The big topic of discussion among Writing Program directors these days is grading, and we are having weekly meetings (for directors only) to look at papers together and have an ongoing conversation about grades.  One goal of this conversation is to arrive at a consensus on grading, so that all directors are "normed" and can communicate WP standards more effectively to instructors.  Another goal is to revisit our grading criteria, to determine whether they need to change at all to accommodate the new "Expos Five" model.  Since this is an ongoing conversation and one with policy implications, I can't go into particulars of our discussions.  But I wanted to give some thought to a related issue that these discussions have me thinking about, which is "how should one grade?" -- that is, what process or procedure should you follow in grading?

My topic here is developing a grading process, by which I do not mean simply developing a better way of "handling the paper load" (though a good process can help with that), but rather how we should go about understanding and responding to a student paper and how we should arrive at an appropriate grade and comment for it.  It is one thing to have a rubric for grading and to learn to apply it.  It is another to develop a process that reflects a philosophy for how to respond to student writing effectively.  Though I think I have many ideas on the subject, I am really just beginning to put those ideas in order, which is why I am blogging about this.  My ultimate goal is to develop some web resources for teachers on the subject and some materials for a presentation (which I may be giving some time in the next two weeks and will announce here). Right now I am just thinking toward that goal, and these are my preliminary notes -- hence the "Part One" in the title.  I expect to be revisiting this topic several times before I get my thoughts in order.

Why Do You Need a Process?

In many endeavors, practitioners train with a particular method or procedure for achieving good results.  Lee Strasberg's "method" for actors (which built upon the principles set forth by Stanislavsky) -- often summarized as "1. Feeling, 2. Thought, 3. Action, 4. Words" -- may be the best known such procedure, since acting and entertainment are such an important part of our culture.  But every field develops "a method."  As a serious chess player and chess coach, I have become familiar with various "methods" of training chess thinking, which all point back to either Dr. Adriaan D. de Groot's Thought and Choice in Chess (1948) or Alexander Kotov's more popular Think Like a Grandmaster (translated to English in 1971).  What chess has taught me is that without a good thinking process, it is impossible to make good choices in any thoughtful endeavor.

It's a sad state of affairs that the best known "grading methodology" (the method of our field, you might say) is to "stand at the top of the stairs and toss high in the air," ranking each according to how far it falls.  I am sure an academic has written something more useful on the topic, and I hope eventually to have a "method" that is informed by "theory."  But thumbing through Bruce Speck's Grading Student Writing: An Annotated Bibliography, I don't see any classic examples to guide me besides Nancy Sommers's classic "Responding to Student Writing" (1982), which has already been an influence. A web search turned up an excellent resource on "Diagnosing and Responding to Student Writing" from the Dartmouth Writing Program, and that has given me some ideas and leads.  But I have not yet found any "ready made method" to apply, though I am starting to develop a better language to explain the process I follow.

What follows is a simple three-step process to get me started and set forth some principles.  I hope it makes for a good start, and I hope I have something more developed and coherent by the time I finish this (in Part Two or Three maybe).

Step One: Understand the Student's Project

When I first read a student paper, I try to focus on the question, "what is the student trying to argue?" or "what is the student's project?"  Typically, this is not the same as asking "what's the thesis?" since few students are ready, typically, to convey their real projects in the opening paragraph of the paper and in a coherent formulation.  Some teachers might say, "well, then that is a failure to communicate on the part of the student."  But all acts of communication are a two-way street, and it is important for teachers to listen closely so they can facilitate the student's writing process and help them learn how to develop their ideas and communicate them clearly. 

To find out what the student's project is, I set myself the following task: "in your own words, try to write out the student's project as a viable thesis."  I generally do this on some scrap paper, or sometimes in the margins of the student paper as the real project suddenly dawns on me.

This is a useful exercise and, most practically speaking, gives me something to write as part of my end comment (where I often begin with "It sounds like you are trying to argue..." etc.)  I want to start with acknowledging the student's project because I want the student to know that I am listening with a generous spirit -- and what it is I am hearing.  I try to begin my comments with some positive things that the student is doing well and this statement of how I understand the project.  Of course, I typically will reflect back a more coherent formulation of what the student has written than the paper contains, but the point of doing that is to model for the student how to articulate the project more clearly so that it can be stated in the form of a thesis. 

I think the mistake of too many teachers is to begin by asking, "how has the student answered the assignment question?" which is not really the same as asking "what is the student's project?"  After all, asking essentially "has the student answered MY question?" by its very nature appropriates authority over the paper and gives the teacher sole power over determining what is a valid act of writing.  Though most students probably developed their projects as an answer to the assignment question, I don't want to encourage them to stay within that teacher-student dyad and be focused on pleasing the teacher in some way.  I want the assignment question simply to be an instigation for writing, and I want the studens to take charge of their work, so that it is not some "bullshit" they are shoveling for me, but their own shit that they are trying to sort out.  Many students are so used to thinking of academic writing as alienated labor that it is hard for them to take possession of it.  But my goal, ultimately, is to encourage that way of thinking, and focusing on whether or not they answered the teacher's question is a bad way to start.

The first step has to be to "honor the other" and seek to understand, as generously as possible, what our students are trying to say.  And once I hear that project, I will generally begin discussing it -- where it is well supported and where the support for that project breaks down. Sometimes, where students have just barely begun to express a project, I will only be able to point to a "promising moment" in the paper.  But that's a start.

Step Two: Write a Usable Comment

"Usability" is a term of art in web design, and I find it very useful for thinking about comments on student papers.  After all, just as web designers want their users to find the information they need as quickly and easily as possible, so teachers want their students to understand comments and make use of them for the next paper.  I find that thinking about"usability" also helps me to think like a student as I write my remarks.

I have often returned to Nancy Sommers's "Responding to Student Writing" to aid my thinking about what makes a "usable" comment.  Sommers collected examples of student comments from teachers.  In analyzing them, she found that they had several critical flaws, and she offered advice for overcoming them.  I would summarize the problems and solutions as follows:

1. Don't Appropriate Authority -- Stay Focused on the Student's Project
   Sommers writes that "teachers' comments can take students' attention away from their own purposes in writing a partiuclar text and focus that atention on the teachers' purpose in commenting."  Teachers appropriate authority by focusing on form, by focusing on whether the student's paper has answered the question, or by emphasizing what is lacking in the paper over what it accomplishes.
   
   
2. Don't Focus on Product (or Form) -- Focus on Process (or Substance)
   As teachers appropriate authority over the student text, they write their comments toward an idealized "product" (such as the five paragraph essay form) and lose touch with the student project.  The sign that the teacher has appropriated authority is that he or she begins to focusing on form ("You need better topic sentences") rather than substance ("I like the idea you are trying to develop in the third paragraph, but it is not until the final sentence that your idea becomes more clarified...")  We certainly want our students to write polished essays, but by telling them to use good form (such as "better topic sentences") in presenting their ideas, we might shut down their writing process (encouraging them to invent generic topic sentences rather than discovering their topics through the process of developing and revising their ideas).
   
   
3. Don't Use Rubber Stamp Comments -- Make Comments Text-Specific
   The typical problem with "form-focused" comments, besides distracting student's from their own projects, is that they too often feel generic and meaningless to students, as though added with a "rubber stamp." The classic example of this is the universal "awk" comment, which is hard for students to understand because it is not specific.  The best comments are text-specific, pointing to particular moments in the student's paper.
   
   
4. Don't Fill the Page with Noise -- Put Comments in Usable Form
   According to Sommers's analysis of student comments, too often they seemed "arbitrary and idiosyncratic."  As she shows by recreating an example of a comment, teachers sometimes put multiple types of comments on the same page, so that the student does not know which to prioritize and which to ignore.  There are too many comments on the page and too many types of comments.  Teachers would do best to keep marginal and body comments to a minimum (and always stated in relation to the student's project).  Comments on writing error should generally be kept to specific patterns of error that the student needs to address -- and probably these issues should be numbered for reference at the end of the paper.  Some teachers give students a list of things to work on for the next paper as a way of summarizing the take-home message of the comments.

One way students feel overwhelmed by teacher comments is that there are too many of them and they take too many forms.  Keep issues to be addressed for the next paper to a minimum -- generally three issues (and, if error is an issue, then no more than three patterns of error). 

Step Three: The Question of the Grade

It is really important to separate our comments from our grades, so that we are not writing comments simply to justify our grades.  That's why it's good to write the grade last, after you have commented and had a chance to put your thoughts in order. 

Determining grades is sometimes difficult, since papers rarely fall neatly into one category.  In my own grading practice, I always think of papers as having qualities of two grades and being more one grade than the other.  So my method of grading begins by pegging the paper grade as a debate between two options, – or, as I usually phrase it, “a question of X or Y.”  So you have a “question of passing/not passing,” “a question of C or C+,”  It’s all about asking an either/or question and then coming up with a good answer.

I think my method of grading and commenting has three steps:

1.    Decide on “the question,” or what two grades the paper is between
2.    Debate between the two options
3.    Arrive at the grade (never a “split grade”)

In folder review, I like to ask teachers what “the question” was for them – and sometimes I am called upon to make the choice.  I am not worried about a teacher’s grades if we are a half-letter apart and seem to be on the same page about “the question” of the grade.  As long as we are asking the same question, we can have a discussion.  If we are not even asking the same question, then I think there is trouble.

 That is my first stab at setting forth a grading process.  Don't grade me too harshly -- it is a work in progress, after all....

I started blogging last year as "From the Center," when I was Plangere Writing Center Coordinator.  But now that I have moved to 135 George Street on the Douglass campus to take on the job of Director of Instructional Technology, I am no longer at the center of the action. 

That is a good thing in many ways, and I'm not complaining.  When my colleagues tell me about feeling overwhelmed during the Add / Drop period, I smile to myself and blithely continue my quiet work behind the scenes, with only a fraction of the foot traffic I regularly dealt with on College Avenue.  That's why I can actually imagine posting to this blog with some frequency.  When I was actually at the center of things, I was just too busy to write "From the Center."  "Off Center" is a place you can blog from....

So "Off Center" seemed the right way to rename the blog.

I will still be writing about some of the projects I started at the Plangere Writing Center, especially working with the Plangere Culture Lab to develop video content for our website and working on summer programming (including our work with the Rutgers Future Scholars).  After all, I will be returning to Plangere every summer from my off-center office to take up residence in the Center as the continuing Summer Coordinator for the Writing Program.  But I will also be writing about the other work I will be doing as Director of Instructional Technology (or, as I like to pronounce the acronym, "Do IT!")

I hope this can be a more interactive blog and I welcome reader's questions about using technology in the Writing Program.

This week, my big project is to get our RU OWL off the ground, hiring and training staff and solving last-minute technical problems.  I am also still editing a video we started last year called "The EXPOS 5." And I am beginning to give more thought to what we can do with our website.  Stay tuned.

The classic way of starting a blog is to explain the name -- what it means and what it doesn't.  By "From the Center" I don't mean to describe my political leanings (since I am not likely to engage with explicitly political issues in this forum).  Nor do I imagine myself as one of the members of the University's core elite; in fact, there is not a little irony in the title, since (as a non-tenured manager of the Writing Program) I am more at the margins of power than students and instructors might imagine.  What I mean by "the Center" is that, as an Associate Director of the Writing Program and Coordinator of the Plangere Writing Center, I help manage two of the core service institutions that affect practically every student at Rutgers.