QQC

In Daiker’s “Learning to Praise,” he introduces what we all probably assumed but is now enforced with data: that multiple studies verify that the ratio of negative comments on students’ papers vastly outnumbers positive ones; however, whenever I have looked at my own completed and commented on work, though the quantity of negative comments may technically outnumber praise, I never assumed they scaled heavier than positive—at least not automatically. If comments were a currency, I always thought positive traded higher. I also always took sections of no comments to be neutral to positive, and the positive comments, which were usually more global, though some instructors liked to point out a line here and there, always to point out something above and beyond. My question then is simple: does anyone else think more in line with this? If so, how did you come to think less negatively about these comments despite the preponderance of them?

I like how Pat Benalof makes “no apologies” for judging a paper in relation to “all other papers” read. More often than not, I take this approach as well, though probably more to a micro scale, partially judging a paper based on not all the papers I have read (though perhaps still doing this subconsciously as a foundation) but to the rest of the class’ assignments. Often times I see the papers in a spectrum and if many of them are “bad,” I see it as a reflection of whether I taught the material well or not. How do we then bring rubrics into the equation of grading, especially in relation to a more holistic and/or progress-based type of evaluation?