Macaulay ITF

One of the barriers to using WordPress as tool in the classroom is the challenge of grading. Currently there is no “out of the box” solution for grading, and, to my knowledge no grading plug-ins.  Absent an online grading system, instructors are forced to print out posts, mark them up and return them to their students – a process that is labor intensive, and not ecologically sustainable.

One way to address this problem is by combining private comments (a plug-in I have developed) with user roles (a plugin that controls user access).  Private comments allows a commentor to create a comment that is only visible to the blog’s administrator, the post’s author, and the comment’s author. For all other users, private comments return with fixed text.  The default text for a private post  is “This post is private” .   To make a comment private, all that is necessary is to preface the comment with a specified token.  The default token is “@private”.  Both the token and default text can be changed through the plug-in’s option window.

Instructors can use private comments to communicate grades and sensitive comments to students.  Before they do so, however, it is crucial that students cannot edit or delete comments.  Instructors can assure that students cannot administer comments by setting the proper flags in the user roles plugin.   That’s pretty much it.  Let me know if you’re using private comments and if so how it’s working for you.