How can I respond to and grade student writing at the end of the quarter without getting overwhelmed? End-of-the-quarter grading can be a difficult task after putting so much energy into teaching. It's easy to feel overwhelmed with a pile of papers to grade that need a quick turn around, especially when you have a number of students graduating. Thankfully, there are a variety of ways to make grading less time consuming that can be instigated as you wrap up your class, during finals week, and as you plan for next quarter of teaching. Check out the following tips to learn more about how you can make your end-of-the-quarter grading process more efficient. As You're Wrapping Up Class: Discuss your end-of-the-quarter grading plans with your students and determine their expectations. For example, if students are turning in their assignments on the last day of class, ask them to indicate if they want extensive comments on their final projects or if they simply want a short overview of how they might improve their writing for their upcoming classes. You could also offer to meet with students at the beginning of the following quarter if they want to stop by and pick up their final projects. You might be surprised at how many students are planning on graduating, going out of the country, or leaving for home right after finals week, so they won't be able to pick up their projects until after the quarter is over, if at all. It can be helpful to know what students are expecting because this can cut down on your grading time. Finals Week: If you haven't already created a rubric, look over the final assignment or project for your course and consider the assignment's instructional goals. Then, develop a hierarchy of elements to which you will respond. Developing a rubric that concentrates on only the top three to five prioritized elements that you have chosen can help you grade more quickly and effectively. Learn more about creating grading rubrics on the WAC Wiki (https://carmenwiki.osu.edu/display/osuwacresources/How+to+Develop+a+Rubric). Next Quarter: As you plan your course for next quarter, think about including your students in the design of your grading rubrics. Asking students about the criteria that they would use to assess an assignment is a great way to talk about learning goals and what they should be prioritizing as they work on their projects. Planning this rubric in advance with students also gives them the chance to peer review each others' work based on the rubric, making your grading experience more effective, and teaches students to set their own evaluative standards. In turn, students will likely learn to meet those standards on their own and hold themselves and their classmates accountable to those standards. Furthermore, they may also feel more invested in an assignment if they have contributed to the assessment tool. WAC Resources: Check out the latest additions to our Writing Across the Curriculum Resource Wiki: https://carmenwiki.osu.edu/display/osuwacresources/Home Additional Resources: Barbara Walvoord and Virginia Johnson Anderson's Effective Grading: A Tool for Learning and Assessment (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998). This book is a great resource for instructors who are interested in saving time when grading and commenting on student projects. The authors offer several strategies to reduce the amount of time spent without reducing the quality of the grading or comments. For example, Walvoord and Anderson suggest using rubrics, checklists, or guidelines to make the grading criteria explicit for students and to help you focus your comments. More Ways the WAC Team Can Help You: See an archive of our past tip e-mails at: http://cstw.org/WAC/?cat=50. For more ideas about how you might implement writing to learn activities please contact us to schedule an individual consultation. To further our aim of facilitating dialogue about teaching writing, we offer workshops with faculty and graduate teaching associates that tackle issues involving the teaching of writing in various academic genres. We also can co-facilitate in-class presentations for your students, demonstrating innovative approaches to writing instruction and lending students strategies for overcoming challenges with assignments. Let us know how we can help you over the summer months. Contact us by phone (292-9650), e-mail (waccstw@osu.edu), or through our website (http://cstw.osu.edu/wac). Have a great summer, The WAC Team, Dr. Chris Manion, WAC Coordinator Victoria Genetin, Women's Studies Tanisha Jackson, Art Education Katie Linder, Women's Studies Kate White, English