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For these reasons, instructors are continuously looking for ways to respond efficiently to student work. Seasoned instructors have developed systems that work well for them. We offer a few here: Don't comment on everything. Tell students that in your responses to a particular paper you intend to focus on their thesis sentences and introductions, or their overall structure, or their use of sources, etc. This method works particularly well in courses that require students to do several papers. Instructors can, as the term progresses, focus on different aspects of student writing. Space or stagger deadlines so that you are not overwhelmed by drafts. If the thought of grading eighteen essays in two or three days is daunting, divide the class in half or into thirds and require different due dates for different groups. Use peer groups. Ask students to meet outside of class (or virtually, on the Blackboard discussion board) to talk with one another about their papers. Peer groups work best when you've modeled the critiquing process in class, and when you provide students with models or guidelines for critiquing. See our page on Collaborative Learning for a fuller discussion. Ask for a Writing Assistant. The Writing Assistant reviews drafts of papers and makes extensive comments. Students benefit by having an additional reader; instructors benefit because they get better papers. If you'd like more information about using a Writing Assistant in your course, contact Stephanie Boone, Director of Student Writing Support.

the RRSG theory of reading comprehension is predominantly cognitive rather than cultural. It depicts the text as an encoded representation of a specific situation.

Making and having meaning, then, transcend cognition and involve a commitment to values and the pursuit of ideals.

These moral qualities are essential to human life, yet they seem to be completely redundant in the case of the aforementioned reader of “the cat is on the mat.”

Seeley notes that after a conversation with some of her students, she discovered that "most can't concentrate on reading a text for more than 30 seconds or a minute at a time. We're being trained away from slow reading by new technology."

I would say that they primarily need protected from themselves… that they need help moderating their web presence until they understand the full ramifications of things they say online.  I don’t think that means they need to be anonymous.  I do think that anonymity tends to foster less responsible behavior, in both children and adults alike

The issue is less stuff vs. reading than it is a question of what sorts of and how much of stuff. When stuff dominates instructional time, warning flags should go up.

In less-effective classrooms, there is a lot of stuff going on for which no reliable evidence exists to support their use (e.g., test-preparation workbooks, copying vocabulary definitions from a dictionary, completing after-reading comprehension worksheets).

In these classrooms, lower-achieving students spent their days with books they could successfully read.