UI professor finds fast way to make the grade
By Tom Owen
The Gazette
Saturday, November 01, 2003, 10:34:10 PM
IOWA CITY -- You might think a university professor's approach to grading term papers wouldn't change much: Read paper, think a bit, assign grade.
Well, not so fast.
A University of Iowa sociology professor has devised a new method of paper grading that he says cuts grading time for a 10-page paper by 80 percent, potentially saving hours upon hours of work for instructors.
Michael Lovaglia, chairman of the UI's Department of Sociology, hit on the plan as his way of embracing former UI President Mary Sue Coleman's plan to weave more writing into the undergraduate curriculum.
In fall 2001, Lovaglia amazed peers at the UI by replacing one of two multiple-choice mid-terms he'd previously used in his Introduction to Sociology class with a 10-page term paper. Thanks to budget cuts, and perhaps Lovaglia's popularity, the course has swelled from fewer than 250 students in 1993 to 580 students today.
The rub came when Lovaglia's three teaching assistants sat down to grade the papers. Reading, grading and writing comments on a 10-page term paper took 25 minutes on average. Multiplied by 580 students' papers, that came out to more than 241 hours -- or 80 hours per teaching assistant -- of grading time.
So, for the next semester, Lovaglia had the assistants grade the papers as a social scientist might conduct an opinion poll -- by sampling a small part of the whole. They sampled short passages from each of the six sections and skimmed the rest.
Voila. The process took only 5 minutes on average.
Suddenly, the nearly impossible was quite possible.
Lovaglia concedes this approach has limitations, and they aren't minor.
"You can't get a sense of their overall argument," he said. "You give up on that. But if someone does a good job on the parts, it has a high correlation with the value as a whole. The grade is just as valid; it just takes less time."
He pointed out, even under his new grading method, the students need to work hard on the paper, since they have no way of knowing which part will be graded.
Once in a while, the system will fail, but if a student complains, he simply has the teaching assistant re-grade the paper in the traditional way.
Lovaglia's method might come in handy for other professors. At least 22 courses at the UI this year have more than 500 students; another 27 have between 400 and 500 students.
But Lovaglia readily admits that none of his colleagues have seized on his method as a great labor-saving invention. English teachers seem to hold it in lowest regard.
"English teachers are into reading the whole thing and getting an overall view of the writing," he said. "The quality of the writing is not nearly as interesting or important to a social science researcher."
Les Margolin, a UI professor of education, doesn't like the idea.
"People used to criticize universities for using teaching assistants to grade papers," he said. "Now, the teaching assistants aren't even reading the papers. Maybe in the future they will just read the title. This whole thing is just falling apart."
By Tom Owen
The Gazette
Saturday, November 01, 2003, 10:34:10 PM
IOWA CITY -- You might think a university professor's approach to grading term papers wouldn't change much: Read paper, think a bit, assign grade.
Well, not so fast.
A University of Iowa sociology professor has devised a new method of paper grading that he says cuts grading time for a 10-page paper by 80 percent, potentially saving hours upon hours of work for instructors.
Michael Lovaglia, chairman of the UI's Department of Sociology, hit on the plan as his way of embracing former UI President Mary Sue Coleman's plan to weave more writing into the undergraduate curriculum.
In fall 2001, Lovaglia amazed peers at the UI by replacing one of two multiple-choice mid-terms he'd previously used in his Introduction to Sociology class with a 10-page term paper. Thanks to budget cuts, and perhaps Lovaglia's popularity, the course has swelled from fewer than 250 students in 1993 to 580 students today.
The rub came when Lovaglia's three teaching assistants sat down to grade the papers. Reading, grading and writing comments on a 10-page term paper took 25 minutes on average. Multiplied by 580 students' papers, that came out to more than 241 hours -- or 80 hours per teaching assistant -- of grading time.
So, for the next semester, Lovaglia had the assistants grade the papers as a social scientist might conduct an opinion poll -- by sampling a small part of the whole. They sampled short passages from each of the six sections and skimmed the rest.
Voila. The process took only 5 minutes on average.
Suddenly, the nearly impossible was quite possible.
Lovaglia concedes this approach has limitations, and they aren't minor.
"You can't get a sense of their overall argument," he said. "You give up on that. But if someone does a good job on the parts, it has a high correlation with the value as a whole. The grade is just as valid; it just takes less time."
He pointed out, even under his new grading method, the students need to work hard on the paper, since they have no way of knowing which part will be graded.
Once in a while, the system will fail, but if a student complains, he simply has the teaching assistant re-grade the paper in the traditional way.
Lovaglia's method might come in handy for other professors. At least 22 courses at the UI this year have more than 500 students; another 27 have between 400 and 500 students.
But Lovaglia readily admits that none of his colleagues have seized on his method as a great labor-saving invention. English teachers seem to hold it in lowest regard.
"English teachers are into reading the whole thing and getting an overall view of the writing," he said. "The quality of the writing is not nearly as interesting or important to a social science researcher."
Les Margolin, a UI professor of education, doesn't like the idea.
"People used to criticize universities for using teaching assistants to grade papers," he said. "Now, the teaching assistants aren't even reading the papers. Maybe in the future they will just read the title. This whole thing is just falling apart."
