Weekly Digest #131: Increasing Grading/Marking Efficiency
Grading (marking in the UK context) can be a time-consuming and, at times, annoying task that teachers face on a regular basis. How can we make grading more efficient and less burdensome, but at the same time provide students with the important feedback that helps them improve their performance in the future? We dedicated a weekly digest to this 2.5 years ago, but we thought it would be nice to have an update with some new, additional resources – given that grading season is here.
Image from Pixabay
1) 13 Marking Workload Tips For Teachers by Lynn How (@lynn_eek) via Teacher Toolkit, @TeacherToolkit
Grading increases a teacher’s workload considerably. Thus, one point important to focus on it how to provide feedback and grades in a way that keeps the workload reasonable. Teacher Toolkit has 13 practical tips on making grading a less time-consuming task.
2) Eight Ways Teachers Can Reduce Their Marking Mountain by Ryan Wilson (@rhwilson83) via The Guardian, @GuardianTeach
This short article focuses on eights things that you should stop doing while grading. It contains some eye-openers and will definitely reduce the time you will spend per assignment.
3) A Marked Improvement? by the Education Endowment Foundation, @EducEndowFoundn
This is an entire research review report on how to make grading more time-efficient and, at the same time, increase its effectiveness for student learning written by researchers from the University of Oxford. Although this is a longer read, it provides wonderful guidelines based on research.
Image from Pixabay
4) The Two Best Ways To Stay Motivated When Marking Exams by RM Results
One aspect that has not been directly addressed yet is that grading can become a quite boring task. Reading the same assignment over and over can become tiresome fast. This resource provides some tips on keeping motivated while grading.
5) Marking And Feedback: Top Ten Tips For Postgraduates by David Lees via Jobs.ac.uk.
This last resource provides grading tips for people who are new to grading and providing students with feedback or who have not done this as often as established professors or teachers: Teaching assistants. It points out important questions to ask yourself before starting the grading procedure.
Every Sunday, we pick a theme and provide a curated list of links. If you have a theme suggestion, please don’t hesitate to contact us! Occasionally we publish a guest digest, and If you'd like to propose a guest digest click here. Our 5 most recent digests can be found here:
Weekly Digest #126: Memory Researchers as Science Communicators
Weekly Digest #127: Women in Physics
Weekly Digest #128: Fall Safety
