Key points:
- Grading even the smallest assignments can take a while, resulting in delayed feedback and overburdened teaching staff
- One instructor is using Gradescope from Turnitin, an automated tool that lightens the grading load and enables faculty to spend more time with students
- See related article: What the F? Grading strategies for early career instructors
Teaching is a thread that has run through my entire life. By fifth grade I was hosting informal study sessions for my schoolmates on a variety of topics, and as an adult I found myself working in the training group of a large computer manufacturer, writing and teaching courses on technical topics. After completing an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering, and then a master’s degree in computer science, I transitioned into a decade of systems consulting in the finance and healthcare fields.
I never gave up teaching. When I’d completed my master’s degree, I approached the chair of my department and asked if there was any chance that I’d be allowed to teach a class or two, bringing my years of experience in industry to a new group of students about to embark on the journey for themselves. The answer was an enthusiastic yes, and I started on what is now a 25-year path of teaching computer science.
A typical class at the time held 20 to 30 students, which is a manageable workload and allows for plenty of one-to-one mentoring. As time progressed, the courses became more popular, and the field itself experienced an explosion of enrollments. It’s been said that computer science is the new business degree, embraced by throngs of students who don’t know yet just what sort of career they’ll take on. Enrollments swelled quickly and it wasn’t long before those 20 students in the classroom became 200, then 250.
This is a lot of students. Even though I work with a relatively large staff — a mix of Ph.D. students who run discussion and laboratory sections and graduate and undergraduates who help with answering questions online and grading — there’s just not a lot of time for mentoring my students. Every time I assigned something non-trivial, my staff would be buried with grading, and often it’d be weeks before the work was finished and papers returned to students–long past the time when it would have been a useful tool for feedback and learning.
Perry Donham has taught at Boston University since 1999, teaching a wide range of computer science and business topics, and spent most of his career as a technical consultant in the finance, publishing, and healthcare industries.
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