How can you grade lots of papers quickly?

Ross Woods, 2022, '23, with thanks to Rοb Zuαzuα, Αrif Zαmαn, Μαtthεw Βαtεs, and Κιρ Whεεlεr.

It's very easy to grade an A+ paper. Reading is a pleasure because the typing and punctuation are error-free, and the language makes pleasant reading. The paper has good grammar, good style, easy to follow structure, correct references, etc. This releases the reader to enjoy original ideas.

The other far end of the scale is also easy to grade. These papers are basically no better than not getting anything at all.

Grading middle-range papers is the most difficult. Errors in writing make reading unpleasant, and the ideas are mundane and sometimes erroneous. But the student might still get over the line, so the assessor has to read the paper.

Issues and hints

What will work for competency-based assessment?
Do students have the requisite writing skills to get into your unit? Very low writing standards might indicate a problem in earlier units or admission criteria.
Split the assessment task into a series of smaller, easier assessment decisions, testing only a few concepts at a time.
Test your questions with other faculty members. If they are ambiguous in some way, you can be sure that students somewhere will misinterpret them and have grounds for appeal.
Always try to be pleasant and try to say something good about their work.
Your role is a trade-off. You or your Academic Dean need to decide on a policy:

On one hand, you can respond quickly with grades and provide only summative assessment. Students appreciate fast results.
On the other hand, you could take longer and add helpful comments that teach students how to improve. Its disadvantage is that the longer it takes to give feedback and comments to students, the less students take notice of them. (That's basic behaviourism.) However, comments also have several advantages:

Students need to help students to improve, assuming that students read them.
Detailed, individualized feedback reduces the number of appeals and questions afterwards.

Put another way, your goal is to do well at both.

In some suggested solutions, the assessor assesses only sample parts of the paper in order to give a grade for the whole paper. Is this fair?

General solutions

Software comments
Prepare a batch of comments and load them into the software. When grading, select the appropariate comment from the software. This works quite well for most students, although a few students need individualized comments for specific problems. You can edit your responses and, if you need more, you create them and add them. There are a couple of variations:

Highlight the text of the document
Insert comment into the text of the document or into the margin.

Use voice grading
Use voice-to-text software to create reports. You can speak faster than you can write. When written, the software can put it in the right place: e.g. students records, feedback to students, moderation preparation, performance statistics.
Prevention is better than cure.
Αshley Βible points out that most students quit caring about an essay the minute they submit the final. Therefore, I started focusing my time on the revising aspect of the writing process rather than the final outcome, and the results have been tremendous.* I'd generally agree, except that students often tend to leave as much as possible to last minute.

Short answer tests

Online multiple choice quizzes
The software can grade online quizzes automatically, but these quizzes are difficult and time-consuming to write well. They can be quite sophisticated and test much more than only memorized information. The effort pays off when tests can be re-used or can be used for large numbers of students. However, they are not a substitute for essay-type tasks.
Grade only some of the questions
Read and grade only some of the questions, but the same questions for all students. Just don’t tell students exactly which questions you will grade.
Fill-in-the-blank tests
These tests require very short answers, but might not be accessible by software. Being short, they are generally easy to grade.
Regulate the answer space
Give students only a small space to write their answers. By regulating the size of the answer-boxes, you can set a limit on the length of answers.
One question at time
Grade one question at a time for all students, not the whole paper of each student. You can go faster becuase you are only thinking about one thing at a time. It's the basic principle of mass production.
Multiple assessors
If you have multiple assessors and a consistent system, multiple assessors can assess answers to different questions at the same time. However, the total time might not be less.

Essays & other compositions: Evasion and avoidance strategies

Use software to filter out failing papers beforehand
Software can check whether it was submitted after the deadline, and check allowable length, readibility, spelling, grammar, style, and plagiarism.
Assign presentations instead
Assess the same knowledge with presentations and assess them as you go. However, your students won't learn to write better.
Require students to pass quizzes to be permitted to submit essays
Grade only content, not writing ability
If you are not a writing teacher, you might decide not to worry about writing mistakes grammar, punctuation, etc. and focus only on content. However, your students might not improve their writing.
Assign less work
If students don’t have to do it, you don’t have to grade it. However, the academic rules for units might require a minimum number of essays or other written works.
Check early that they understand the task.
Give oral feedback to the whole class
This enables assessors to give back feedback to the whole class as soon as possible. It is probable that most students have the same kinds of strengths and weaknesses. However, students might need feedback about their specific paper.
Get students to self-check before they hand it in.
It might reduce the errors, but students often have difficulty seeing mistakes and shortcomings in their own work.

Essays & other compositions: Sampling strategies

Three problems
If the essay has major problems, comment only on the three most important problems. This does not overwhelm a struggling student, although it leaves lesser problems unidentified and uncommented.
Surgical sample
Read carefully only the first and last pages and one other randomly selected page, and skim the rest. Give detailed comment on the three pages you read.
“Stop reading here”
If a paper is very poor with lots of errors, stop reading after the first 10 errors (e.g. typos) or the bottom of the first page, and give a fail. Very competency-based and probably a good approach for this standard of paper, unless there are very good reasons to do otherwise.
Comment intensively on only one paragraph.
Comment only at the end of the essay.
Comment on each mistake only once and then say “See above.”

Essays & other compositions: Actual assessment strategies

Use rubrics
Rubrics are effective for large numbers of students. They are also re-usable and can be modified, and can be used to give specific, competency-based grades. Accreditors tend to view them favorably. However, they are difficult and time-consuming to write and depend on being able to anticipate the kinds of student responses.
Use checklists
These work quite well and can be electronic or paper. They have the strengths of rubrics: effective for large numbers of students, re-usable, modifiable, and suitable for competency-based education.

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* 5 Tips for Grading Essays Faster While Leaving Better Feedback Αshley Βible, 26 August [2018], https://buildingbooklove.com/5-essay-grading-tips-for-grading-essays/