Read on Twitter
This week I am grading papers. I have given myself the assignment to write *only* positive comments in the margins, that is, to only comment on the things I think are *good*. This is the 'green pencil' method. Will give some experiences here.
1. It is really hard.
/1
1. It is really hard.
/1
I realize my entire logic/intuition for grading is based on detecting errors. If no errors, then maximum. Flipping that is really hard.
re: feedback, I already gave myself some slack. Next to positive comment I may also ask questions (But no negative judgements in disguise)
/2
re: feedback, I already gave myself some slack. Next to positive comment I may also ask questions (But no negative judgements in disguise)
/2
Discovering that I have a strong urge to point out, not exactly *errors*, but things implicit in student writing of which I'm unsure they see that it is there (and that it's good). I want to say things like: "Exactly, and therefore ....(something they did not explicitly say)"/3
This feels like helping students constructively seeing where the value lies . But it also still feels like "correcting". In psychotherapy you learn not to do this. The patient says: [Text] and then you are not supposed to go: "O so what you *really mean to say is*.../4
I am now writing positive comments I’d normally have never written, such as: “this introduction paragraph had a clear structure! it really helps the reader get ready for what lies ahead”. Normally such paragraphs would go without saying, w/me jumping on problems further down./5
I'm becoming more conscious of the fact that some of the parts I like, are so, because they conform to what I am familiar with: certain norms in academic writing. This makes me think a lot about those norms, whether we should keep all of them, or get rid of some parts at least./6
One thing I really would like to get rid of is formal referencing, and especially the futile details of eg APA. I think it's fine to reference earlier work, and show how your work is positioned within existing work. But it's 2020 people! Just copy the DOI's as clickable links??
More tomorrow. Will close today with 2 of my experiences as student. One where we had to write as a team (impossible 
), we got really tough feedback, had to go for an oral exam to discuss it, got reallt critical questions. We though we were dead. Then we received an A. /5
), we got really tough feedback, had to go for an oral exam to discuss it, got reallt critical questions. We though we were dead. Then we received an A. /5
Another experience was to receive really detailed feedback, I mean at level of comma and dot and word choice, for every other sentence. The teacher must’ve worked many extra hours to deliver that. I learned a lot. But I heard later the teacher got overworked .../6
He also gave very practical tips I still use today eg: make one doc to set up your structure/main line of argument in bullet points. Make another doc to just write text in when you get inspiration. Then integrate the good bits of text into the structure and stitch it together./7
I encourage students to be critical of their own work in the discussion section. This is how we teach it. But it made me reflect on science practice today. Whenever does one read a sentence like: "the results cannot be trusted because ..." in a scientific paper? And WHY NOT? /8
Flipping from negative to positive feedback is fun and weird!
In a paper that forgot almost all 'white lines' indicating paragraph endings, I searched for the one correct white line, and put the comment: "this white line makes it clear that a new paragraph is starting". /9
In a paper that forgot almost all 'white lines' indicating paragraph endings, I searched for the one correct white line, and put the comment: "this white line makes it clear that a new paragraph is starting". /9
(This is a variation of the trick my son's old judo teacher always did. Instead of saying: Hey you two stop running and sit on the mat, he'd say: Oooo Jeremy, you are sitting properly on the mat how good of you. Upon which the other kids would immediately go and sit too)./10
I find it most difficult to 'mark the positive' when a paper is really problematic. But this surfaces another meta-level issue: normally I would spend *most* of my time commenting on such 'bad' papers. But is that fair to all students? Why do good papers get less of my time?/11
Also, bad quality of papers in some cases indicates that the student does not have some of the assumed prerequisite skills and knowledge we assume they should have had for them to *enter* the course. In other words, a problem created elsewhere. /12
My idea starts to be this: If the student has many troubles in writing, only positive feedback may not generate enough guidance to get on the right track. (But, the problem is probably bigger in general: why is this student doing this course?). However, if the student is .../13
...actually really good, only positive feedback is perhaps not helpful either. To this student you want to say: you are so good in writing already, let us now talk finesse, perfection. However *ideally* I would not want to grade that student but just *collaborate* with them./14
For the middle group however I think only positive feedback can work really well, because it stimulates, and it may drag students out of their 'school-pupil' mode into 'autonomous writer' mode: hey, this is good, that I like: do some more of that, keep on going with that!!/15
(As an aside: writing intelligent analysis of my grading on twitter is the PERFECT excuse for procrastinating the actual grading job. GET BACK TO WORK JELLE)/16
