Almost a year ago, we decided to start a second blog focused on providing relevant, useful information specifically to educators. We’ve been blown away by the response.
The web is bursting with instructors passionate about finding new ways to help their students. We’ve done our best to gather resources, interview interesting people, suggest tips for better teaching and learning, and encourage new ideas and techniques.
In case you missed it, here are some of the most popular posts from the last few months:
Psychology professors rejoice! We’ve got a new set of psychology writing assignments ready to use in your class this fall!
Based on one of the most popular intro psych texts (Psychology by David G Myers), our assignments have already been tested in the classroom for quality. And we’ll let you use two of them at no cost.
For years, SAGrader has been helping students learn more through writing and saving time for instructors.
Now, we’re giving teachers the chance to use it for free in their classroom this spring.
Why? We want your opinion and suggestions! We’re eager to learn how we can improve SAGrader to make it the ultimate learning tool. In exchange, you and your class will get full access to SAGrader for the Spring ’09 semester.
Those of you who have been waiting for a commitment-free chance to try automatic grading, now is your chance! Sign up deadline is November 17th.
SAGrader is designed to help students express their understanding of concepts through careful, precise writing. We’re not big fans of “fluff” writing that sounds good, but doesn’t actually say anything.
I call this writing to the point. The underlying goal is to remove any content that does not help define your main point in a unique way.
It’s similar to the system used by screenwriters. When you’re writing a script for a movie, each scene needs to contribute to the underlying theme of your film. If you can’t explain how a scene relates to the overall movie, cut it.
Use the same process for each word and sentence in your writing.
I recently read some of Ayn Rand’s editing notes for her first draft of The Fountainhead and she repeatedly criticized herself for using adjectives that don’t contribute something distinct to the noun.
I fall into this trap all the time. Often, I’ll end up using two adjectives to describe a noun that mean the same thing (“We need to keep our workplace clean and tidy.”).
Just stop it. It’s okay to reinforce your point. Repetition is a useful technique. But don’t add “filler” words and sentences just to take up space. It’s poor writing and less enjoyable to read.
Over the years, SAGrader has been used a lot in Sociology courses. As a result we’ve gathered an impressive collection of classroom-tested essay assignments for Intro, Social Psychology, Social Deviance and Research Methods. Now we’re offering these ready-to-use assignments to your Sociology class!
It’s an easy way to inject some robust assignments into your curriculum. And since they’re already setup in SAGrader, you won’t have to grade them. We’ve got over 20 assignments to choose from. Use as many as you want for only $19 a student.
SAGrader ( www.sagrader.com ) , our automated essay grading service, has seen a lot of changes this summer. We’ve improved the interface, made some changes to some features, and added an array of new functionality. For an example of something we’ve changed, please look at the section view in your account (paid or demo).
In order to get some information on how users view the changes and new features that we have released, we are running a beta test of the newest version of SAGrader, version 3.0.
Beta test enrollment will run from July 14th through August 1st. Unfortunately, we can only accept a limited number of beta testers, so apply early to receive first consideration.
For the beta test we are offering instructors the ability to have three essays programmed into SAGrader for free, and then have up to 150 students in a class submit to their personalized assignments. This will give instructors the ability to offer the SAGrader learning environment to their students without requiring their students to pay anything (as always, instructors pay nothing).
Why would we do something as crazy as offer such a powerful program as SAGrader for free? In short, we need data. We want to know what people think about our new features, and how we can improve in the future. Also, we want to know a few things about SAGrader instructors. We want to know how their experience goes, and how their students’ experiences go. In order to do that, we are asking that instructors and students fill out a couple surveys.
We hope to be able to use this opportunity to dramatically improve SAGrader, and build an even more powerful learning system. Go to www.sagrader.com/beta for more information on the beta. Find the solicitation after the jump.
