Scripsit As An Annotating Device In Grading
Introduction to the potential of SCRIPSIT as an aid to grading student essay work began inauspiciously. Faced with a self-imposed deadline for the return of a set of student papers, I was hurrying to annotate them and was railing at the fact that I had to repeat the same comments regarding writing mechanics on more than a few of the essays. At that moment, the proverbial lightbulb switched on. Before thirty minutes had elapsed, I had warmed up my word processing program and typed a series of the most repeated grammar-related comments, both laudatory and cautionary, into my machine. Set off in blocks and designated by code letters, they constituted a primitive menu of reactive comments. Using the menu required no more effort than that of typing in the pupil names and the applicable block letters for each student. Printed on fanfold paper, the comments were then cut out and stapled to each of the corresponding student papers. Inasmuch as I had saved the comments on cassette tape as well, I was also now in the possession of a complete set of comments for the class in the area of writing mechanics.
Alerted to the potential of SCRIPSIT for the rapid annotation of student papers, by the time the next writing assignment came due I had prepared a considerably upscaled version of my word processing scheme. Specifically, I had prepared a model answer to the question which I posed in the student essay assignment. For each of the major three or four points which I hoped/expected students to treat in their responses, I had developed a set of reactive statements of my own. These reactive statements were keyed to the various directions which student answers might be expected to take regarding the central points which I had identified. Each of these statements was then assigned a block designation. (My version of Model III SCRIPSIT 1.0, permits up to 23 separate block designations.) I also retained the grammatical reactive comments from my first experiment and assigned therri the block designations which remained after all of my other reactive comments were covered.
I printed out a copy of my new "response menu," propped it against a typing stand, and set about the business of grading and "responding" to my student essays. Equipped with such a menu, I was able to create a formal essay response to each student's work by combining appropriate blocks, printing each set of blocks, and affixing same to
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the student essays as before. An outline example of this procedure follows in Figure 1.
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