From my perspective as an instructor, every assessment goes through roughly five key stages of its “lifecycle”: 1) design the assessment, 2) create a rubric, 3) build a comment library, 4) grade assessments, and 5) review graded assessments. Each stage requires significant resources to produce high quality and consistent feedback. In a small course, I traditionally lead stages 1, 2, and 5 myself whereas a couple of TAs will do stages 3 and 4. As the coordinator for a large course, I am under significant time constraints and cannot follow this traditional scheme without significant compromise on grading quality. With the support of the Writing-Integrated Teaching (WIT) program, I have remodeled this workflow in collaboration with Head TAs and a Lead Writing TA. I only lead stage 1 and initiate stage 2. With my support, Head TAs lead stages 2, 3, and 5. Grading TAs focus primarily on stage 4 with support from Head TAs. This remodel has maximized the impact of my limited time, created leadership and development opportunities for experienced TAs, strengthened TA grading skills, and improved assessment feedback. I hope to share my experience with others along with suggested strategies that could be adopted in other large courses.
Location is Room BA2165