Hello. First time teaching (undergrads) this semester, and I am now, ahem, first time marker. My field is humanities, so essay-heavy although this assignment I am currently grading is 1000 words each so not too bad.
My problem is trying to speed up marking. I started marking today, and have so far made it through six essays… in about 5 hours. I think I am notionally paid for about 3 essays to be marked per hour, but I guess I was prepared for the first lot to take a tiny bit longer since I’m getting used to it.
What I wasn’t prepared for was just “how long” it’s taking. I have another 36 essays to do. I tried setting a clock for 20 mins each time like I am paid for, but I keep going way over. (I have ADHD so a fair bit of time blindness I guess.)
I am a final year PhD and I am desperate to get back to my own work as quickly as I can. How can I speed up marking as a first timer so I can get closer to the 20 mins mark – and hopefully from that, learn how to stick to time next time I mark?
Bonus points for hacking the ADHD time blindness situation.
ETA: There is a rubric I am using! Which is helpful.
Comments
I challenge myself to mark a certain number per hour and I could do 3 1000-word essays an hour. Unless I challenge myself, I slow down and get distracted. What’s also key is to limit your comments – 2-3 per page and an overall comment. I’ve developed my own templates for feedback, which is a great time saver but you have to have some experience to be able to do that.
A rubric frontloads a lot of the mental effort of assigning a grade.
In terms of comments, has your instructor of record given you guidance for how much feedback to give? Generally, less is more. Even for the students who read your feedback, too many things to work on is overwhelming so they do none of them, or pick one of the least important ones to focus on. Don’t line-edit their work for them unless you’ve specifically been told to.
The LMS should have a feature where you can load custom comments you can label, like “F” for “format” or “SU” for “Support Unclear” and include explanation. “G” stands for “global” so you don’t have to mark it everywhere in the paper. All you have to do is mark the codes on the submission and click through the comments then add a blurb at the end.
As someone else says, do a rubric.
Then still die for hours, but at least your conscience is clear.
Also, once you read about ~ 10 writing assignments you can tell what’s going to happen. Enjoy the good students, do the minimal you can for the students who are also giving you the minimum.
And don’t go all-in and put a billion comments, they don’t care
Do big-picture stuff, which you are already good at. Ultimately it’s up to them to do a good job.
I pretty much grade psychology assignments for a living (I’ve got some other responsibilities but grading is a major one). Here are my tips:
have a rubric, if the professor didn’t make one you should. Grade according to the rubric then squint at the essay and see if the grade seems about right, adjust accordingly. Also it’s best to establish the rubric in advance and run it by the professor and other TAs for the class to ensure it’s appropriate and everything is standardized across sections. I also like to let students see how they will be graded in advance by posting the rubric. Rubric categories shouldn’t be super specific, they can be things like “use of sources”, “understanding of material” or “structure of argument”. It’s useful to know how much value is being put on each aspect of an assignment it also makes giving feedback faster.
Break up your grading with other tasks, like grade 5 essays then do something else or take a break then grade 5 more. Doing it efficiently takes a lot of focus and most people even without ADHD can’t keep that up continuously for hours.
Do not use ChatGPT (not saying you ever would but people seem to be commenting about it). Your students deserve better. If you’re using it to grade then they would be within their rights to have ChatGPT write their assignments and no one will learn anything. Also you may find yourself having to justify your grading to a student or professor and you can’t do that if an AI actually did it. This is also one of the reasons that it helps to have a rubric.
I observed a friend mark a single essay for an hour or more. I was shocked, because she was going back, rereading, commenting numerous times per page. At some point, that essay was so bad, she just needed to say “see me” or say what it doesn’t do, instead of trying to locate the missed opportunities to do something, or whatever she was doing. Often, students don’t even read the feedback, so why give so much? I think you need to reframe the dedication you can give each essay. I find it easier to comment on good essays, but bad ones, there is little point into getting into the weeds. Even though those students need the most help.
To add to some of the tips provided here, if you are a graduate ta, I would ask the instructor of record for a rubric and guidance for how much feedback they would like. But what I usually did is align what the instructor was doing in the classroom with the feedback I was providing. This makes the instructor happy and it also makes the student feel like your feedback is relevant to the course. I would avoid grading entire essays and reports, and instead pick one area that the instructor was focusing on that week and all of my feedback on every paper would focus on that theme. This also reduces the amount of complaints you get from students sharing their feedback with each other because they’re mad about their grade. So when they do, they see a theme across all papers and in their brain that just feels more fair. An instructor would be happy if you spent so much time that you were making 25 cents an hour, but you have to be realistic you can’t grade hundreds of 10 page essays every week and not want to murder someone