Hard work pays off

Currently, I am teaching six physics labs of 15 students, each of whom write a weekly lab report that I have to grade. That makes 90 lab reports, or roughly 650 pages to read and make comments on. Often, the reports need alot of improvement and my comments are ample. Unfortunately, that takes time and the students probably do not make an effort to read them.

One thing that makes their lab reports bad is the lab manual itself. Before the procedure, there is an objectives and a theory section. Between the two, all of the concepts and ideas that the students are suppose to discover during the lab are given away. As a result, the students think that instead of analyzing their data, they can say that their data corroborates the theory and be done with it.

So, I end up writing "Discuss more than the theory, error, etc. Compare, analyze, and discuss the results", "Results --> Theory --> Error", and other such things about 70 times per week. In order to cut time, I made a document that lists all of the comments. I assigned numbers to general comments that can be applied to any lab and letters to comments that pertain to the results and objectives of the particular lab being graded. The result? My grading time got cut in half.

An added benefit is that now, after having made the comments list available to my students via a Google Docs shared document, I can now see when my students are looking at the list. As I am typing, Anonymous User 1337 is checking the comments I left on his or her lab report, and I am smiling knowing that my efforts are not entirely in vain.

Thank you, Anonymous User 1337.