POWER GRADING! 

In last year’s 6001 graduate teaching practicum, the new GTA’s discussed the practical matter of “power grading.” Fearlessly staring down the incalculable hours of commenting and grading student papers, and backed by our benevolent leader -- Dr Pruchnic -- we came to terms with eight rules for a power-grading system that helped to reduce and organize the immeasurable amounts of grading through several shrewd techniques.  It is the purpose of this page to share these rules of power-grading with you!

1.       Run a Soft Copy System: Having final drafts submitted and returned as soft copies may seem like a minor point, but it will eliminate time wasted on collecting and returning hard copies during class, allow for flexible (offsite) due dates/time, reduce time spent on reviewing drafts during face-to-face meetings, and make it easier to track down graded drafts that may be needed either due to a grade dispute, lost files, or because you need examples for current class use/future classes.

2.       “Informate” Your Comment System:  Some people believe that partially automating your comment practices can create insensitive and abstract evaluations of student work.  However, keeping a sheet of ready-made comments (particularly multiple versions of common remarks), will save you time typically wasted on continually restating common problems on particular assignments.

3.       “Outsource” Oversight on Drafts and Preliminary Evaluation: The peer-review workshop is an old-saw of the composition classroom, but much of the value of this activity is lost when it could by more constructive.  Having drafts available for all students to read creates panoptical pressure on students to turn in an impressive first draft and for peer reviewers to make substantive comments.  This will reduce grading time as students will have stronger starts and often you will find yourself able to shorten your remarks by referring to peer review comments.  Having students ‘grade’ each other’s drafts can also help ‘soften the blow’ of your evaluations, as students are often more severe in their evaluations than their instructors.

4.       Keep more files than the FBI: Having easy access to the graded versions of students’ work will allow you to efficiently focus on both recurring problems and marked improvements in their writing. Reference to their previous papers (both positive and negative) will also reinforce for the student that you are invested and aware of their progression and do not approach each paper as an isolated entry.

5.       Increase Student “Mindshare” and Decrease Grading Time Through Collaboration:  In the GTA model syllabus, assignments 3 through 6 are ripe for collaboration between students.  Students can benefit from the kind of writing they’ll likely be doing in the workplace as you benefit from less grading.

6.       Focus on (Negative) Constructive Comments when Grading: Empirical studies have proven the surprising fact that students prefer negative comments that provide direction (“This is a problem because you neglect to ...”) over “generic” positive comments (“Good Work!”), and that the former are also the comments that have the highest impact on their future work. Providing options for revision allows you to turn what might have been a frown of frustration into a smile of appreciation.

7.        Remember that Grading Starts before the Final Drafts are submitted and Doesn’t Stop After They are Returned: Rubrics provide a “shared text” that you can refer to during evaluation (thus saving time in both the explanation and justification of comments and grades) whereas rubrics or other prognostic schemes referencing common errors beforehand both encourage students to avoid common problems associated with particular assignments and allows you to reference this schema rather than continually explicating the problem on individual papers.  Using examples from student papers in class after drafts are graded also saves you time grading: by identifying common problems in the latest batch of drafts you can insert a comment identifying the category of the problem and referencing its future appearance during class. (“This structure of this sentence makes it a bit confusing; we’ll be discussing this problem in class on Tuesday”). Assigning a text such as a pocket guide to grammar, also allows you to focus on more unique writing problems while referring students to the appropriate sections of that text.  

8.       Introduce “Time-Motion Protocols” into Your Grading Practices: Except in extraordinary circumstances, limit your evaluation of a project to a time limit.  “Power-Graders” may in fact reach the goal of evaluating projects in X number of minutes by using rules 1-7 and by avoiding repetitive comments.