It's the attack of the 3-ring binders!

Yes, it is that time of year once again. Students are frantically finishing their end of course projects and turning them in. Instructors are frantically trying to deal with the enourmous amount of paper, folders, and binders that 200 some odd student projects produce. Today was the day that my Intro students turned in their Psychology Concept portfolios. I had requested that they use the report covers or slim folders, but inevitably I received bulky 3-ring binders that cause things to fall into disaray rather easily!

I am actually pretty excited about grading these projects. I did a similar project like this in my own undergraduate Social Psychology class. Students were required to look for media images, reports, examples, or personal examples of psychology concepts covered in class or by their text book. This is the first time I have had one of my own classes do a project like this however. I am actually hoping to mine some of these for my own use for class examples. I've looked through quite a few of the portfolios already and some are very well done with some great examples.

Luckily this year I also get to share the pain of grading student projects with my 4 TA's. I have split the work between the 5 of us, to a more manageable 30-40 portfolios each. I just hope that the interrater reliability is good. I put pretty straightforward grading rubrics for both the students and graders to follow. So hopefully all will be good. It is always a daunting task to grade student work.