Grading Online Work

All week I've been grading papers, some on paper, some submitted electronically.
Grading compositions online is so different from grading handwritten ones.
There are advantages:

a) Not having to fit my comments in whatever tiny spaces are left in the margins or on the back of the page (where I always wonder if they'll notice them). I have unlimited room in the comments on the side of a Google Docs page.


b) Copy and paste is GREAT. I can paste their line directly into my comments when talking about it, and I can keep pasting those most common comments I give to the students over & over again for the most common mistakes in their writing.

c) It is clear and easy to read.


There are disadvantages:

a) I still have not worked out WHERE I type my corrections. Do I make the change in the work itself and highlight it, or do just highlight it? If I only highlight, should I use different colors to differentiate between grammatical gaffes, word choice errors, and punctuation or spelling mistakes?

b) I can't be as sure that students read the comments without doing a little extra work on my end. I can check to see if students opened the document after they shared it with me and I graded it, and I can check to see if they made revisions, but both of these involve remembering to go back to the document. With pen and paper assignments, students just hand in a new paper. With electronic documents, my students will have to notify me in some way when they want me to go back and view a revised essay.

This is still a work in progress, but all in all, grading online compositions from my students has been a success. I am saving a little time, a LOT of paper, and getting more students to turn in their work by allowing them to share them via Google Docs. Online grading may have its challenges, but it has been a success so far.