Your name, title, etc.: Anna Mazurek, Lecturer
The school/department you teach for: College of Journalism and Mass Communications
Class size: 167 students total in three sections
Anything else you think we should know about what and how you are teaching: I teach an online course that I pitched and built myself called Freelancing for Media Majors (MC 1100 O). I started teaching the course in 2018, and it’s grown from one section of 25 students to three sections of 50 students each semester, so I’ve had to make some adjustments. The courses fill up very quickly, so I often have often more than maximum limit. (I have 167 for Spring 2021 now instead of 150.) After transitioning to Canvas in the fall, I’ve focused on ways to be more efficient with my time in Canvas especially with grading.
Tip: Use Text Shortcuts for Grading
While grading, I find that I often type the same comments or phrases repeatedly to clarify why points were deducted. I’ve started adding keyboard shortcuts to allow me to quickly add these phrases. (This idea was inspired by a previous tech support job and my time as a page designer for two newspapers when both text and keyboard shortcuts saved me a great deal of time!) The written assignments in my course are extremely important so they can’t be replaced with other assignments. To speed up grading, I’ve started using shortcuts for these as well as discussion posts.
Editors Note: Anna Mazurek is a Mac user. Specific steps may differ for PC users.
Here are a few examples of shortcuts I’ve started using this semester:
For the required peer responses for discussion posts:
Shortcut: mpr
Replace with: Points deducted for no peer response.
Points deducted for no peer response
Shortcut: spr
Replace With: Points deducted because peer response is too short. It should be minimum of three sentences.
Response too short
For written assignments, there are often common grammar issues, so I’ve focused on those. For some, I leave the sentence open ended, so I explain specific issues as needed.
Shortcut: ege
Replace with: There are excessive grammar errors including _____.
Shortcut: cpn
Replace With: Proper nouns should always be capitalized. This includes business names and all social media companies like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
How to Set Up Keyboard Shortcuts in a Mac
- Go to the Apple Menu > System Preferences
- Click on Keyboard in the second row.
- Click on the Text menu (second from left).
- Click the + menu to add a new shortcut and what you would like to replace it with.
When you are in SpeedGrader and type the shortcuts, they show up in a bubble. If you hit enter, they auto populate in the box. Please note these work in multiple programs but might NOT work all programs on your computer. Some programs might have their own internal system for text shortcuts that has to be set up in the program itself. These also work in my Texas State email when using a web browser and the Mail app on a Mac.
Choose a short combination of letters related to the phrase to make it easy to remember. For example, spr stands for “short peer response.” Avoid common phrases you normally type or normal word spellings to avoid having the auto text appear repeatedly, which can be an annoyance when you are working on other projects.
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Thanks for sharing, Ludmila! I love your set-up with the ctrl+tab idea. That also works well. I’m refining my approach with every assignment by noting patterns of what I type repeatedly to save time. I’m glad to hear you found it helpful. Feel free to email me if I can help with anything else.
Anna, thank you so much sharing! As a faculty, who has 260 + students per semester I totally understand your “pain” with grading open-ended assignments. Hot keys in Excel used to be a survival tool in my prior work in public accounting.
In my grading I used to put typical responses in the separate world file and jump from it to the speed grader using ctrl+tab and copy-paste buttons, but your approach is more elegant. It should definitely save quite some time for me and other instructors of large classes.
Thanks for sharing, Ludmila! I love your set-up with the ctrl+tab idea. That also works well. I’m refining my approach with every assignment by noting patterns of what I type repeatedly to save time. I’m glad to hear you found it helpful. Feel free to email me if I can help with anything else.