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[zuzu_]

Please feel free to vent your problems here.

I teach composition online. This is such a horrible course to do online because of the sheer volume of writing and revision that occurs. I have to read students drafts, and thoughtfully evaluate and make suggestions for improvement, all while trying to be tactful because my critical comments can't be balanced by my winning personality, unlike in on-campus courses.

So I kill myself making careful revisions and comments on every student draft. I'm pointing out positives, negatives-- a lot of mental energy. I return these drafts to students a week before their final essays are due. I send out a reminder message that students can access my comments in the "Graded" file in the dropbox. I explain, in detail, how to do this. I tell them to contact me if they have trouble. I tell them what extension to call for tech support.

So now I grade final papers, and OVER HALF of the students apparently NEVER checked their drafts for my comments. Naturally, these drafts SUCKED, but would have been decent if they followed my suggestions. So everyone gets sh!tty grades. And they're all like "OMG I didn't realize you made all these comments on my draft. I couldn't find them in the dropbox."

So NO WAY am I giving all of these students an opportunity to rewrite again. Grading everyone's paper twice sucks enough. I'm not grading them three times.

Of course, my evals are going to suck now, too.

Fck, fck, fck.

[magistra]

Wow.  Just found this, and I wanted to sympathize.  That sounds like the worst of all possible worlds, and a terribly misuse of on-line technologies.  Some classes simply won't work on-line. 

Maybe make it required that they use your comments, or they fail?  I don't really know.  I do know how long it takes to write those comments (insert comment, etc seems to take me longer than with hard copies) and I can't really imagine doing all this multiple times, just to be ignored.  I'm so sorry.  Maybe think of it as a lesson in What Not To Do.  <passes alcoholic beverage of choice>

[docme]

They have done this to themselves. They are used to making that "I couldn't find it in my dropbox" excuse and it working. I no longer read my evaluations. I can imagine if I'd told a professor, "Oh, you put that in my folder?, I couldn't find my folder." They would have told me to go suck an egg.

[garyz]

Are you forced to teach on line?  I am finishing my first year teaching OL and I'm finding it takes both the right instructor and the right type of material.  Maybe composition courses really shoudn't be taught OL at all?  I teach criminal justice at a community college and despite the "rush" to OL, I am not at all sure it is appropriate for all courses about this subject? 

[zuzu_]

Are you forced to teach on line?  I am finishing my first year teaching OL and I'm finding it takes both the right instructor and the right type of material.  Maybe composition courses really shoudn't be taught OL at all?  I teach criminal justice at a community college and despite the "rush" to OL, I am not at all sure it is appropriate for all courses about this subject? 

Yes--I am pretty much forced.

I agree that comp is a particularly terrible thing to put online.

I do, however, see the necessity of these courses. I live in a spread-out, sparsely populated rural area, and teaching these courses online allows people to attend college who couldn't otherwise.

[illuminata]

zuzu, we all know college student are theoretically able to read, but many don't read (or comprehend?) ol instructions well. Can you have your IT ppl help you make a video of you giving the instructions verbally? I don't know why, but this really seems to help.

There are apparently several ways to post the video (our campus is big on podcasts) on Blackboard, and I'm sure it would work on other apps as well. Once you make the thing, you post an announcement that they need to go watch the thing. Maybe it makes them think they "know" you better? Who knows, but it seems to help around here.

[caeprylo]

Perhaps you could make them work together before you get the final drafts.  What about grouping or teaming class members together and having them peer review before you get their papers?

[carol3605]

This is exactly what I was going to suggest. I teach almost exclusively online English comp classes. For each essay, students are placed in peer review groups with a feedback form they must use to critique the drafts in their group. If they do not critique, or if they do not post an essay to be critiqued, they get a zero grade on the essay. At  the end of the term, the students who do this  rave about how much they learned by having to read and comment on other people's essays. I send a hard copy in the mail with my comments on the draft that is submitted for a grade. Perhaps that approach will help?

[magistra]

zuzu, we all know college student are theoretically able to read, but many don't read (or comprehend?) ol instructions well. Can you have your IT ppl help you make a video of you giving the instructions verbally? I don't know why, but this really seems to help.

There are apparently several ways to post the video (our campus is big on podcasts) on Blackboard, and I'm sure it would work on other apps as well. Once you make the thing, you post an announcement that they need to go watch the thing. Maybe it makes them think they "know" you better? Who knows, but it seems to help around here.

She's talking about Tegrity and WIMBA, and doubtless there are other programs.  A FAQ never goes amiss, either -- or better yet, several.  One for technical problems, one for common grammatical errors, one for basic writing flaws, etc.

[balance]

This is exactly what I was going to suggest. I teach almost exclusively online English comp classes. For each essay, students are placed in peer review groups with a feedback form they must use to critique the drafts in their group. If they do not critique, or if they do not post an essay to be critiqued, they get a zero grade on the essay. At  the end of the term, the students who do this  rave about how much they learned by having to read and comment on other people's essays. I send a hard copy in the mail with my comments on the draft that is submitted for a grade. Perhaps that approach will help?

I also teach online English courses, and I also require students to submit peer reviews. The paper load is so high in English courses, I cannot imagine providing feedback for drafts and final papers.

[zuzu_]

Perhaps you could make them work together before you get the final drafts.  What about grouping or teaming class members together and having them peer review before you get their papers?

Yes--I already do this.

zuzu, we all know college student are theoretically able to read, but many don't read (or comprehend?) ol instructions well. Can you have your IT ppl help you make a video of you giving the instructions verbally? I don't know why, but this really seems to help.

There are apparently several ways to post the video (our campus is big on podcasts) on Blackboard, and I'm sure it would work on other apps as well. Once you make the thing, you post an announcement that they need to go watch the thing. Maybe it makes them think they "know" you better? Who knows, but it seems to help around here.

I just got Camtasia and am looking forward to improving the course with video and audio this summer. Unfortunately, many areas here do not have easy access to high-speed internet service, so I worry that will be an issue.

[fishbrains]

To add to the other good suggestions: I have my online students complete a syllabus/navigating-the-course quiz as their first assignment, so they know what I expect and where to put things (he-he). I won't accept anything from them until they complete this quiz. This may sound a little corny, but I swear by it.

Also, I only comment on the peer reviews my students complete on each other's drafts, not on a raw draft. This eliminates my need to start commenting from nothing, and, generally, online students do decent jobs on peer reviews.

I actually prefer teaching comp online instead of in a classroom, freak that I am.

[generalist_j]

Don't know whether this is directly related, but here's something a colleague shared today: when commenting on drafts online, he organizes his comments around passages from the student essay (which he cuts and pastes). My intuition is that this is a very efficient method to give feedback in the online environment; I'm not sure whether it'd also work in a comp course.

GJ

[finallyfullprof]

I teach a lot of comp courses online. I use mandatory peer review groups and offer students an optional conference with me. For those who take it, I give general comments about their strengths and weaknesses (sometimes with examples so they'll know where to start looking, always with appropriate page numbers for them to review in their handbooks). I never do detailed commenting or grading on a rough draft. My experience has been that students essentially want instructors or tutors to make all the corrections for them rather than giving them the tools to learn to make corrections themselves. 

[alexisalexander]

I teach online and I always gather all the student email addresses into a Google group and post to ALL of them with advice, directions, head's up's etc. This would be the kind of thing I would be posting, like "Your drafts have been reviewed, please use these suggestions in your final paper"