Do I have to grade everything?

Why a bit of auto-grading is helpful rather than harmful

Certainly it was overwhelming to bring home an intimidating stack of exam books or papers. But it isn’t any better online. In fact, a notification that there are 173 things to grade can make you want to close your laptop and walk away.

Learning Management Systems offer to grade things for us. Set up a quiz and students can get instant results. Count participation in a forum for three points automatically. Create one rubric for all the papers.

As professors we hesitate. This seems like cheating. And it’s letting a machine do our job, the job of assessing student work. No computer, we know, can grade an essay or walk through a science or math problem. It requires expert knowledge. Our expert knowledge.

Those lucky enough to have Teaching Assistants can, with only a few pangs of conscience, leave the grading to them. But the rest of us, at community colleges and small universities, can’t dump the responsibility on someone else. And if we’re new to the online environment, between setting up classes online and answering endless queries, our grading can get sloppy. Or it gets done very late. Or both.

Automatic grading, we know, is antithetical to good teaching. Every student’s work deserves our time and attention. Studies show that…