Increasing Grading Efficiency with the Carmen Comment Library

Providing useful, action-oriented feedback – feedback that is timely, specific, substantive, and that helps students to identify patterns and strategies for success – enhances instructor presence in online courses and provides critical support to students during the learning process. At the same time, crafting such feedback requires additional time, effort, and tradeoffs on the part of the instructor, especially for large enrollment courses. The Comment Library is a function within Carmen that can help to increase grading efficiency, while still offering students the pointed feedback they need to grow and succeed.

With the comment library that is contained within Carmen’s Speegrader, course instructors can create and store written comments that can quickly be selected, adjusted, and attached to an individual student’s grade. This ability to simply locate, select, and attach a stored comment to any student in the course is particularly helpful for cases in which instructors find themselves identifying and commenting on the same types of errors made by multiple students or across various assignments. In addition, any comments stored within the comment library are automatically connected to an individual instructor’s account, allowing the instructor quick access to saved comments across all courses.

To add and save comments to your Carmen Comment Library, watch the short video tutorial or follow the outline steps provided below.

1. From within your Carmen course, locate an existing assignment and open the SpeedGrader via the More Options Menu (generally indicated by three vertical dots).
2. Once in the SpeedGrader, locate the comment box on the right-hand side of the screen. You may need to scroll down to find it.
3. Click on the comment bubble icon that appears just above the comment text box to open the Comment Library.
4. To add a new comment to the library, type your comment in the text box and then click + Add to Library.
5. Continue to add additional comments in this way until you have added all desired comments to the library.
6. If you need to edit an existing comment, from within the Comment Library, click the pencil icon next to the comment that you would like to edit, make your changes, and click Save. 
7. To attach an existing comment to a student’s grade, from within the Comment Library, simply select the comment that you wish to add, review it and make any changes needed, then click Submit when you are ready to publish your comments and the student’s grade.