iPhone for podcasting

I record my lecture audio with the Voice Memos app on my iPhone, and I use the 3CRSS service to host a podcast using those files. I waited until the end of March to start cleaning up the files on my phone as they are in two places - on the 3CRSS server and on my local computer. Starting my next lecture I will rename the memo immediately so I can see a better name than the date and time on my phone. It will make cleanup a lot easier.

Grading a dropbox

I found using the Turnitin.com plagiarism detection service to have a nice side effect when grading. I can navigate among submissions within the Turnitin.com interface, which already opens in a new browser window. So I can open an originality report in one window and open the feedback page for that student in another window. This makes it important for students to include their names as part of the filename or somewhere in the text of the paper so I can easily identify whose paper is in the Turnitin.com window. Turnitin.com assigns a user number  but there is no easy way (if any) to match that to the student ID number or name.

Discussion setup

I have one discussion topic per chapter and the assignment is for students to write a two-paragraph commentary on the chapter. To help them get started I provide several prompts and say they could choose to respond to one of those. To encourage peer interaction I give extra credit for replies:

• Original author: 16 points possible for the original post
  2 points per quality reply
  1 point per courtesy reply
• Reply author: 8 points for a quality reply that is properly supported (quotes and page nos.)
  4 points for a quality reply
  1 point for a courtesy reply

I do not limit extra credit, and some enterprising students are testing how far they can go, so I added the following additional rules:

• No points for additional posts by the original author in the same thread
• Only the highest quality post gets graded for reply authors in the same thread

For the next time I teach with this, I will add the additional rule:

• Only the highest quality post gets graded for reply authors on the same specific topic anywhere in that chapter discussion topic (all those original authors still get extra credit for writing a post that inspires a reply)

Too much grading!

This class has too much grading of writing: six document analyses, nine discussion topics, and a research paper. I was a week late in grading a chapter discussion and I will end up a week late in grading a document analysis. A full-time colleague told me today it would be okay to drop an assignment, and I think I will do that. I am sure my students will be happy.