated as 'best' can earn bonus points.

The benefit to this is that i dont have to read the questions. I simply review them in the LMS preview window to see that they followed or didnt the format template.  The group members evaluate the quality of the questions.  My grading is done by downloading the results of the survey into a spreadsheet and manipulating it.  Initially this took six hours WITH a student worker, but now I can do it alone in 2 hours per module (with 50 students in the class).

Again, I dont know if requiring the students to write the questions for each chapter would be appropriate for your course material, but it may provide an option. 

[downer]

Is your LMS supervised by someone else on a regular basis?

[HigherEd7]

No, I do not think so.

Is your LMS supervised by someone else on a regular basis?

[downer]

Then just do what you can in a reasonable amount of time, without stress.

When assigning grades, over-estimate what they deserve, based on what info you have time to look at.

[arcturus]

This is a stressful time of the semester for both students and faculty, but please re-read the numerous responses that have been posted to your previous questions regarding online teaching. Teaching well is often a time-intensive process, whether that be in a face-to-face format or online. It is possible to design courses such that less time is spent grading, but that usually requires up-front time to design effective assessments.

In terms of grading discussion posts, my approach is a simple 3-level rubric (0 points, 1 point, 2 points) indicative of whether they responded appropriately to the prompt. Some weeks everyone gets 2 points (usually an attempt to connect the course material to their lives, so anybody who posts is automatically assumed to be correct) and some weeks most people get 1 point (usually an attempt to have them synthesize material from different modules, with varying levels of success). These posts take very little time to grade, but the activity satisfies the requirement that there be student engagement with other students in an online course.

[polly_mer]

When assigning grades, over-estimate what they deserve, based on what info you have time to look at.

Otherwise known as ripping off the students because general education is somehow not about learning things or at least demonstrating that one is proficient in the required things to move on to the next course.

OP, talk with your colleagues about what can reasonably be autograded, what is formative assessment for the students' benefit, and what is summative assessment that constitutes the grade.  Formative assessment may need more of your attention to provide useful feedback than summative assessment that is basically yep/good enough/nope.

[arcturus]

Then just do what you can in a reasonable amount of time, without stress.

When assigning grades, over-estimate what they deserve, based on what info you have time to look at.

While presumably meant in jest, this is the type of advice that can get someone fired for cause. In that context, it has no place in a fora where people often come for advice and guidance.

[downer]

Then just do what you can in a reasonable amount of time, without stress.

When assigning grades, over-estimate what they deserve, based on what info you have time to look at.

While presumably meant in jest, this is the type of advice that can get someone fired for cause. In that context, it has no place in a fora where people often come for advice and guidance.

No jesting.

How would it lead to the loss of a job? We know from past history with this poster that the school is mainly interested in satisfying its customers.  And OP has said no one supervises the LMS. It's a perfectly reasonable response to the work conditions imposed.

[HigherEd7]

Thank you, the one thing that is frustrating about this board is that sometimes you get some good advice and sometimes I have to say it some people can be a jerk. Most people come here to seek advice from experience faculty, and not to be reminded of how many posts they posted or questions they asked. I would really like to see what some of these experts teaching was like. Please remember the turtle did not get to the top of the pole by himself. Take care 

Then just do what you can in a reasonable amount of time, without stress.

When assigning grades, over-estimate what they deserve, based on what info you have time to look at.

While presumably meant in jest, this is the type of advice that can get someone fired for cause. In that context, it has no place in a fora where people often come for advice and guidance.

[fishbrains]

This is a stressful time of the semester for both students and faculty, but please re-read the numerous responses that have been posted to your previous questions regarding online teaching. Teaching well is often a time-intensive process, whether that be in a face-to-face format or online. It is possible to design courses such that less time is spent grading, but that usually requires up-front time to design effective assessments.

I agree. But I've also found that people who design "master courses" quite often throw in everything but the proverbial kitchen sink into their "master courses" because they don't have to teach them; therefore, the bad logic goes, if 10 discussions boards work well, then 15 boards will produce even better "engagement" . . . right? A discussion board every single week all the way through a course along with all the other assignments for 50 students just isn't intelligent design. If possible, the OP might modify the course into something that meets the prescribed guidelines but cuts down on the ineffectual busy work.

Modifying the posting prompts to produce shorter responses works well for me. For example, for one poetry board, I have the students write a Shakespearean sonnet based on a topic I give them (to avoid plagiarism). These are quick to grade and fun for me to read, plus they show me students understand closed-form poetry, at least to some extent. Students generally look at other's posts without my prompting to see what others have done (they can't see the board until they post their own sonnet). If I had to deal with 15 boards with 50 students, I might move on to haiku. :)

Sounds like a tough gig for the OP.

[AvidReader]

Then just do what you can in a reasonable amount of time, without stress.

I don't know about the "without stress" part, but, yes, do what you can do in a reasonable amount of time.

I give a lot of what other people might consider "busy work." Not your volume, but I have 1 or 2 things due every week. Some are short (write 3 sentences explaining the best thing about this article / submit a thesis statement and a list of topics for body paragraphs in your next essay / submit a works cited entry for your next essay). A few are more like discussion posts (and there LMS makes a big difference). I think these things help me catch issues before students submit work worth 10-20% of their grades, but they also make my grading load crazy.

When I taught in person, I would usually have something students did at the beginning of class (quiz / thesis statement / works cited entry) and we could often review them in class, or I could glance over them when students were doing something else and use the check, check-plus, check-minus model. Thinking about how I used to grade these activities has helped me think of ways to give grades and/or useful feedback while holding students accountable.

I'll note that I don't find assigning numerical grades all that hard, especially for discussions / journals /other small activities. It is the feedback that takes time. YMMV.

Most things I grade on a scale of 1-5, or 1-10, but the 1-2-3 arcturus describes works just as well, depending on how your gradebook is set up.

For me:
10 or 5=great job, met all requirements, seems on track.
8 or 4= on the right track, but needs to look at something
6-7 or 3-3.5= good effort but needs to revisit more carefully. Might be missing something. Might have misunderstood something.
4 or 2 = submitted something but has serious errors. Needs revision before continuing the larger activity
0= did not submit.

You can build in some of the feedback if you tell students that this is what this means. So you might give a score of 8 and say "make sure you include/apply/do X in future responses."

If really jammed for time, give the grades with minimal feedback and invite students to attend virtual office hours if they are confused.

I prefer grading by hand, but an advantage of grading online is that you can copy and paste material in feedback. I keep a text file for each assignment I give, and I update it every time I re-teach the assignment. Within the document, I sort by type of feedback. My feedback file on "discussion response to article X" might have sections for praise, content, analysis, explanations, citations, and grammar. For the first student, I might say, "You have 2 examples from Jones's article, but the prompt asks for 3. Check the directions more carefully before submitting in future." After typing this to the student, I also paste this into my feedback file under "content," and when the next student forgets the third example, I copy and paste the text again. It adds a few seconds the first time, but speeds up subsequent iterations.

AR.