My TED TALK IN TEN
In 10 sentences
Why do professors complain about grading?
(1) About this time of year college and university professors are in a mad dash to finish grading, report to college and university authorities who passed, who then can confirm who is graduating in just a few days.
(2) This talk is not about subject matter and course content or professors’ skills in explaining, teaching and inspiring learners, but about grades and feedback that learners receive.
(3) Learning is about learners performing things that demonstrate their knowledge and skill.
(4) But if they’re only tested once in a while, say three or four times in an academic semester (a couple of quizzes, a midterm and final) then that’s poor feedback for learners.
(5) By comparison, online learning games provide almost continuous feedback.
(6) In a well designed learning game, learners know where they stand, what their rating is (their current grade), and what they need to do to improve in real time, not say, in two days (or two weeks) after a prof finishes grading.
(7) By contrast, I often have heard learners complain they don’t know their current grade, what they have to do to improve and worse, the purpose of the course.
(8) Learners in these situations either quit or grimly push through to the end.
(9) In the meantime, if their prof has weighted their final exam to count for (say) 50% of their final grade, such learners know they’re dead meat.
(10) Profs can complain about grading 30-page, not-so-well-constructed, argued, or grammatically correct final essays they’ve mandated to their learners, but the solution for them is to increase the feedback for their learners throughout the entire time of the course, not to load up everything at the end.
