Class Management

Mondays are all about mechanical things. I have to close and lock last week’s team discussion area. I have found that if you don’t lock them, some very late students will post to those areas even after the work has been graded. How sad.

I have to open a new team discussion area for this week’s assignment. I store these discussions and simply reorder them so the new one is at the top. D2L makes it pretty easy to create a topic for each team under a particular forum. I also need a “Whole Class Area" under the forum where the teams share their work with everyone. D2L has some easy Group Management functions that make all of this simple after you learn the buttons. This is what it looks like:

Grading

This is one of the most important things I do. Chickering and Gamson say prompt feedback is vital to student success and I believe them. I used to grade discussions on a unit basis, every three weeks or so. A few years ago I decided to follow the sage advice of the theory folks and it made an immediate difference. The down side to this is that the gradebook is loaded with 15 different weekly discussion grades. But, I think it is worth it. Students know right away if they have messed up. If they are motivated, they correct the problem and get on task for the next week. This is really no more work for me. It’s just spread out more through the semester. I like to post the grades right away so I have a busy day every Monday.

Grading the discussions is pretty easy. Each team has 4 or 5 students and they have been posting for a week. So I just compile all of those postings and go down the line noting the student's work as I go. It's easy to do it this way when you only have a few students listed, unlike with an entire class. Of course I have to do this several times for each discussion, once for each team. And, I have read these postings at least one time earlier in the cycle. Still, it's just work.

I also have to evaluate the final Team Paper (or project) from last week. This is what inspires me. My student teams often prepare very nice papers with clear, understandable prose demonstrating a deep understanding of the subject. That is very nice! Those moments are what make teaching such a rewarding career.