How the Angel Drop-Box Can Improve Your Life (or at least help you get organized)
If you dread the piles of student papers that begin to proliferate in your office about mid-semester, and if you’re starting to wonder if those piles are breeding, you might want to take a look at the Angel Drop-Box. The Drop-Box is a utility that lets students turn in papers as electronic attachments through your course’s Angel site. In many ways, this is similar to having students submit papers by e-mail, with the exception that papers submitted to your Angel Drop-Box are automatically organized by class and assignment.
Aside from the convenience of not having to either manage stacks of papers or sort out student papers from the rest of your e-mail, the biggest convenience of having students’ submit papers on-line is that you can respond to them the same way. For short assignments that require few comments, the Drop-Box includes a comment function that lets you record the student’s grade and write a short response. For longer assignments or assignments for which you want to respond in more detail, you can save the document in MS Word and then use the MS Word Comment functions to comment directly on the student’s paper (as you would with pen and paper grading). You can then save your comments, and return the marked up draft back to your student through the Drop-Box.
And finally, you can link the Drop-Box to your Angel grade book, so that the grade you record in the Drop-Box is entered directly into your grade book and your students’ Angel grade reports. In other words, the entire life cycle of an assignment—from drafting through submission, feedback, and grade reporting--can occur electronically and without ever using paper, printer cartridge, or ink.
“First Thoughts on Writing” are brought to you by the Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) program. For more information about the WAC program at PSU, please browse our website or contact the WAC directors.