The Situation
Teachers often face mountains of projects and papers to grade. Experienced teachers know that for any project there is a set of comments and suggestions that are repeated over and over.
As a teacher grades, the repetition becomes wearing. Writing similar comments over and over causes fatigue. The quality of comments normally slides from energetic at the beginning of a grading session into pure tedium resulting in inconsistent grading.
Each class, every semester, the same process is repeated.
Capture Those Repetitive Comments
BoldComment captures teacher comments for any objective in a project or paper. Think of it as an automated rubric. Each time a similar comment or suggestion is needed, the teacher simply checks a box and the comment is included.
BoldComment allows a teacher to write detailed comments once and reuse them every time the project is graded.
Click on the image for a close-up view
Objectives and supporting comments are listed in the BoldComment screen. There can be multiple comments for each objective and each comment (and it's point value) is fully editable. Comments can include links referring students to specific solutions and more detailed suggestions.
Point totals are automatically calculated based on which comments are selected.
Individual grading reports can be saved for each student and grading reports can be reused and expanded from semester to semester.
Features
- Comment block for individualized summary.
- Each item is fully editable - objectives, comments, point values.
- Automatically creates an HTML document that can be quickly inserted into comment fields of systems such as Desire2Learn, Moodle, and Blackboard.
- Runs on both Macintosh and Windows operating systems
- Comment files are local to the teacher's computer. A connection to the Web not needed.
Benefits
- Consistent grading and comments.
- Customized commenting for each student without repetitive typing.
- Points calculated automatically.
- Comment files can saved and reused semester after semester
Availability
BoldComment was written by Peter K. Johnson and is currently in beta stage. It is currently only available on an individual trial basis. Peter has been using BoldComment for three semesters and continues testing the product each semester.