Drafting and Revision

Drafting is the process writers use to compose formal assignments. In line with common practices among instructors of WI courses, the WAC program recommends that drafts not carry a grade of their own. This practice emphasizes that drafts are works in progress.
Instructors of WI courses should make clear the distinction between revision, editing, and proofreading. Editing and proofreading have to do with the surface-level appearance and mechanics of a paper and its adherence to ‘academic’ and disciplinary conventions; revision, on the other hand, is always substantive and involves significant labor.

The Feedback Loop: Responding to and Grading Student Writing 
The CUNY-wide Faculty Advisory Committee for WAC recommends that course enrollment be capped at 25 so that student work receives appropriate attention and that the process of writing for the discipline can be adequately addressed. The National Council of Teachers of English, on the other hand, writes:

“Institutions can provide reasonable and equitable working conditions by establishing teaching loads and class sizes that are consistent with disciplinary norms. No more than 20 students should be permitted in any writing class. Ideally, classes should be limited to 15.”

This section begins with a discussion of course caps because class size is directly linked to instructors’ grading labor and student outcomes. This section will outline some practices for instructors to consider in relation to the labor of grading student writing.

Peer Review
One way to address the labor of evaluating student work is to use peer review. Peer review is a process through which students read and critically evaluate each others’ writing. It is a good idea to collaborate with students in determining which aspects of writing need feedback, and how to provide constructive comments that address substantive issues and elicit meaningful revision, rather than simply editing or proofreading a paper.

Conferencing
Another way to address the labor of evaluating student work is through conferences. Individual conferences are meetings between the instructor and students to discuss plans for drafting and/or revising formal written work. Conferences held in pairs or small groups can be particularly efficient in concert with peer review; students may benefit from feedback given to their classmates, whose work they’ve already read and evaluated. Conferences provide a space to identify common challenges and to address patterns of error, which help instructors avoid intensive sentence-level marking. An additional benefit of conferences is that students may raise their own concerns and questions and receive individualized support from the instructor.

Minimal Marking
As a final note on minimizing the labor of grading, the York College WAC Program recommends this brief guide on minimal marking from New York City of Technology at CUNY. In essence, instructors are advised to address the highest order concerns in a limited number of comments.

Supplemental materials/further reading section:

These materials are gathered from various sources (across CUNY and beyond) and need to be tailored to York classrooms. Some of the key terms (like “mastery”) used in these documents do not follow the most current trends in writing studies and have been the subject of critique. We suggest using these materials as general templates but revising them for the specific objectives of your WI courses.

Creating Effective Peer Review Groups to Improve Student Writing

Peer Response Samples with Associated Assignments.  (https://www.jjay.cuny.edu/writing-intensive-resources)

Responding to Student Writing

Tips on Grading: Using Rubrics

Unit 3 Quiz and Deliverables

Now that you’ve finished reviewing the materials for Unit 3, complete the unit by submitting the form below, which contains a quiz and asks you to create some deliverables for the unit. The form will require you to sign in using your CUNY account. In order to allow you to refer to this page while completing the form, we recommend that you open this link in a new tab.

Link to Unit 3 Quiz and Deliverables

(Login to Microsoft 365 with your @login.cuny.edu username and password to complete the form)