Has it been four years? The marking blues, or, the cost of too much feedback.

Has it been five four years?

Apparently I started this blog five four years ago. My plans for creating a centralized record of my attempts to improve my own teaching has failed. However, I have been experimenting with various pedagogical techniques over that time.

My most recent conundrum: the marking blues

My current conundrum concerns (alliterative, no?) my realization that I hate marking, even though it is important. I don't mind making rubrics (though sometimes I resort to a checklist). I think clear feedback is useful, at least when students read it. But marking grinds down my mental reserves like the trench warfare of WWI left a dent in France's population pyramid that took decades to work out. Ok, maybe marking isn't that bad.

I have a tendency to provide too much line-editing. I sometimes feel as if I provide more feedback than students will use (at least before I started requiring second drafts that showed how they incorporated or responded to my feedback). This was in addition to summarizing comments. And a detailed rubric (though not more than could fit on a single double-sided sheet).

One tool I've found to help speed my marking along is to use two highlighters, one green and one pink. The green marker is used to underline things students do well, the pink marker underlines those things students do poorly. I then might also add some margin notes. This seems to help me mark more quickly. One way it helps me is that I now routinely have a big fat highlighter in my paw instead of a pen or pencil. Mechanically, this means it is well-nigh impossible to automatically scrawl comments in the margins, or line edit, without first replacing the highlighter with a more finely-nibbed writing instrument. And that little act, I surmise, is often too much effort.

The takeaway

If when marking, you discover you are a compulsive line-editor and comment-leaver, using two colors of highlighter might reduce your marking time. This still leaves you time to also provide summarizing comments.