Assignment Advice

[HigherEd7]

This semester, I would like to focus on some research and get some writing done I am currently teaching four classes. In my online classes, I have a weekly discussion board and quiz and a midterm and final exam and two assignments is this pretty standard? In the past, I gave my students to much work and it took up all of my time trying to grade everything. I have used some of the teaching materials that come with the textbooks and I don't think the people that write these understand that it is a lot to grade.

[Parasaurolophus]

It depends on the subject, but to my mind, it does look like a lot:

• Weekly discussion board
• Weekly quiz
• Assignment 1
• Assignment 2
• Midterm exam
• Final exam

That's six assessments for a single class, two of which you're repeating every week (for what, 13-15 weeks?). Multiplied across however many classes are structured this way... yeah, it's a lot. I imagine that the discussion board stuff is pretty easy to grade without investing too much effort into it, but you've also got those quizzes sucking up your time every week.

I don't know that there's much you can do to minimize your grading load for this semester, but it seems worth your while to rethink your evaluation profile for future iterations. Does the course LMS do any of the grading for you? If it doesn't, but it can, then it's worth setting it up to do that for you. That allows you to give many more assessments than you could otherwise handle grading.

For comparison, my evaluation profile for my IRL formal methods class consists of:

• One in-class presentation
• Five quizzes (roughly one every two weeks)
• One final exam
• Attendance

Technically, that's eight things. But the LMS grades my quizzes for me, so all I ever have to do is keep an attendance sheet, grade the presentation as it's being made, and grade the final exam. Easy peasy. It's almost no work at all, except for a few days at the end of the semester.

[polly_mer]

From a pedagogy standpoint, the question remains: what do students need to learn in this course and what is the best way for them to do that?

What do students have to do to complete the quizzes and how does that compare to 9 hours per week for a 3-credit class held over a 15-week term?

What is involved in the two assignments and what do students get out of doing them that is different from the weekly quizzes and discussion boards?

We can help reduce the grading burden (maybe), but we need a lot more information than simply the list.  The list looks really light to me on assignments, but it could be a ton of grading work for minimal benefit to the students.

So, start at the beginning: what do students need as feedback and what's the most efficient way for you to provide that feedback?

[Hegemony]

A weekly quiz is way too many quizzes.  You'll spend forever grading them, and some students will miss them for various reasons and plead for an attempt to make them up, and you'll have to decide which reasons are valid, and then create a new replacement quiz, etc. etc. etc.  If you have a midterm, skip all the quizzes.  If you want to have quizzes, have one every second week, and skip the midterm.

[HigherEd7]

Thanks for the responses. The assignments are around 5 to 6 pages each and students are applying it to what they learned application. I have 35 students in each class so it will take some hours to grade. I thought about just giving a quiz every other week and bring it down to 8.  This is an online course so the LMS will grade the quiz and exams. Correct in the past I have had students miss a quiz and then you have to develop another one etc..............

1. Weekly Discussion Boards
2. 8 - quizzes
3. 1 Assignment
4. Final Exam

[polly_mer]

What do the students need to learn?

What is the best way for the students to practice and get formative feedback before a summative assessment?

The numbers of each type of whatever are not nearly as important as being effective for a good tradeoff between student needs and instructor's time and effort.

Again, what are students supposed to be doing for their 9 hours per week that will help them learn the material?

[craftyprof]

I don't think quiz frequency is that big of an issue if the LMS is doing the grading.  For you, the work was in the set-up, so changing the number of quizzes would be more work.  I use frequent low-stakes quizzes in some of my classes to encourage students to stay current on the readings.

One of the strategies I picked up from the Jedi Mind Tricks or similar thread around here was to have some number of quizzes that get dropped so you don't have to deal with make-ups and evaluating excuses.

Some of my colleagues evaluate threaded discussions with elaborate rubrics... they monitor word counts, grammar, citations, etc.  My discussion assignments are more likely to involve between 1 and 4 checkmarks and take less than 20 minutes to grade for a class.  So I don't see anything wrong with the number or type of assessments use are using - it is more a question of how complex your grading scheme is.  Making that piece easier on yourself is more important than the absolute number of things you are requesting from students.

[HigherEd7]

Very curious to know what tool you are using to grade your discussion questions in 20 minutes. It takes me several hours to grade them each week.

I don't think quiz frequency is that big of an issue if the LMS is doing the grading.  For you, the work was in the set-up, so changing the number of quizzes would be more work.  I use frequent low-stakes quizzes in some of my classes to encourage students to stay current on the readings.

One of the strategies I picked up from the Jedi Mind Tricks or similar thread around here was to have some number of quizzes that get dropped so you don't have to deal with make-ups and evaluating excuses.

Some of my colleagues evaluate threaded discussions with elaborate rubrics... they monitor word counts, grammar, citations, etc.  My discussion assignments are more likely to involve between 1 and 4 checkmarks and take less than 20 minutes to grade for a class.  So I don't see anything wrong with the number or type of assessments use are using - it is more a question of how complex your grading scheme is.  Making that piece easier on yourself is more important than the absolute number of things you are requesting from students.

[Hegemony]

My discussion assignments involve one substantial post and two substantial answers to others' posts.  The original is worth a maximum of 4 points and each of the responses 2 points, for a maximum of 8.  I read the discussions every day (and contribute), so when it comes time to grade, I know the gist of the whole thing anyway.  Then I click the thing on Canvas that lines the particular student's posts (one original and two answers) up together, read through them rapidly, and assign the whole shebang a grade out of 8.  Sometimes I write a note - "What happened to your second response?" or "Great points!"  The whole thing takes about 90 seconds.

[HigherEd7]

Sounds good! Do you have them respond to your question by a certain day and responses to students by a certain day? In the past, I had my students respond to my post by Wed and students by Friday. Thoughts?

[Hegemony]

Yes, that sounds good.

[HigherEd7]

What is the time limit for student presentations and if you have a large class would you still do a presentation? Seems like it could take up some class time.

It depends on the subject, but to my mind, it does look like a lot:

• Weekly discussion board
• Weekly quiz
• Assignment 1
• Assignment 2
• Midterm exam
• Final exam

That's six assessments for a single class, two of which you're repeating every week (for what, 13-15 weeks?). Multiplied across however many classes are structured this way... yeah, it's a lot. I imagine that the discussion board stuff is pretty easy to grade without investing too much effort into it, but you've also got those quizzes sucking up your time every week.

I don't know that there's much you can do to minimize your grading load for this semester, but it seems worth your while to rethink your evaluation profile for future iterations. Does the course LMS do any of the grading for you? If it doesn't, but it can, then it's worth setting it up to do that for you. That allows you to give many more assessments than you could otherwise handle grading.

For comparison, my evaluation profile for my IRL formal methods class consists of:

• One in-class presentation
• Five quizzes (roughly one every two weeks)
• One final exam
• Attendance

Technically, that's eight things. But the LMS grades my quizzes for me, so all I ever have to do is keep an attendance sheet, grade the presentation as it's being made, and grade the final exam. Easy peasy. It's almost no work at all, except for a few days at the end of the semester.

[craftyprof]

My discussion assignments involve one substantial post and two substantial answers to others' posts.  The original is worth a maximum of 4 points and each of the responses 2 points, for a maximum of 8.  I read the discussions every day (and contribute), so when it comes time to grade, I know the gist of the whole thing anyway.  Then I click the thing on Canvas that lines the particular student's posts (one original and two answers) up together, read through them rapidly, and assign the whole shebang a grade out of 8.  Sometimes I write a note - "What happened to your second response?" or "Great points!"  The whole thing takes about 90 seconds.

To answer HigherEd7's question, I do this too.

And I usually assign 5 or 10 minute presentations.  With questions and reloading between presenters and a break in a 3-hour class, I budget 15 minutes for each 10 minute talk.  Maybe 8 minutes for each 5 minute talk.  So, it's possible to do about 20 in a single week.  In a larger class, I have them work in small teams for the presentations because I usually don't want to devote more than 1 week to them.

[HigherEd7]

Thank you for the response.

My discussion assignments involve one substantial post and two substantial answers to others' posts.  The original is worth a maximum of 4 points and each of the responses 2 points, for a maximum of 8.  I read the discussions every day (and contribute), so when it comes time to grade, I know the gist of the whole thing anyway.  Then I click the thing on Canvas that lines the particular student's posts (one original and two answers) up together, read through them rapidly, and assign the whole shebang a grade out of 8.  Sometimes I write a note - "What happened to your second response?" or "Great points!"  The whole thing takes about 90 seconds.

To answer HigherEd7's question, I do this too.

And I usually assign 5 or 10 minute presentations.  With questions and reloading between presenters and a break in a 3-hour class, I budget 15 minutes for each 10 minute talk.  Maybe 8 minutes for each 5 minute talk.  So, it's possible to do about 20 in a single week.  In a larger class, I have them work in small teams for the presentations because I usually don't want to devote more than 1 week to them.

[HigherEd7]

Can all of the goals for students outcomes be accomplished just giving quizzes, exams, and discussion questions? Or do you have to give assignments that really amount to just busy work depending on who you talk to. I don't want to have students passing a course just because they do well on the assignments, but can't pass any of the exams. I have spent a lot of time reading and grading papers that have been copied from other students who took the course or written by someone else. Thoughts?