So amongst all the components of my digital conversion project, I'm going to describe my move towards digital grading. Not that these are in any particular order of importance, just this is what I've been working on for the past 2 days. First of all, why? I don't want to do something digitally just because it can be done, but because there is some kind of benefit, either in productivity or pedagogically. Here are the reasons I came up with:
1. As higher education moves toward more online and distance learning (in the case of my institution they will have to be dragged kicking and screaming), there will naturally be less paper passed back and forth between students and professors.
2. Grading lab reports is already the bane of my teaching existence. Just looking at the physical stack of 20-24 lab reports is daunting. Digitally, they don't take up a whole lot of space. Also, by having students turn them in digitally,it means they will probably come into my inbox over a 24-48 hour period rather than in pile at the beginning of a lab period. Maybe, just maybe I might even start grading them as they come in.
3. I can get them back to students via email within seconds of grading them rather than having them wait until the next lab period. So, theoretically, students could get feedback before turning in their next lab report.
4. Less paper. I really could care less about helping the environment. Most trees in the US are grown for the specific purpose of turning them into paper. While they are growing we get the added benefit of them participating in the carbon dioxide/oxygen cycle. However, I do think it's silly to waste resources.
5. I won't have to put up with students asking if they can borrow my stapler. Get your own stupid stapler!! The sell them at Walmart. Asking me if you can borrow a stapler right before you turn your report in tells me you just printed it 5 minutes ago in the library. Digital documents don't need to be stapled.
6. I don't have to think about taking stacks of papers to grade. If I'm at home in the evening and want to grade 1 or 2 while on my iPad I can. There isn't as high of a barrier to grading.
7. Documents transferred digitally have time stamps and leave trails. They don't get lost, eaten by pets, and there is no question as to when it was received.
So, now that I've convinced myself and you that this is something worthwhile, how will I do it? Remembering my guiding principles, it can't be clunky, can't rely on the student to have achieved Power User computer status, or take too much extra effort.
Here's the workflow I've developed:
1. The student gets me the document digitally in whatever native format they produced it in. This likely is a Word document, but it could also be a Pages, RTF, or a PDF. This will probably occur via email, but there are a number of ways to get the bits to me. That really doesn't matter.
Aside: "why don't you just use the track changes tool that is built into Microsoft Word?"
I'm glad you asked. I don't use MS Word as my primary word processor. Choosing this tool would mean that my students would HAVE to use a particular platform to complete their work. This goes against one of my guiding principles. Secondly, Track Changes behaves unpredictably if you are mixing different versions of Word, and thirdly, most students don't even know this feature exists. Fourthly, I can't draw big happy faces with my finger using Track Changes like I can when annotating a PDF.
2. The document gets converted to a PDF if it isn't already. This is super easy on the Mac as this functionality is built right in. I've even built a simple Automator action that will convert the file and dump it into a specified folder with a single click from my email inbox.
3. Our lab reports make use of a rubric that is shared among all the instructors in our department. It's a simple spreadsheet. Before, I'd have to Xerox at least 25 copies for each lab section. I'd fill the rubric out and staple a copy to the report along with any comments written on the report itself. Well, I just used Adobe Acrobat to create a PDF form of this rubric with drop down menus for each scoring section. This way, instead of typing the actual number in a text box, I can quickly have a score inserted for each section. I created a simple script in Acrobat to append this rubric form as the first page of the student's lab report PDF that was created in step 2. As part of this script, any PDFs in this folder get updated at one time. I don't have to do this individually for each report. This file is dumped automatically into a specific folder in my Dropbox. No manual syncing or thinking. It just works!
4. This new combined PDF has a "!-" appended to the filename to indicate that it needs grading.
5. To actually grade the report, I can open it on my iPad using a program called PDFExpert. I prefer GoodReader, but it can't do forms. I can fill in the rubric, annotate the report itself with comments, underlines, strikethroughs, etc. I can do the same thing on the Mac with Preview.
6. Once I'm done, I save a copy of the file replacing the "!-" with "$-" to indicate it's done. From both PDFExpert and Preview, I can have it emailed to the student with 2 clicks.
7. The student can view the report and all the annotations with any ubiquitous PDF reader. All the campus computers have this capability, it's built in to all Macs, and if by chance doesn't have Adobe Reader installed, it's a quick free download and trouble free installation. It doesn't matter what operating system they are using. It just works!
8. The last thing I do is save a locked or "flattened" copy of the PDF on my system. This becomes the canonical copy in case there is any question as to the content of the graded paper. I wrestled with the idea of sending this un-editable version to the student rather than the editable one. It turns out that sometimes, depending on what software is used, some of the comments get lost and are not visible to the student. Again, I don't want to have to think or be constrained to a particular software workflow to make sure the student receives all the feedback they need. A student just has to realize that even though they can change their score on the form from a 24 to a 40, if it doesn't match what my canonical copy says, it doesn't mean anything.
My initial plan is to test drive this one the first lab report of the semester. If things go well, I'll do it for all the formal reports. As for the worksheet labs, my hope is to use our copy machine to scan the reports to PDF en masse and do a similar thing, but we'll have to see about that.
0 comments:
Post a Comment