Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!ncar!gatech!prism!russ From: russ@prism.gatech.EDU (Russell Shackelford) Newsgroups: comp.edu Subject: Re: Resource & Responsibility (was Re: Automatic checking...) Summary: a partial solution (maybe) Message-ID: <15642@hydra.gatech.EDU> Date: 22 Oct 90 14:48:30 GMT References: <2028.27218c6b@waikato.ac.nz> Distribution: comp Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology Lines: 42 In article <2028.27218c6b@waikato.ac.nz>, coms2269@waikato.ac.nz (Brent C Summers) writes: > juh@cs.hut.fi (Juha Hyv|nen) writes: > > Presently, checking the homework is done by a person. Last spring, > > over 500 students took part in the course. That meant that a total of > > 500 students x 5 parts x 4 questions = 10,000 answers had to be > > checked (and the results registered). At the rate of checking one > > answer a minute it would take over 160 hours to check all the answers. > > That is one working month! I think that the time should be spent > > teaching than doing a routine job that could be done by a computer. > It is entirely clear that the grading of student work is perhaps *the* most wasteful aspect of current instructional practice. In theory, grading is a crucial part of the evaluation-and-feedback process and, as such, is an essential component of any learn-by-doing experience. In practice, however, it (a) consumes immense amount of available resources, and (b) does little more than providing an adminstrative function. In short, we are expending LOTSA resources and have precious little to show for it. This is a key place where the deployment of info processing tools is called for. The key appears to be the exploitation of the fact that student responses are typical. At one end of the spectrum, there's "soft" responses, like essays; at the other "hard" responses that are simply right or wrong. In either case, students screw up in a finite number of ways. An appropriate Grading Environment will exploit this fact, such that student's receive better feedback than they currently do, while graders spend less time in rote, redundant activity. We studied this for a couple years as Georgia Tech. For some months now, we've been "on the verge" of releasing "Optimus, The Teaching Information System." It is designed to address this and other aspects of universal teaching activities. I'll post again when it's released. It can help alot. russ -- Russell Shackelford The College of Computing Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 30332 russ@prism.gatech.edu (404) 834-4759