next »

[zuzu_]

Has anyone found an efficient way to do this?

I am an experienced online instructor but inexperienced in WebCT. A large part of my course grade is "participation" in discussion forums. I assign a weekly participation grade to each student, and this is averaged to make their participation grade for the course.

Of course, I'm way behind in grading these. I am using a regular old Excel Spreadsheet to do grades (not the WebCT gradebook) and I'm finding the process of going through these posts and assigning grades to be extraordinarly time consuming.

Suggestions?

[zharkov]

I don't remember the mechanics of WebCT for grading, but the approach I use is to give credit for the number of postings.  That is, if the student is supposed to post 10 substantial postings in a week, then I give full credit to all students who post 10 or more.   I don't grade individual postings.

[_touchedbyanoodle_]

Has anyone found an efficient way to do this?

I am an experienced online instructor but inexperienced in WebCT. A large part of my course grade is "participation" in discussion forums. I assign a weekly participation grade to each student, and this is averaged to make their participation grade for the course.

Of course, I'm way behind in grading these. I am using a regular old Excel Spreadsheet to do grades (not the WebCT gradebook) and I'm finding the process of going through these posts and assigning grades to be extraordinarly time consuming.

Suggestions?

Not using the WebCT grade book is craziness. I don't know if the features are the same (yet, or still?), but in Blackboard, you can select "grade topic" and view the number of posts and then compile individual students' posts. I run through, assign the zeros first, and then read the posts for each student and enter grades very quickly. I only allow three options for discussion grades: full, half, zero, so that limits the time I spent determining what number to assign.

You could start doing this and continue to hide the grade book.

[magistra]

I don't know about Web CT, but with some programs you can import your grade book from Excel (I know we can do this).  Ask your IT people about importing.

[finallyfullprof]

I also use the number of posts and the quality, but I don't grade each one individually. I divide them into groups (usually pre-and post-midterm). I use the Quiz function to create a placeholder for the grade and then put comments there about the general quality of the work.

We are switching to BB Vista, and it allows not only individual grading but also insertion of a rubric to use for discussion posts.

[bone_gal]

I think it might depend on the version of WebCT that you have.

I taught on WebCT CE and it did not have a way to directly grade discussion postings (which makes me think this is what you're using). I had to search each discussion for each students name and then note their grade on another sheet, and then manually transfer the grades from that sheet into the gradebook. Major pain!

We now have WebCT Vista, which is worse than CE in many respects, but which does have easier discussion grading. In the gradebook I click on the discussion, and then view submissions. That pulls up another window where I can look at all submissions from each student (including date and time of postings).

I don't know what to suggest if you're not using the WebCT gradebook.

Like others here, I give one grade per discussion (not per post) and that grade factors in message quality, quantity, and when posted. I have a rubric that helps with that.

[georgia_guy]

I typically start with post count. However, I also keep a sheet, upon which I write plusses and minuses while reading the posts. If it is exceptional, it gets a +. If it is a wasted "I agree with the above poster" type of post, it gets a minus. I add one for each plus, and remove one for each minus. I use this adjusted total to calculate their participation grade.

I do not grade postings for grammar. I grade them for content and relevance.

[zuzu_]

OP here. Thanks for the suggestions.

Unfortunately I have zero training on WebCT. I don't even know what version I have. I have no clue how to use the gradebook.

I got access to my course shell about 10 days before the semester started. I work at a small rural school, and the woman in charge of training faculty in online course development quit in the middle of August and has yet to be replaced. I'm lucky I figured out how to post content and have things go relatively smoothly with that. I'm hoping to figure out the gradebook in time for next semester

Part of my problem is that I'm weighting the DFs as 35% of the overall course grade, so I don't feel right about using shortcuts to "ballpark" grade. This is something I think I'll change for next semester.

[magistra]

In that case I'd just grade them as mini-essays.  It'll be laborious, but give each week's post (or posts, all together) a grade out of 100, like you would a weekly quiz or essay.  This is what you're saying by individual grade, right?  And it'll make averaging them easier.

To make life a bit simpler, give grades on a mental scale of A/A-/B+, etc.  Thus 100/95/90 and the like.  I've done this with short papers.  I found that I was stressing so much over a couple points, and that if I was grading on different days one paper would get a 92 that was at least as good as the 93 paper I'd read the day before, etc.  I was going crazy over consistency.  So I grade on a 5-point scale (with exceptions for truly borderline cases).  In the end it won't matter in terms of points, especially if they're assessed every week.  It might help, it might hurt, most likely it's a wash, and what difference does a point or two make at the end of the semester?  Nothing, compared to your sanity.  I've explained this process to my students and they've always thought that it was fair, which surprised me a bit -- you'd expect someone would whine, or ask whether he shouldn't have had a couple more points, or something, but I never got this.  On-line, of course, this isn't even an issue.

I hope this was the sort of thing you were looking for.  If not, I apologize.  I'd also suggest you call or e-mail WebCT and ask them for help -- they should have a separate helpdesk, or at least be able to tell you how to figure out which version you have.   You can usually figure things out ok with the 'help' function -- though certainly not always!  I must admit, I need to tackle our gradebook myself.  The training session was not helpful.  Our IT people may know the software (may), but they don't know how to teach.

[curly]

Seems to me that you have a long road ahead of you this semester.

For 35% of a grade, there is no way to shortcut if you want to grade quality.  Quantity is no indicator of student success, unless you're going to go on quantity as an indicator of student involvement and grade it as participation or some such.

It's rather easy to grade discussions if you are active in them with the students.  That might be your easiest solution.  Login and post questions in response to student discussions.  You'll know right away who is active and thinking right away.

If you are not active in the discussions, you could, maybe, although I don't like this, grade on posting times.  For example, I have taken several online classes where discussion was a big part of the grade.  Usually it was me and the other anal student discussing all week and then a flurry of posts in the final hours.  IMHO, those who actually discussed should get the good grades and posting times reveal that.

As sad as it is to say this, most profs I had online (more than 20 courses at 8 different public U's - it was an online cooperative multi-institution degree) were never involved in the discussions and most seemed to grade (very easily) on whether or not you "participated" in the discussion du jour.  That is my caveat about grading discussions - a lot of students have experiences like mine and unless you clearly and repeatedly inform them of your expectations if they are beyond "post at the last minute", you may find that your evaluations will suffer.

Good luck... and remember, one of the best things about a semester is that it ends.

[zuzu_]

These are helpful suggestions. I am not as active as I'd like to be in the forums--this is my first semester at a 5/5 CC and I have newborn.

But yes, I am at least skimming these posts for quality.

Thankfully, I got a good class. Most are dual-credit HS students, who are very bright, and have a special "study hall" to work on my course everyday. So except for the occasional "Hi Taylor!!!!! I totally agree with you, girl!!!!!" post, most of pretty high quality.

[cs_prof]

Here is my experience. I teach computer science and information technology.

As to the instructional technology, I have been using three different CMS, WebCT v.4 being one of them. None of the three are well suited for grading discussions as I want.

Discussion questions are published as part of each weekly assignment beforehand, in the beginning of semester. Every week, I create a weekly WebCT online discussion with a standalone thread for each question. Some questions are designed so that students prepare for working on the programming homework assignment. Some questions a kind of 'in-breadth'; they cover the required theoretical material that students must learn.  By making students discussing these questions, I ensure that they at least skim the textbook material.

Technically, I grade each student message. In fact, I just count "good" ones and further deliberate on "not so good", which is a rare occasion. Most postings are deemed to be good, anyway. The weight of online discussion in the final grade is about 20 per cent. So students looking for grade "C" sometimes do not participate much. I do not care.

The major requirement is making the subject line conveying the meaning of the student posting. This saves time on grading; often I do not even open student postings to put a grade; it is normally apparent that the message is 'good'. Postings with subject lines repeating previous ones are disqualified and even could be deleted by the instructor.

My grading scheme is as follows: student receives 40 points of 100 just for joining the discussion, no matter what BS he/she had posted. Those who ignore the discussion thus get zero. The rest 60 points are divided by N for each good answer (normally I offer between N and N+2 questions). Depending on course, N varies between 3 and 5. Extra posting, if any, allow raising the grade up to 110 per point. Then follows cutoff discouraging students from over flooding the online discussion.

Many discussion questions have very limited set of correct answers; so the discussion could be exhausted soon if some smart ass in the class posts all answers in just one message. To discourage students from doing so, I set the rules:
1. Each queston should be discussed in each student's posting using just one criterion and/or highlighting just one aspect. Posting attempting to cover more than one are deleted by the instructor.
2. Student is allowed to post the next message in the same question thread if only at least 1 hour had elapsed since the previous posting or somebody else had already posted a message in this thread.
3. No more than 2 postings per one thread; thus answers by each student must cover at least about 2/3 of all questions.
This also enforces peer-to-peer fairness, still making the discussion a kind of competitive.  Nobody steals someone's party in the discussion, anyway.

I am normally trying to followup on each student's message by posting an empty reply with something like 'Right' or 'Good point" in the subject line. This is just to demonstrate that I am here and follow the discussion.
Sometimes I add in 'A Challenge to All' in the subject line and post a new question in the message body. I am doing so in two cases: (1) if the discussion tends to be exhausted or (2) the discussion has reached an intersting point that is worthy of looking into.

In their feedback in the instructor evaluation forms, students had never complained about these discussions; sometimes they even place positive remarks. I think that this what is needed.

[curly]

There is a "discussion grader" now available in BB.  I have never used it.  Does it work?

[xenia]

Has anyone found an efficient way to do this?

<snip> A large part of my course grade is "participation" in discussion forums. I assign a weekly participation grade to each student, and this is averaged to make their participation grade for the course.

Of course, I'm way behind in grading these. <snip>  and I'm finding the process of going through these posts and assigning grades to be extraordinarly time consuming.

Suggestions?

For 35% of a grade, there is no way to shortcut if you want to grade quality.  Quantity is no indicator of student success, unless you're going to go on quantity as an indicator of student involvement and grade it as participation or some such.

I've taught online courses where participation was set high as a percentage of the course mark. It's pretty much unavoidable if you want them to make posts. And yes, then you have the hundreds of posts each week to deal with. Of course you're in there, giving them feedback too.

I don't know if this would work for you, but in terms of quality, there is a possible shortcut.

You can ask the students to choose their 5 best posts for you to grade for the quality fraction of the participation grade.
It also might not hurt to let them know that some exam questions are going to be based on how online discussions develop. That could just promote lurking, but it's worked for me, because students feel reassured when their post gets feedback that they are not only grasping the subject matter, but getting input into what'll be on the exam.

As for the numbers part, i.e. "You are expected to make 3 posts a week, of sufficient quality etc. etc.", counting these up doesn't threaten so much to suck the last dregs of life out of you as would assigning a mark for every last post.
Mind you, I've done that too. But you have to do that as you're going along, or it's all but hopeless. 

[onilne_adjunct]

There is a "discussion grader" now available in BB.  I have never used it.  Does it work?

Yes - mightily!  I screamed at a couple of my schools to get it, and they finally did.  I love it and would hate to go back to the old method I used (flipping back and forth between threads to see what a student wrote - it would take me over an hour per class this way).

With Discussion Grader I'm able to view all of a student's postings for a discussion thread at one time, and enter a grade for that student (it still takes a couple of mouse clicks, but way better than the old way).

I employ a grading rubric that my students are aware of, and I read the postings during the week, so when I go to enter the grade it takes about 15-30 seconds per student (and that's mainly waiting for the server).