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Screencast of the Week - Grading Papers in a New Way

Posted on Sunday November 4, 2007 by Betsy Weber

For the first time, the Screencast of the Week...is a Jing video!

Remember when you were back in school? You'd put your heart and soul in a paper, turn it in to the teacher and a week later you would get some cryptic feedback written on the paper in red ink. Sometimes, for me, a few words weren't enough for feedback and it often left me with more questions than answers.

Alisa Cooper, a professor at Maricopa Community College, has changed the way she grades papers. Most students turn in their papers electronically now, right? Well, why not grade and comment on them electronically as well? Alisa has created a 'grading toolbar' for Microsoft Word that she uses to comment and grade student's papers. In this quick Jing screencast, she'll show you how she adds comments and feedback.

Click on the screenshot below to launch the Jing video. It runs 4:20 minutes.

jing_coop.jpg

You can read Alisa's blog post about her technique here. Alisa's method saves time for the teacher and gives students clear feedback. No more questions and everyone is happy! You can read more about Alisa here. Thanks Alisa for sharing your tips and tricks!

Any nominations for next week's Screencast of the Week?

Comments (23)

Richard Campbell :

Great job Alisa

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Jenn P :

by far one of my most favorite posts on the TSC blog! ITA -- kudos, alisa! now let's see if i can find the buttons to do this in office 2007 ...

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Holly T :

Alisa,

Thank you so much for sharing this tool; it is fantastic! I created three toolbars: one for MLA formatting, a second for Standard English Conventions, and a third for my frequent comments on other elements of writing (use of transitions, word usage, development of thesis, etc.) Already it has saved me time and allowed me to provide more descriptive feedback than I would if I was writing out each longer comment individually. Furthermore it allows me to focus my time on writing comments that are more individualized as needed rather than on the more generic comments. This certainly beats copying and pasting from a comment bank in another document for online commenting.

The only issues I ran into following the video instructions was realizing that I didn't need to click the record icon when creating the macro (it was already going - in effect I was pausing the recording and then closing it before I had recorded anything). In the video you pointed to the icon and didn't click on it. I misunderstood this point at first. I also needed to figure out what kinds of names for the macros would be accepted (no space or symbols if I remember correctly). When I watched the video closely where I was getting stuck I was able to see what I was doing wrong in both cases.

I am now wondering how it may be possible to move the order of the icons around once they are on the toolbar. You mentioned doing another video at some point - perhaps this an other advanced use of macros would be a good subject.

Thanks so much for sharing this with us! It has been so helpful!

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