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Grading: how much (and which types)?

In our newest “how can we help you?” thread, a reader asks:

I am curious people’s thoughts on grading.

We know (well, at least me and some friends) that many students do not care much about our feedback, and many of them do not even read them. And we also know that grading probably is the least interesting part of teaching (again, at least for me…).

This semester, I am trying something new. First, I significantly reduced the amount of grading for myself. I made a lot of assignments in-class work, and as long as they were there thinking and writing, I gave them full credit. (Honestly, when I saw that they were that doing things, I cared less about what they actually did… I sometimes even did not read their in-class work… Shhh… Don’t let my students know it.) For a lower level undergraduate course, I only provide feedback for around three short writing assignments (500 words each). Second, for those short writing assignments, I ask them to do it in class and resubmit them later based on my feedback. I force them to engage with my comments.

So far, I would say that it helped my “mental health” A LOT. I did not fall behind in grading as before, and I feel that I have more time focusing on teaching prep, so that most of my effort regarding teaching has been devoted to in-class time. I also feel that my time is more balanced, and I feel more comfortable working on my own research and doing service. Of course, this is partly because I simply have more time.

But I do worry that if I give them too little feedback, or, if I assign myself too little grading to do. I cannot help but wonder if I am a bit too selfish. To be fair, I talk to students a lot during office hours and after class, most of whom are those who are interested in philosophy. My question is: how do you approach grading? How much grading do you think is reasonable for a course in this era (students not caring about feedback, the usage of AI, etc.)?

What do readers think (and do)?

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10 responses to “Grading: how much (and which types)?”

  1. Anonymous

    I think that something I’m learning as I teach more is the need for in-class assignments that actively and directly engage students. Class time is not just for course material, but also for teaching reading and writing skills. As a grad student (I did an MA and PhD at different institutions), I came to appreciate the feedback on writing and the role of revision in improving not only my writing but my ability to reconstruct the arguments of those I was engaging with. At my MA institution class was mainly all content and a term paper at the end that you would get feedback on half the time. As a full-time teacher now, I’ve begun incorporating dedicated time to in-class assignments. One thing I do is a paper workshop where students partner up and read a draft of each others’ work and provide feedback. I also go around and work with students individually. Using in-class time is the best way to teach them how to think and write on paper. I don’t think all assignments should be like that since that would take so much away from content over the course of a semester. But it’s something that I never experienced as an undergrad and I think it left my writing poorer because of it. As a result, I went into teaching initially thinking my job was to just teach content and that assignment were a way of testing student’s knowledge of the material. But more and more, as I think the author of this post shows, it’s becoming clearer to me that class time should also be used for working more directly with students on writing and thinking which is just as important as engaging with content.

    Reply
  2. Anonymous

    It sounds like you are making busy work for your students. Do not do that. It is unethical. And it does not advance their learning or development. This is where learning goals, etc. can help. Get clear on what you want them to learn from the course – really clear (in six sentences). Structure the course and the assignments so that they can acquire those skills and knowledge. And then any assignment they do, and that you have to grade, will be worth your while. You have to change course. I am assuming you are early career. If you are, then if you proceed as you are now, you are almost guaranteed to hate your job in 10 years.

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      In-class writing assignments are busy work? Do you think revisions are busy work?

      Reply
  3. Anonymous

    I very much envy OP. My institution (in the UK) disallows any nonconformity. I think OP is doing the right thing. I wouldn’t worry about too little feedback. You can’t expect students to write publishable papers just with one feedback. Short but actionable feedback is much preferable to long feedback.

    Reply
  4. Anonymous

    You are not being selfish. In my view, you are doing (for a low-level undergraduate class) about as well as you can in light of LLM proliferation, and I say this as someone who has pivoted from learning contract style assignments to something very much similar. You are correct that negative feedback does not help really any but the very highest motivation students learn; I have seen empirical research on this point. And your approach in grading incentivizes students to spend time doing philosophy together while avoiding punishing students (in future career outcomes, etc.) for coming from weaker educational backgrounds.

    Unfortunately, in low-level classes, cumulative written assignments are de facto impossible to keep honest at this point. I have spent a lot of time talking to students off the record about these matters–if you think you can tell if writing is AI, you are probably subject to something like the toupée fallacy. And the very best students tell me one thing consistently: they use AI to do the *thinking* for them, to tell them which thesis is good and which is bad, and to write them an outline, and then do the writing themselves. I find this abhorrent. I would genuinely rather a student prompt an LLM to write a paper on their original philosophical thinking than write a paper by hand expounding philosophical reasoning an LLM did for them. But sniffing out this kind of output is well and truly impossible (they can still have the LLM give them ideas/outlines even for Google Docs tracked assignments, or even for scaffolded planning assignments), which forces in-class written assignment, which forces basically the grading structure you describe above. Policing this doesn’t work. It leads students to lie to me, and sets me against my students. Better to have a situation where this kind of conduct just isn’t possible.

    The main worry I have about the approaches you and I are taking is that they don’t give the students who are interested in further research in philosophy enough feedback and mentorship to get better at writing philosophical research. I am currently piloting a tracking system that allows students to opt into replacing their in-class assignments with a single written assignment that requires weekly attendance at small group check-ins during office hours as well as a public oral defence, but as this is a new experiment I can’t tell you how successful it is. I would probably rather assess philosophical reasoning in low-level classes with oral exams than short-form in-class writing, but as I teach mostly classes of 25-40 (without TAs) it’s not feasible from a time perspective.

    I think you are engaging with a set of instructional challenges that really no generation has dealt with before honestly and with good intentions. I understand where the sense of guilt is coming from, but I don’t think you have real grounds to worry. You are doing well by your students and the fact you are reaping benefits with regard to a work-life balance is a happy accident. While it is probably true that there is more that could be done, it will take all of us a little while to see how LLM capabilities and usage patterns stabilize (as well as affect the structure of the university itself) before we can get there.

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      This is really useful to hear (re: your polling of honest students). I have feared this was the case, to be honest. What sort of in-class assessments do you have them do? Do you do the same thing for your upper level courses?

      Reply
  5. Anonymous

    I switched to doing exams and rarely write any comments now. Instead, I have a mini-rubric for the short essays and mark how many points for each they got. When I give exams back, I go over common mistakes at the beginning of class. So far, not a single student has asked me for an explanation of their exam grades (this is my first semester not writing comments).

    Maybe for majors classes I’d do something different, but for lower-level courses this seems fine and has saved me a good bit of aggravation.

    Reply
  6. Anonymous

    I do daily in-class writing for my intro class. There are only three possible grades: 0, .5, and 1. Feedback is opt-in and requires a meeting for every other time I give it. This saves me so much time, and allows me to focus on students who care.

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      Could you say a bit more about what those writing assignments tend to entail?

      Reply
      1. Anonymous

        Usually 5 minutes of free writing on a prompt that I write on the board.

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