Sometimes, I start writing feedback on assignments before starting to assign grades, and it would be extremely helpful if there were some way to keep track of which assignments I have already put annotations or comments on even if I have not yet assigned grades.
My two main use cases involving feedback without grade assignment:
- Giving students the option to resubmit the assignment after getting comments. This is often useful for a first assignment when students have not yet learned my expectations. I do not want them to see a low grade and get discouraged when I expect that they will do much better on a second attempt.
- Calibrating grades: I sometimes read through a few submissions to see how students interpreted assignment questions and what sort of answers they gave. This helps me to figure out grading details that I did not expect to encounter. It is important to figure out these details before assigning any grades so that I grade consistently.
Implementation ideas/issues:
- This could be indicated in the “change user” dropdown
- Is it hard to detect whether annotations have been made? For example, the grading tool asks me to save even if I just click somewhere on the document without adding any annotation.