More Trouble on the Cyber-frontier

Of course Blackboard would be having trouble again, just as I was trying to shoot some fast responses to my students on their draft of the media mid-term. The system would not let me post at all. SO . . . I had to pull a rabbit out of my hat and decided to email everyone with all the responses. The plan was to post holistic responses to each paper in Bb so everyone could see the range of issues (grades were posted in the private grade book). The interesting thing is, this approach has made me re-evaluate how I respond to papers. Instead of “justifying grades” I have to respond directly to the issues with the particular draft—otherwise, it would be the same as posting grades publicly (which is, of course, illegal). It was very interesting to see how similar my responses were. They were identical in many cases because the problems fall within certain categories. Ooops. Another issue just came up . . . .

More later . . . .