The vaguely winter feeling in the air suggests that the fall final exam season is nearly upon us, and GAs and TAs know all too well that can only mean that grading season is just around the corner. You know, when hot chocolate and candy canes become weapons in your arsenal providing the sugar and caffeine to stay awake longer and mark more papers…
…which is totally unhealthy.
Let the record show that we here at the GATA Network have always been about marking smarter, not harder. We know that the end-of-term papers that pile up can be daunting whether it’s your first time marking or your fiftieth.
More on marking and the stress that comes with it:
Announcing The Minimal Marking Workshop
That’s why we’re announcing the return of the GATA Network Workshop Series with Minimal Marking: Get More “Bang for Your Buck ” When Marking Student Writing. On Friday, November 27th, the CTL’s Visiting Fellow Claire Lamonica will be discussing the “minimal marking” strategy in a special workshop completely free to GAs and TAs.
Participants will have the opportunity to practice minimal marking, discuss its benefits, and determine how it can be implemented in their roles as markers. Claire brings a wealth of teaching and marking experience from her work in both writing instruction and educational development.
What: Minimal Marking: Get More “Bang for Your Buck ” When Marking Student Writing
When: Friday, November 27th, 1:30pm-3:00pm
Where: Lambton Tower 2103
How: Reserve your spot, visit http://cleo.uwindsor.ca/workshops/52/
What Is Minimal Marking?
Instead of developing more elaborate ways of cramming more marking into less time in marathon-type grading sessions, why not learn how to make the assessment process more efficient? That’s exactly the thinking behind “minimal marking,” an approach the streamlines the feedback process so that you spend less time repeating yourself about grammar and other mechanics.
Essentially, instead of highlighting and correcting every error encountered in a student’s paper, minimal marking is a system that suggests systematically alerting students to those errors with a quick mark, which the student then corrects on their own.
Read more on minimal marking:
- Richard H. Haswell, “Minimal Marking,” College English, Vol. 45, No. 6 (Oct. 1983), 600-604. Retrieved from http://users.ipfw.edu/wellerw/minimal_marking.pdf.
- Abraham Romney, “Minimal Marking: An Oldie But A Goodie,” Retrieved from http://writing.uci.edu/minimal-marking-an-oldie-but-goodie/
- Anne McNelly, “Minimal Marking: A Success Story,” The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Vol. 5, Iss. 1, Article 7. Retrieved from http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cjsotl_rcacea/vol5/iss1/7/