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| Image Credit: @Eqavet |
For this week's reflection I will be focusing on tasks that are taking up a large portion of my time... grading and providing learning outcomes. Module 1 ended on Sunday night at midnight and I have 60 students to grade materials for (60 Voice Threads, 120 virtual labs, 60 quiz / assessments). This takes a lot of time and dedication. In my syllabus and on my personal description in blackboard, I tell my students I will have all work graded within 7 days. I strive to be faster than this, but this is not a lot of time for all of the material on which I need to provide feedback. I am also focusing on bulking up my learning objectives within the modules (a continuation from
Week 4: Reflection for Module 1 (part 1)). While this task will take me the entire semester to complete, I am working to stay one module ahead of my students. This week I will be completing the learning outcomes for Module 3 (but I will show Module 2 learning outcomes in this blog).
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| Image Credit: @pngall.com |
Grading and Feedback
As I stated above, I have spent most of this week providing my students feedback and grading their materials. Blackboard provides a great place in each grade book item to provide individual feedback. I always grade all student submissions, one assessment at a time, one question at a time. This is to ensure consistency among feedback and grading. It is a common practice in the math and sciences to grade this way for consistency and ensure no bias occurs. I also grade anonymously (a button provided in both Blackboard and LateNiteLabs allows instructors to use this option). This is important to help eliminate any perceived bias and helps to promote consistency in grading (this is also common grading practices for math and science). The first thing I grade is the discussion posts in Voice Thread (this is the only assignment that cannot be graded anonymously). The discussion posts are assessed on participation. As long as a student contributes to the discussion, the student will receive full credit. Students are provided examples of an "appropriate scientific discussion" and what it means to "contribute to a scientific discussion" at the beginning of the course and at the beginning of each module. Almost all student receive full credit for the discussion. Those that do not usually did not post a response.
I try and provide feedback in multiple ways on this activity. I publicly reply to student posts to contribute to the discussion and encourage continued participation. I also provide private feedback to the student that discusses the academic aspect of the post. I like to provide encouraging feedback for each student and point out how well they accomplished responding to a scientific discussion. Sometimes students are nervous about contributing to scientific discussion and I really enjoy giving encouraging and supportive feedback to each student. I really enjoy getting feedback from students on how this helps them as well. It encourages me to keep taking the time to do this every module. I use a variety of methods to provide feedback. I use a combination of text, audio, and video feedback throughout the grading process and this provides students a variety of different feedback methods throughout the semester. Students frequently tell me that the audio and video feedback are their favorites... which is also supported by the literature... so this does not surprise me.
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| Image Credit: P. Williams |
The second assessment I provide feedback on are the labs. This is something that takes up a huge amount of time. I have to go through each step that the student completed and check through to make sure they completed the experiment accurately. I provide students a lot of participation credit as well. This means that even if the student struggled through the lab, as long as they participated and worked on the lab, they will get credit. I have a personal rubric to help guide me as I grade participation so I can ensure consistency in the grading and feedback process. There is also a section for students to write where they had issues with the lab or where they needed more help or resources. I also review all of that to ensure the students were not hampered in their lab completion process. While this aspect does not directly contribute to their grade, it provides me feedback on things students may need. I can clarify instructions for future labs or add more resources that will help them.
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| Image Credit: P. Williams |
The quiz is the last thing I assess. Although blackboard will automatically grade the multiple choice parts on part 1 of the quiz, I still go through each question for each student to make sure the questions were read and interpreted appropriately. I also go over all the student data to ensure that students are not all missing the same types of questions. Although every student has different questions, they all have the same types of questions in the same frequency and level of difficulty. So, if I notice that a lot of students are missing questions of the same type that give me clues on if there are weaknesses in the materials, resources, and my instruction. If this occurs, I will add points to the student quizzes and go back and look for resources that will better help a student on the topic that was causing confusion. Because I have taught this course previously, I have caught some of these issues in previous semesters, but I will always check to make sure students are getting everything they need. Each student also has one essay question that I have to grade and assess. I go through and provide feedback for each essay. For this part of the quiz (which is taken separately from the multiple choice part of the quiz) the student can use other resources to craft their response, as long as their response is in their own words. This take a lot of time on my part and I work to make sure I provide feedback on each question.
Learning Outcomes
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| Image Credit: P. Williams |
The other aspect of this week, aside from providing feedback and answering student questions, was the continuation of the development of student learning outcomes. This is a task that I have taken on this semester as part of a plan to improve my courses and to help students make better connections between the material and the learning outcomes. This has been a huge success so far, but I just have to keep ahead of the students as much as I can. So, this week, I am focusing on getting Module 3 completely finished even though we started module 2 this week. It seems to be helping students and I have received feedback from students that it really helps them know what is expected and helps them prepare for the exam. I am glad this is currently helping students in the course and so happy that I chose to better connect learning outcomes to the material in the course. I will continue this process throughout the semester.
Wrap Up
As noted above, the first part of the module has been dedicated to providing feedback to each student in the course. I am very pleased with the progress the students have made through module 1. I have put in a lot of time and dedication to making sure the students receive positive, effective, and timely feedback... which is something that we have focused on in this program. As I noted before, I set a course policy that I will have all things graded and provide feedback within a week of the due date. I always strive to be faster, and I am happy to report that all 60 students received personalized feedback a few days ahead of schedule. I always feel so accomplished after working so hard to give each student timely feedback. With this many students, it is a huge challenge. Now on to the other courses I teach that are not part of this practicum reflection.
Onward and forward...
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