Anyone who is doing an undergraduate degree will probably be quite stressed at the moment because it seems as though the assessed work submission deadlines are coming thick and fast, but spare a thought for us lecturers too. We are the ones working just as hard marking all this work the students are submitting, and it’s not as easy as it first sounds.
Marking is a difficult part of a lecturer’s job because it’s something that you often don’t get very much training in. When I started work as a seminar tutor I was given advice on lesson planning, running a seminar and so on but very little concrete guidance on marking essays. This is surprising because it’s obviously a really important part of the student experience to have their essays marked accurately and to receive constructive and valid feedback. So how do you learn how to mark and what are some of the pitfalls?
Think back to your own days as a student…what did you find most useful? Probably the answer was detailed feedback highlighting errors of content, fact and approach, and also spelling, grammar and referencing mistakes too. It was useful to receive this feedback fairly promptly in order to improve next time. Those lecturers (thankfully few in number) who give a sentence or two’s comment, often weeks and weeks after the essay was handed in are really not doing their job properly in my humble opinion. So make sure you allow enough time to do your marking, which can be difficult when you have 40 essays piling up. Yes, it is time consuming, but also rewarding too.
I sort my essays by question attempted, then I can compare like with like. I then read through the marking criteria given (usually set institutionally, you probably will have little say in deciding this). I speed-read all the essays so I can get a feel for the sorts of things students are saying that are right or wrong. By the time I have read an essay through in detail, which is the next job, I usually have a feel for the mark it deserves. Then it’s time to write the feedback for the student. I think the idea is to tell them, firstly, what they’re getting right as well as, secondly, telling them what’s wrong and, finally and most crucially, how to improve next time. These three elements are vital to any essay feedback. You’ll probably have an official feedback sheet to complete, but I also scribble all over the essay itself so that students can see where they need to improve.
If you are new to Higher Education teaching and this sounds awfully challenging, don’t worry, it gets easier as you get more familiar with the process. However, your students deserve you doing a careful job, so don’t rush. And if you’re really worried, ask your mentor or unit leader for some guidance, they’ll be only to happy to find you some help on how to mark and will also be able to check over your marking once it’s done. But the best way to learn is by simply doing it.
Pity, of course, for the authors of the essays one has to learn on… but as you say there is no better way, because everyone else is marking too and can’t spare time to talk you through a first few essays, valuable though that might be.