I teach an online asynchronous course in a masters program and my students are woefully behind in their writing skills. They have to do a LOT of writing in my class. I focus a ton of my energy on just trying to get them to write coherently, and that means I wind up spending SO MUCH TIME making comments on their papers. The other downside is they are demoralized and overwhelmed by all the feedback.

So why do I do it this way? Well, I’d love to limit my feedback to more global comments, but the students have demonstrated that they are completely unable to locate their own mistakes if I only give global comments. I have also found that having a “paper trail” that justifies my grading protects me when they complain to admin (my admin is thankfully supportive).

But there has to be some kind of middle ground here, where the students can get the detail they need without overwhelming them and me. I talked about this a little in a thread on another post and some people suggested voice recorded feedback, which I’m curious try out, although I’m not totally convinced that it will result in less work for me.

Has anyone found a speedy-yet-effective feedback method?

Edit: THANK YOU EVERYONE! This was such a helpful thread for me. Somethings I already do or am sort of doing but reading your replies made me realize I need to commit more (giving more detail for the first 1-2 papers and then sticking to global comments the rest, not editing their papers FOR them, letting the rubric speak for itself); I definitely have some new ideas to try out too (voice comments, comment banks, limiting to three areas for improvement). I Also appreciate the reminders that the students are ultimately responsible for their own learning. I truly believe that but the vitriol from the evals really had me questioning myself.