Facilitation Through ICON
ICON teachers do a variety of things that make life easier for those who are teaching composition classes. The most significant of these functions is that we take pressure off of the professors by lightening their work load. It would be especially difficult for new classroom instructors if they had to both create lesson plans and grade all of the papers that their students turn in. With each of their students turning in increasingly larger assignments every week, grading everything would simply be too burdensome.
By using ICON, graders also gain an important degree of anonymity. When a student is not sure who graded their paper, they cannot claim that they received a poor grade or even a good one because of their relationship with their teacher. Thus, classroom interactions are not hampered by feelings of resentment towards the instructor.
Having a large pool of online graders brings diversity to the grading process. Each grader has his or her own strengths that make him or her particularly good at spotting certain errors and explaining how to fix different types of writing. As their various assignments go from grader to grader, students will learn how to fix a greater variety of issues than they would otherwise.
I suppose that what makes grading through ICON similar to critiquing a paper in a writing center is that in both cases the students receive hints on how to make their papers better rather than a complete explanation of everything that is wrong. Without the option of using a red pen and mercilessly noting every last mistake, ICON graders instead have to choose examples from the student’s work that exemplify a great number of errors. We then point the student in the right direction to find help on how to fix that type of error. As a result, the student has to really think about the writing process.
By using ICON, graders also gain an important degree of anonymity. When a student is not sure who graded their paper, they cannot claim that they received a poor grade or even a good one because of their relationship with their teacher. Thus, classroom interactions are not hampered by feelings of resentment towards the instructor.
Having a large pool of online graders brings diversity to the grading process. Each grader has his or her own strengths that make him or her particularly good at spotting certain errors and explaining how to fix different types of writing. As their various assignments go from grader to grader, students will learn how to fix a greater variety of issues than they would otherwise.
I suppose that what makes grading through ICON similar to critiquing a paper in a writing center is that in both cases the students receive hints on how to make their papers better rather than a complete explanation of everything that is wrong. Without the option of using a red pen and mercilessly noting every last mistake, ICON graders instead have to choose examples from the student’s work that exemplify a great number of errors. We then point the student in the right direction to find help on how to fix that type of error. As a result, the student has to really think about the writing process.
posted by Lauren Wallace at
11:10 PM
1 Comments:
Interesting...very interesting! I agree (and missed it on mine!) your comments on the "anonymity" of the graders being an asset to the CI's and the diversity of graders providing the students with the graders' "strengths". However, I think you underestimate the professors. How hard could it be to teach 2-4 classes and grade 50-150 assignments of varying length, all while taking 3 graduate level classes? There are, after all, 24 hours in a day and who needs sleep...or food? I concur that ICON instructors are similar to the writing center, in that we provide assistance to young writers. Good job!
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